Browsing by Subject "harhakäsitys"

Social norms direct group behavior. Everybody in group knows how they should behave ac-cording to the norms, but sometimes group members may have misperceptions about the norms. Pluralistic ignorance is situation where majority of the group secretly resist the norm. Group members do not tell their own opinion or non-normative behavior because they think other group members support the norm. It has been studied that youth have misperceptions, for example about substance abuse and bullying behavior. According to the social norms the-ory the misperceived norms and negative behavior can be decreased by releasing the actual norms. Perkins’ and Berkowitz’s (1986) social norms approach releases the actual positive norms to the group by intervention. The purpose of this study is to examine the suitability of the social norms approach in com-prehensive school context and survey the ways that interventions can be done. The first re-search question surveys the misperceptions that social norms approach have been target at in comprehensive schools, and which methods can be used. The second research question surveys changes in students’ misperceptions and behavior. The method of this study was nar-rative literature review. In my literature review’s material students’ misperceptions were about substance abuse, bul-lying and rumor spreading. Interventions prefer social norms marketing method such as post-ers and other material. Active methods, like interactive feedback assemblies, were also used and three researches mentioned that parents received a newsletter. Students’ misperceptions decreased in all studies but results about students’ negative behavior were conflicting. In some cases negative behavior decreased but in some cases it even increased. The behavior changes may be explained by increase in students’ awareness, low campaign exposure, stu-dents’ age and intervention methods and readiness.