《社会心理学》课程教学资源（文献资料）Aggression——The Salience of Social Referents - A Field Experiment on Collective Norms and Harassment Behavior in a School Social Network

ATTITUDES AND SOCIAL COGNITION The Salience of Social Referents:A Field Experiment on Collective Norms and Harassment Behavior in a School Social Network Elizabeth Levy Paluck and Hana Shepherd of school collective and their h tbehavior. eers per peatandPeonaygh ed.in for Kevwords:social norms.social influence,social conflict.social ne works,relational aggression,bullying Classic and contemporary experiments have demonstrated the However.individuals also develop ideas about social norms that s judgm Cialdini&Goldstein.2004:Sherif.936).Most experimental These types of"collectve" s describe theo as tha social os test the n of perceived types of social orms apply to iudgments or behavior in other situations such behavior iswro( rded to Elizabeth Lev Despite powerful evidence of collctive normative ty. 200 Shepherd,01).Toae,pychological ha whe they are pre d to individ ld Gre h P provided superic e across large numbers of people and situations.These social Pychology nd

ATTITUDES AND SOCIAL COGNITION The Salience of Social Referents: A Field Experiment on Collective Norms and Harassment Behavior in a School Social Network Elizabeth Levy Paluck and Hana Shepherd Princeton University Persistent, widespread harassment in schools can be understood as a product of collective school norms that deem harassment, and behavior allowing harassment to escalate, as typical and even desirable. Thus, one approach to reducing harassment is to change students’ perceptions of these collective norms. Theory suggests that the public behavior of highly connected and chronically salient actors in a group, called social referents, may provide influential cues for individuals’ perception of collective norms. Using repeated, complete social network surveys of a public high school, we demonstrate that changing the public behavior of a randomly assigned subset of student social referents changes their peers’ perceptions of school collective norms and their harassment behavior. Social referents exert their influence over peers’ perceptions of collective norms through the mechanism of everyday social interaction, particularly interaction that is frequent and personally motivated, in contrast to interaction shaped by institutional channels like shared classes. These findings clarify the development of collective social norms: They depend on certain patterns of and motivations for social interactions within groups across time, and are not static but constantly reshaped and reproduced through these interactions. Understanding this process creates opportunities for changing collective norms and behavior. Keywords: social norms, social influence, social conflict, social networks, relational aggression, bullying Classic and contemporary experiments have demonstrated the power of social norms over individuals’ judgment and behavior (Asch, 1955; Blanchard, Crandall, Brigham, & Vaughn, 1994; Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004; Sherif, 1936). Most experimental studies of social norms test the influence of a perceived situational norm, meaning the perceived social consensus regarding which judgments or behaviors are appropriate in the immediate situation (Miller & Prentice, 1996). These types of social norms apply to that situation only; their influence is not expected to carry over to judgments or behavior in other situations. However, individuals also develop ideas about social norms that apply to a larger collection of situations, situations that are popu￾lated by a wider community of people who interact repeatedly. These types of “collective” social norms describe the norms that arise in a school, an organization, or a nation. The social influence, organizational, and cultural psychology literatures provide many examples of collective social norms and their influence on impor￾tant patterns of behavior and cognition across time. For instance, college students’ perception that binge drinking is common on campus increases campuswide alcohol consumption (Prentice & Miller, 1993). Bullying and harassment in secondary schools is fostered by a perceived social consensus among students that speaking out against such behavior is wrong (Juvonen & Cadigan, 2002). Finally, patterns of counterfactual thinking in Eastern and Western cultures are perpetuated by cultural members’ perceptions of a social consensus regarding the most valued means for achiev￾ing ends (Zou et al., 2009). Despite powerful evidence of collective normative influence over individual and group behavior and cognition, very little research addresses how individuals identify these social norms (cf. Kitts, 2003, Shepherd, 2012). To date, psychological research has tested the impact of norms when they are presented to individuals through public opinion data or experimental confederates. To understand the means by which individuals learn about collective social norms in the course of their everyday experience, psychol￾ogists can examine the social cues that individuals use to gener￾alize across large numbers of people and situations. These social cues might include particularly salient individuals, behaviors, or public expressions. Identifying the social cues individuals use to This article was published Online First September 17, 2012. Elizabeth Levy Paluck and Hana Shepherd, Department of Psychology and Public Affairs, Princeton University. A research grant from Princeton University awarded to Elizabeth Levy Paluck provided support for this research. We gratefully acknowledge the collaboration, generosity, and support of our high school research site, its staff and students, and in particular Kelly Bocuzzo and Alan Paluck, whose energy and dedication made this project possible. We received important feedback from Peter Aronow, Peter Bearman, Hart Blanton, Mina Cikara, Alin Coman, Paul DiMaggio, Donald Green, Deborah Prentice, Matthew Salganik, Ezra Zuckerman, and members of colloquia at the Russell Sage Foundation, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Theo￾rodology workshop at Princeton. Izzy Gainsburg, David Mackenzie, and Ani Momjian provided superior research support. All errors are our own. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Elizabeth Levy Paluck, Green Hall, Department of Psychology and Public Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540. E-mail: epaluck@princeton.edu Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012, Vol. 103, No. 6, 899 –915 © 2012 American Psychological Association 0022-3514/12/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0030015 899 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly

