Why does advertising the truth matter?
Research suggests that correcting misperceptions provides valuable support for health. If students know that the true social norm for their peers is healthy, then they are more likely to persist in their own healthy choices. It’s not our job to tell college students what to do. It is our job to help them make decisions based on facts and not on misperceptions. This strategy is called the Social Norms Approach. The National Social Norms Resource Center was created at Northern Illinois University to facilitate more interventions and research related to Social Norms Marketing. Now existing at the University of Virginia under a new name, the National Social Norms Institute works with VCU’s Wellness Resource Center in a grant-funded project to create, conduct, and evaluate the social norms marketing campaign at VCU. For more information about the theory and research related to true numbers and social norms, check out www.socialnorms.org. A summary of changes at VCU over time from 2002 throu