900 PALUCK AND SHEPHERD learn about collective social norms is imp tant for understand ne p In th article.we test the hypothesis that highly cted and he social n rega cial referent stable percept tive social norms from a host of cues,theorie ibing the ence of ial refe She d ore tha s.we test th they have t i Social Referents Provide Cues to Collective Norms 2000:Miller&Prent How Individuals Identify Social Norms Social psychological theory predicts that individuals form their the ti not clu what is socially norm cognitionor f the As a result of the c ollective oup identity. extent of thei A second type of person who is theor ctically well positi ally.in s may the aueceoftm school.The indi iduals have a large numb cial their nips are frequently obs in the of fem are highly co embers of the clique In par when the be oadly endorsed and when the n with the y high l or takes place.Gi liques grant indiv uals a feeling of unig bcha e conditi ns,it is n able to ask well as one of likely to b duals infer within a Widely known individuals and leaders of cliaues should have ter influence than other members of a community over per more likely to be perceived as act.ype o latively wid oss the tive norms in the course of their everyday lives? How Individuals Identify Collective Norms Through Social Referents tative of the group as a whol At the same time.clique When individuals form an im ion of how mo onle in community feel about for relations.not behavior.due to their greater personal relevance to group members

learn about collective social norms is important for understanding the persistence of norms and behavioral patterns in a collective, as well as instances of change in norms and behavior. In this article, we test the hypothesis that highly connected and chronically salient individuals in a community provide cues as to the social norms of the collective. To test this hypothesis, we use a randomized intervention within a repeatedly measured, complete high school social network. Although individuals likely infer col￾lective social norms from a host of cues, theories describing the influence of social reference groups and situational social interac￾tions suggest that certain individuals, or social referents (Sherif & Sherif, 1964), will shape inferences about collective norms signif￾icantly more than others. We test the way in which cues from these social referents are transmitted to their peers through everyday social interaction, specifically, interaction that is frequent and personally motivated, as opposed to interaction shaped by institu￾tional channels like shared classes. Social Referents Provide Cues to Collective Norms How Individuals Identify Social Norms Social psychological theory predicts that individuals form their ideas about what is socially normative in a social context or within a community by observing other people’s public behavior. The power of that perceived norm over individuals’ own cognition or behavior depends on the extent to which they perceive the norm to be univer￾sally endorsed, and the extent to which they feel personally tied to the context or community (Miller & Prentice, 1996; Sherif, 1936). For example, when an individual observes a person littering in a parking lot, the littering behavior may not serve as a cue to a littering norm if there are signals that the behavior is not universally endorsed, such as another person picking up trash or a previous experience in the parking lot in which no one littered (Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990). Additionally, individuals may reject the influence of norms belonging to a context or community if they are motivated to define their identity in opposition to that context or community, as in the case of “fringe groups” (Blanton & Burkley, 2008; Blanton & Christie, 2003), or if they feel they do not fit the community prototype, as in the case of female undergraduates at a traditionally male university (Hogg, 2010; Prentice & Miller, 1993). In sum, public behaviors influence perceptions of social norms when the behaviors seem broadly endorsed and when the perceiver feels personally tied to the context or community in which the behavior takes place. Given these conditions, it is reasonable to ask whose behavior contributes the most to individuals’ perceptions of norms in a context or community. This question is particularly relevant for understanding how individuals infer norms within a wider community where individuals interact repeatedly across different situations. Are there particular types of people in the community whose behavior is more likely to be perceived as universally endorsed, and as personally relevant? Do certain peo￾ple “count” more when individuals draw inferences about collec￾tive norms in the course of their everyday lives? How Individuals Identify Collective Norms Through Social Referents When individuals form an impression of how most people in a community feel about, for example, race relations, they do not comprehensively account for each person’s apparent racial atti￾tudes and compute an unweighted modal or average collective position. We revisit and test the long-standing hypothesis that the public behaviors of highly connected and chronically salient actors in a group, called social referents, provide normative cues regard￾ing what is acceptable and desirable for group members (Sherif & Sherif, 1964). For each individual group member, social referents are most influential over stable perceptions of collective norms when the individual is personally connected to the referent and repeatedly observes the referent across situations. Personal con￾nections are critical to referents’ influence because perceivers infer more social information from and are more influenced by people with whom they have an affinity or felt connection (Hardin & Higgins, 1996; Hogg, 2010). Repeated observation of social ref￾erents in various situations is important because individuals do not identify norms on the basis of their accumulated experience and knowledge (Miller & Prentice, 1996), but rather on the basis of immediate context in which the norms are relevant (Kallgren, Reno, & Cialdini, 2000; Miller & Prentice, 1996). We examine the influence of two types of social referents in a collective. One type is a widely known individual, who has many ties to individuals across the network (i.e., the ties are not clustered among a subgroup, but span several subgroups in the network). Widely known people are personally connected to many members of the community. As a result of their reach across the social network, and, relatedly, because they are often respected and considered popular by others, their behavior may be identified as representative of the collective group identity. Additionally, due to the extent of their relations in the network, their behavior is likely to be more frequently observed across situations in the community. A second type of person who is theoretically well positioned to shape perceptions of collective norms is a leader of a subgroup, or “clique,” within the community, such as a friendship clique in a school. These individuals have a large number of social relations, but their relationships are largely concentrated within a subgroup in which the subgroup members have social relations with one another. A clique leader’s behavior is frequently observed by clique members because they interact with one another more often than they do with others in the community. Also, leaders of cliques are highly connected to other members of the clique. In particular, connections in a clique may be marked by high levels of identifi￾cation with the clique leader referent, because membership in cliques grant individuals a feeling of uniqueness as well as one of belongingness (Pickett, Silver, & Brewer, 2002). Thus, the norms inferred within an individual’s subgroup are less likely to be rejected as unrepresentative of the individual’s identity (Blanton & Christie, 2003). Widely known individuals and leaders of cliques should have a greater influence than other members of a community over per￾ceived collective norms. However, each type of individual may also have a slightly different impact. For example, due to their relatively wider reach across the social network and their status in the group, widely known people may seem more relevant for inferring collective norms as they may be perceived as more representative of the group as a whole. At the same time, clique leaders may be particularly capable of influencing personal attach￾ment to collective norms and enforcing costly or socially riskier behavior, due to their greater personal relevance to group members 900 PALUCK AND SHEPHERD This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly

SALIENCE OF SOCIAL REFERENTS 901 ence individuals'percep ey.&Smith.2007)and follow a tradition of empirical research f collective soci 2004.d within main goal of this h was to re norms are accompanied by changes in the behaviors that are individuals in a networkon collective oms and behavioral pat- prescribed or proscribed by those norms tems through the course of everyday interaction Prejudice and Harassment in Schools We investigate the so ce of cues about a problematic norm ent harass cal in the Galvan,2008 social network of th scho sponse from the target and often from the targets ision a su cial refe lving a school ce.sexual har erbally in person and al refc po onen resist this abel and i cho like"ei mean and "making drama"(Faris Felmlee,2011:Marwick cial int ment behavior is not str gly related to and perso pe ng to nerally o tial cha for about collect h t the social n ork of a school Wher rchy participa u ying intervention that the n s.the on the throuhout the year to test the attitudes do not tra withd ted eve social interaction change their peer ial norms motivate haras ment and inhibit behaviors that de w collectiv e&Mille ,993 can more tolerant colled ure of through everyday social interactions.In doing so.in this research

and to group members’ tightly knit and frequent interactions allowing for ongoing monitoring and reinforcement. Overall, understanding who can influence individuals’ percep￾tions of collective social norms may help us to understand how to change chronically perceived norms and behavioral patterns in a community. The main goal of this research was to understand whether and through what channels these theoretically identified social referents of a community can significantly shape their peers’ perceptions of collective norms in their community. Importantly, we also examine whether those changes in perceived collective norms are accompanied by changes in the behaviors that are prescribed or proscribed by those norms. The Present Research: Measuring Social Referents’ Influence Across a Social Network We investigate the source of cues about a problematic norm within a community, specifically, the norm of peer harassment in a high school. Using a saturated survey and social network analysis to map the entire social network of the school, we are able to identify social referents at the school, both widely known and clique leader social referents. We randomly assign a subset of these social referents to an intervention involving a schoolwide assembly in the fall and public reminders of the assembly for the rest of the year, in which the intervention social referents demon￾strate their opposition to harassment and support for behavior that can de-escalate conflict. The influence of the intervention social referents is measured net of the influence of the remaining control social referents. Specifically, we test whether the intervention social referents’ public behavior changes their peers’ perceptions of the school norm of harassment and behavior. We further predict that intervention social referents will influ￾ence their peers through the mechanism of everyday social inter￾action that is frequent and personally motivated. Specifically, interactions that students initiate with social referents should be the most influential channel for perceiving cues about collective norms, compared with incidental or institutionally driven interac￾tion. When students are personally motivated to interact with social referents in or outside of the classroom, social referents’ behavior should be noticed more and weighed more heavily in students’ inferences about the collective norm, relative to interac￾tions that are a consequence of a school administrator’s decision to put students in the same class or study hall. In addition, we hypoth￾esize that the more frequent the interactions with social referents, the stronger their influence on their interaction partners’ perceptions of the collective norm. Thus, we use reports of students’ self-selected social interactions at three points throughout the year to test the idea that the influence of ties to intervention social referents will be relatively greater if students are exposed to them in frequent and personally motivated everyday social interaction. In sum, our research questions are: Does greater social interac￾tion with intervention social referent students over the course of the school year significantly shape their peers’ perception of the school’s collective social norm regarding harassment? Does greater social interaction change their peers’ harassment behavior? In this research, we explored how collective norms are identified by testing whether the widely known and clique leader students’ behavior can communicate a more tolerant collective norm through everyday social interactions. In doing so, in this research we answer the more general call to understand the wider conse￾quences of social influence within social networks (Mason, Con￾rey, & Smith, 2007) and follow a tradition of empirical research attempting to understand peer influence within networks on be￾havior (e.g., Bearman & Moody, 2004; Coleman, Katz, & Menzel, 1957). To our knowledge, this is the first time that influence across a naturally occurring social network has been tested with an experiment, in which influence agents are randomly assigned to treatment on the basis of their position in the network. As such, the study is one of the first to measure the causal influence of certain individuals in a network on collective norms and behavioral pat￾terns through the course of everyday interaction. Prejudice and Harassment in Schools Many high schools in the United States and abroad report harmful and cyclical patterns of student-to-student harassment in schools (e.g., Graham, 2006; Juvonen & Galván, 2008). The harassment is often cyclical in the sense that harassment prompts a response from the target and often from the targets’ friends, which triggers a reaction from the initial student and her or his friends, thereby broadening and fueling the behavioral cycle. The type of harassment varies from school to school, but common themes include harassment on the basis of ethnic or racial identity, appearance, sexual orientation, or rumored sexual activity. Increas￾ingly, harassment takes place online, on social networking sites like Facebook, and through phone texting, but it also occurs verbally in person and sometimes physically. Although many intervention programs label such behavior bullying, adolescents often resist this label and instead choose descriptors like “being mean” and “making drama” (Faris & Felmlee, 2011; Marwick & Boyd, 2011). Crucially, harassment behavior is not strongly related to stu￾dents’ personal values or attitudes regarding tolerance generally or harassment specifically. Harassment is typically widespread throughout the social network of a school; students at almost all levels of the school hierarchy participate (Faris & Felmlee, 2011), despite variation in their personal orientations toward harassment. This suggests that changing patterns or levels of harassment in a school will not come from changing students’ private attitudes, values, or beliefs, which are the target of many existing anti￾bullying interventions. Instead, researchers have described high rates of harassment behaviors as stemming from perceptions of a social consensus concerning harassment behaviors at the school (e.g., Juvonen & Cadigan, 2002). For example, many students do not personally like or approve of harassment, but their private attitudes do not trans￾late into behaviors aimed at discouraging harassers, defending victims, or withdrawing from the cycle of harassment by refusing to engage in conflict or that of their friends. Students interpret their peers’ failure to take action as implicit endorsement of the harass￾ment. In other words, peer behavior communicates social norms regarding the acceptability of harassment and the unacceptability of standing up against it or withdrawing from it. These perceived social norms motivate harassment and inhibit behaviors that de￾escalate conflicts (see also Prentice & Miller, 1993). The chronic activation of harassment norms in schools is perhaps an important feature of what is frequently described as a schoolwide “culture of harassment” (Bradshaw & Waasdorp, 2009). SALIENCE OF SOCIAL REFERENTS 901 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly

902 PALUCK AND SHEPHERD Method 0l, Experimental Context sed the numbers to nominate as many students as they wanted We use the sp dins time tosether question measured two mor times throughout the year.to approximate the frequency with e indicate with whom students are pe nally motivated to spenc sent their expe e harassment ir erived collective norms and behavior.We se this particul Peer harassment is defined as verbal or omplete pattern of Collective norms. We used a series of eight questions to of bhavior that c calate harassment and of students ,providin reminders about the om onflict we asked:"How many students at Ischooll believe it's wh asunng stu nd the intervention. for the believe's ormal to mind your One week after ne is making class penod【o every the s drama for them? step into the middleof o provided info nsent.The survey co hing you into a l ocker,but when they'res ing stuff befor don't talk to my frend I persona of harassm on.June 2011).Instead,teacher nd st ding h t at the school.On the basis of .and on initial qu that prevent future confl We nex essed norms regarding nent in all relevar ey questions (w which was defincd that sc stu se question 2011 wortquestionsSix,apcstioncicitcdsttcntrelation ps at the school in beha oraltems "With whom did yo in th you comn un with other students? "Who would you talk tofs mething D the inf respect"and "who you think are most popular").We followed

Method Experimental Context We studied a small public high school (N
291) that drew students from urban and suburban areas of Connecticut. Teachers had observed high levels of harassment among students in previ￾ous years, and as a response, the school invited the Anti￾Defamation League (ADL) to run an intervention program called “Names Can Really Hurt Us” (referred to below as NAMES). The NAMES intervention prepares a small group of selected students to present their experiences of and reasons to oppose harassment in a schoolwide assembly. Peer harassment is defined as verbal or physical abuse and social ostracism among peers. Prior to the intervention, we analyzed the complete pattern of relationships among students (the school’s social network) in order to identify a pool of widely known and clique leader social referent students and then randomly assign a subset of those social refer￾ents to participate in the program. Participation included leading the schoolwide assembly and, later, providing reminders about the themes of the program through publicity campaigns during the remainder of the school year. We first describe the saturated school survey to illustrate how we identified the social referent students within the school’s social network while measuring students’ perceived norms, beliefs, and experiences of harassment prior to the intervention. Schoolwide Survey: Social Network and Norms Measurement One week after school began in September, we administered a survey during a single class period to every student in the school (N
260 due to absences on the survey day and in the days following; 56% female; 44% African American, 23% Latino, 21% White; 59% of students were new to the school that year; see Table 1A). Parents signed a consent form for their child to participate, and students also provided informed consent. The survey consisted of four parts: demographic information, questions about relation￾ships with other students at the school (our social network ques￾tions), personal beliefs about and experiences of harassment￾related events at the school, and perceptions of collective social norms regarding harassment at the school. On the basis of previous work on harassment and bullying in schools, and on initial qual￾itative work at the school, we used the term making drama to refer to harassment in all relevant survey questions (which was defined in the survey as “talking behind the backs of other students or to their faces in a mean or rude way; spreading rumors by text, Facebook, MySpace posts, or instant messaging (IMs); giving other students mean or rude looks in the hall”; Marwick & Boyd, 2011). Network questions. Six questions elicited students’ relation￾ships with other students at the school. Four asked about friend￾ships at the school in behavioral terms (“With whom did you spend time in the last week?”; “With whom did you communicate online last week?”; “Who would defend you if you were having ‘drama’ with other students?”; “Who would you talk to if something bad or upsetting happened to you?”). Two questions elicited nominations of high status peers (i.e., students at the school “who you really respect” and “who you think are most popular”). We followed recommended procedures (Marsden, 2005) by providing each stu￾dent with a complete roster of students in the school, arranged by grade, sorted alphabetically by first name, and numbered. Students used the numbers1 to nominate as many students as they wanted for each question. We use the spending time together question, measured two more times throughout the year, to approximate the frequency with which a student is exposed to the behavior of their peers, and to indicate with whom students are personally motivated to spend time. Frequent and personally motivated everyday interaction is the proposed mechanism through which social referents influence perceived collective norms and behavior. We use this particular question to map the social interactions through which we trace the influence of the intervention and control social referents. Collective norms. We used a series of eight questions to measure perceptions of prescriptive norms regarding harassment at the school, specifically, perceptions of student approval of harass￾ment, of behavior that can deescalate harassment, and of students’ rationale for harassment. First we assessed an overall prescriptive norm of harassment: “How many students at [school] believe it’s normal when students start drama or any other kind of conflict with other students?” For norms regarding behavior to deescalate conflict, we asked: “How many students at [school] believe it’s wrong, or would criticize you, if you tried to stop other students from starting drama?”; “. . . believe it’s wrong, or would criticize you, if you did not defend your friends when someone else was making drama for them?”; “. . .believe it’s wrong, or would criti￾cize you, if you ignored rumors about you, rather than defending yourself?”; “. . .believe it’s normal to mind your own business when other students are starting drama for people?” and “believe it is important to defend your friends when someone is making drama for them?” As we learned through interviews at the school, behaviors that deescalate conflict are not necessarily interventionist behaviors in which students defend their friends or step into the middle of conflict. One student stated: “I can see helping out if someone’s pushing you into a locker, but when they’re saying stuff before class and you’re just like ‘don’t talk to my friend like that’ and you start talking too, that’s just starting more problems” (Student DE, personal communication, June 2011). Instead, teachers and stu￾dents identified behaviors like stepping back, minding one’s own business, and not grouping together to defend friends as behaviors that prevent future conflict. We next assessed norms regarding a rationale for harassment behavior: “How many students at [school] believe that sometimes students deserve to have rumors spread about them?”; and “. . .believe that students are seriously nega￾tively affected when they are targeted by rumors, gossip, or other drama?” Students responded to these questions using a pictogram with six options, each of which featured a collection of outlined stick figures. The proportion of shaded figures in each picture repre￾sented the percentage of students at the school who believed or supported the statement (1
Nobody, no shaded figures, 3
1 In the first wave of the survey, students were asked to write down both the name and number of other students they nominated in network ques￾tions. Due to students’ concerns about the confidentiality of the informa￾tion, we only asked them to record the other students’ identification numbers and not their names, in Waves 2 and 3 of the survey. 902 PALUCK AND SHEPHERD This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly

SALIENCE OF SOCIAL REFERENTS 903 from the method n only used where rese archer of the slo .At Wave 3,students also recalled how many o average heir good D apture students'perceptic ons of the collecti of a pro typica owing yea for behaviors supporting h Identification of Social Referent Students t de licts ring instead of The of student rows and t ention ie ith Student 130.then the ce I.W ucipate in ha matrix.In a diffe combined the sults of th forward or send emails,IMs.o en fo therl with phy cal viole ct as a n she spent time ith ek an on they are b p s responded to the ing a 4-point scale (from Vithi this know sents in order to canture s anguage erman F. and experien with ha nent t the fficient in the status hink Do a problem for a small rumors abou hem or whe people make sing a 4-poi ndi ond- d third-w We admin roups h st week after the interve edbelow to be idely known"or "clig ind of th chool ye of the survey: 190 (Mr .2005 sto determine how students perceived ct the distinct i luence effec s of each type of student on thei other students from startingdrama?Students responded using the of students remain unconnected over the course of the school b-point pictogram but this does le our overall a hich is t ement of the sure of the nce o the f the s relative to the total number of ties to control social

About 50%, half-shaded figures, 6
Almost everybody, all shaded figures). This method for eliciting perceptions of social norms differs from the method most commonly used where researchers ask for perceptions of what the “average person” in the group does (e.g., Prentice & Miller, 1993). By using percentages, we hoped to capture students’ perceptions of the sentiments of the collective as opposed to sentiments of each individual’s idea of a prototypical group member. For the prescriptive norm questions, the success of the interven￾tion would be evidenced by perception of less widespread approval for behaviors supporting harassment. Put differently, students would perceive behaviors that deescalate conflict such as stopping others from “starting drama,” refusing to participate in the con￾flicts of friends, and ignoring instead of engaging rumors about oneself to be more desirable and normal at the school. Answers to the questions pertaining to a rationale for harassment indicate a successful intervention when students perceive a widespread belief that students are seriously negatively affected by gossip and ru￾mors, because this perception should make students less likely to participate in harassment. Another series of questions addressed students’ perceptions of descriptive norms (e.g., “How often do students. . . spread rumors about students at [school],” “. . .forward or send emails, IMs, or texts to other students to gossip about or threaten someone,” “threaten [one another] with physical violence,” “. . .act as a ne￾gotiator to calm down a conflict or break up a fight,” and “. . .stand up for someone when they are being insulted or harassed?”). Students responded to these questions using a 4-point scale (from 1
Never to 4
Several times a week). We consulted with school staff and students in order to capture school-specific issues and appropriate language. Personal beliefs and experiences. Three questions addressed personal beliefs about and experiences with harassment at the school: “Do you think there is a problem of too many students gossiping, spreading rumors, or making drama for each other?”; “Do you personally have a problem of students gossiping, spread￾ing rumors, or making drama for you?”; and “Do you think that students are seriously emotionally affected when people gossip or spread rumors about them or when people make drama for them?” Students responded using a 4-point scale (from 1
Not at all to 4
Very much). Second- and third-wave surveys. We administered the social network and norms survey described above to the entire school two more times: 1 week after the intervention described below (N
250, 57.2% female) and at the end of the school year (N
220, 58.18% female). A total of 278 unique students completed at least one wave of the survey; 190 students completed all three waves. We added questions to Wave 3, described below. Close friend norms. Wave 3 reframed two of the collective prescriptive norms questions to determine how students perceived the norm within their close friendship group. Specifically, we asked “How many of your close friends believe that it’s normal to start drama or any other kind of conflict with other students,” and “. . .believe it’s wrong, or would criticize you, if you tried to stop other students from starting drama?” Students responded using the 6-point pictogram. Cognitive salience and endorsement of the program. As a measure of the cognitive salience of the program and of the intervention social referent students who participated in it, Wave 3 of the survey assessed students’ memory for the hallway interven￾tion poster slogans (described below) by asking students to recall one of the slogans. At Wave 3, students also recalled how many of their good friends had participated in the NAMES intervention. As a measure of students’ endorsement of the underlying themes of the program, Wave 3 asked each student to vote on whether a program like NAMES should be implemented the following year at their school. Identification of Social Referent Students We used social network questions from the first survey to construct the complete network of relationships among students at the school. The complete network of student relationships is rep￾resented by a square matrix in which the rows and the columns contain every student in the school. If, for example, Student 125 reported that she spent time with Student 130, then the cell at the intersection of row 125, column 130, would receive value 1. We combined the results of the four friendship-related questions into one matrix. In a different matrix, we combined the results of the two status questions. We combined questions in order to create robust networks that captured several dimensions of relationships, and because some questions elicited higher response rates than others. The combination of questions was not additive; if Student A named Student B as someone she spent time with last week and as someone who would defend her, the cell at the intersection of Students A and B in the friendship matrix has a value of 1. Within this matrix, we identified widely known students as those students who were nominated as being high status by many other students (i.e., high indegree in the status matrix; see Was￾serman & Faust, 1994), and whose status matrix associates did not have many status connections to one another (i.e., low local clustering coefficient in the status matrix; Wasserman & Faust, 1994). This metric verifies that widely known students serve as social referents for a wide swath of students at the school, rather than for a smaller, interconnected group of students. We identify clique leaders as those students who received many friendship nominations (high indegree in the friendship matrix), and whose connections also shared friendship connections to each other (high local clustering coefficient). This designation of clique leaders indicates that they served as leaders of tightly interconnected groups in the school. This strategy for identifying social referents is superior to one in which students nominate people who they believe to be “widely known” or “clique leaders,” because indi￾viduals have different thresholds for who should be included in such designations, rendering their nominations less broadly com￾parable (Marsden, 2005). We stratified this pool of widely known students and clique leader students by gender and grade. To improve our ability to detect the distinct influence effects of each type of student on their friendship connections, we excluded from the pool five students of each type who had direct ties to a student of the other type, for example, a clique leader who was directly tied by friendship to a widely known student. We are unable to ensure that the two types of students remain unconnected over the course of the school year, but this does not trouble our overall analytic strategy, which is to measure the effect of the total number of ties to intervention social referents relative to the total number of ties to control social referents. SALIENCE OF SOCIAL REFERENTS 903 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly

904 PALUCK AND SHEPHERD The term social referent does not indicate a static student trait p and s tis ca cial ref by gaining ties.For the purpo h skit fir al refe ts,three girls and tw nf the as whether the of inter ention so zed her hos e of students.We find that they did no One of the boys related a stor about gettin I at sch ch perpetu 0ng01 cycle rse of the year. ative spoke a bout the ncepts of hy cial refe nal nool s.We stratified the pool by on his or tion program.S of these students refu ed participation in the stop to th below).leaving 24 social referent students who onnected to the intervention social re to the firs dely udents and nd eight s small 31k0 ys:19 sopho n we of follow-up events during the scho who wer for the p ent m es Inter ention social referent ialrefereatsndcntswhe from the pool of eligibl social referents. ted a MES Intervention cial refer nts al The NAMES eir NAMES assment to the student body and to facilitate public discussion nt sloga ocal referents de cat the des rintive idea tha cribed their own harassment and invited and the ring the spring.intervention social referents sold wrist tor from ment message they had se nent at their hool.Students were asked to identify vents)an"all Behavioral Outcome Measures nts dis t in and Behavior reported by teachers.Before the of th onsultation with ADl facilitators s survey to all teachers at the school and to administrative staff who e read by the The argets an The ent ted by fellow student ed by other stu on the rumor.the girl is publically defamed with the word slut in cords of all disciplinary events receiving administrative attention

The term social referent does not indicate a static student trait, but rather a dynamic social status. Students can lose social referent status by losing friendship and status ties to other students over time, or become social referents by gaining ties. For the purposes of studying the influence of the social referents who were ran￾domly assigned to participate in the intervention program, our primary concern was whether the interactions of intervention so￾cial referents would change to a significantly different degree than those of control social referent students. We find that they did not; Table 4A (Appendix) illustrates that, as a group, the intervention and control students maintained their social referent status over the course of the year. Random assignment of social referents to intervention. The final pool contained 83 eligible social referent students: 42 widely known students and 41 clique leaders. We stratified the pool by type of student and by grade level, and used a random number to select 30 students, 15 of each type, to participate in the interven￾tion program. Six of these students refused participation in the program (we address the modeling complications of noncompli￾ance below), leaving 24 social referent students who participated in the intervention (13 widely known students and 11 clique leaders; 16 girls and eight boys; eight sophomores, eight juniors, and eight seniors), and 53 control social referent students who did not participate in the intervention program (27 widely known student alternates and 26 clique leader alternates; 31 girls and 22 boys; 19 sophomores, 11 juniors, and 23 seniors). Below, when we refer to control social referents, we mean those social referent students who were not randomly selected for the program; by intervention social referents, we mean social referent students who were randomly assigned to participate in the intervention program from the pool of eligible social referents. Intervention The NAMES assembly program functions as a platform to broadcast certain students’ experiences with and reactions to ha￾rassment to the student body, and to facilitate public discussion about harassment among students. During the schoolwide assem￾bly conducted in October, the intervention social referents de￾scribed their own harassment experiences and invited other stu￾dents to do the same. Intervention social referents first participated in two training sessions to prepare for the assembly. A facilitator from the ADL led activities that prompted reflection on the nature and effects of harassment at their school. Students were asked to identify the various roles that students can play in harassment (e.g., an “ally” to targeted students or a “bystander” to events). Intervention social referents discussed and wrote essays about their own experiences of harassment in these various roles. Teachers from the school, in consultation with ADL facilitators, selected five of these essays to be read by the student authors at the assembly. The essays were selected to represent the perspective of students who had been both targets and perpetrators. The other intervention social referents wrote and performed a skit illustrating common types of harass￾ment at the school and ways to speak out against it. On the day of the assembly, the intervention social referents performed the skit, in which they acted out a rumor spreading to other students about a girl being a “slut.” Both girls and boys pass on the rumor, the girl is publically defamed with the word slut in the school hallway, boys make advances on the girl, and the audience observes the girl’s emotional turmoil. In the concluding scene, another girl defends the girl who has been targeted. After the skit, five of the intervention social referents, three girls and two boys, read their essays on stage. One girl’s essay described the experience of switching elementary schools because a girl had mobilized her group of friends to continuously harass her, whereas another girl spoke of her own insecurities that lead her to make fun of other students. One of the boys related a story about getting in a physical fight at school, which perpetuated an ongoing cycle of aggression. In between the intervention social referents’ perfor￾mances, an ADL representative spoke about the concepts of by￾stander, ally, and perpetrator, and the effects of harassment. At the end of the assembly, there was an open microphone session in which any student could share his or her own experi￾ences with harassment. Twenty-four students from the audience volunteered to speak at the microphone. Many echoed the inter￾vention social referents’ call for tolerance and a stop to the “drama.” Over half the students who spoke were not socially connected to the intervention social referents, according to the first social network survey, indicating that the group of speakers rep￾resented diverse positions in the school social network. After the assembly, all students at the school were divided into small groups to discuss the assembly. Intervention social referents and adult supervisors facilitated these small-group sessions. A number of follow-up events during the school year reinforced this association between the intervention social referents and anti￾harassment messages. Intervention social referents read announce￾ments regarding the consequences of harassment over the loud￾speaker during morning announcements for several weeks, and designated a special “NAMES” table at lunch period two times during the year where they sat to eat and chat with any passersby about ways to report harassment or concerns about harassment. Intervention social referents also created a series of magenta￾colored posters that each featured a different photo of intervention social referents wearing their NAMES t-shirts, and one of several anti-harassment slogans such as “Whatever your story, I’ll listen” and “People who spread rumors are no friends of mine.” The slogans were designed to communicate the descriptive idea that intervention social referents behaved in a tolerant manner and the prescriptive idea that they would sanction harassment behavior. Finally, during the spring, intervention social referents sold wrist￾bands for $1 featuring an anti-harassment message they had se￾lected (“Don’t stand by, be an ally”). Behavioral Outcome Measures Behavior reported by teachers. Before the start of the NAMES program and at the end of the year, we administered a survey to all teachers at the school and to administrative staff who worked closely with students. Teachers and administrators used the school roster to nominate students who they perceived as popular, respected by fellow students, and harassed by other stu￾dents. They also nominated students who defended those who were harassed, and students who “contributed to a negative school environment.” Students received 1 point in each of these categories for each nomination from a teacher or an administrator. Disciplinary records. We obtained the complete school re￾cords of all disciplinary events receiving administrative attention 904 PALUCK AND SHEPHERD This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly

SALIENCE OF SOCIAL REFERENTS 905 throughout the school year.The disciplinary data included in hat originated from eac student.that is.their own nominations o hara (in of ties to both variable reflects the fact that only three tudents wer ode f six ties,which did not change results) effects regre Although the wristband tudents of eing ated with rof support fo which students bought the wristbands nique if there is an lying lincar ship betweer Results to social refe model ssmen uld Analytic Approach inally.w used an instn ental variab ach to correct fo ariable camines the influen ce of the ran As Table 1 indica there are many students in the sample who m assienment (here the contolsocilfrefd who to part cial referents t bu a social network ty o Thus ysis is a conservative of soci on and contro using spend time ties in order to causally relate the students form new ties and umber of ties.and perceptions of be critical predictor of nor ative influe we used the numbe ties to inte ocial reterents at the wav in whic der we are predicting behavior at Wave3 or measuring change from Number of Suudents Spending Time With Intervention and Control Social Referents.Neither.or Both Variable 。for rvey 69

throughout the school year. The disciplinary data included in￾stances of peer conflict and harassment. Despite reports of wide￾spread harassment, official records of these incidents are rarely coded as harassment specifically (only seven out of 403 infrac￾tions). School records of “disruptive” behavior reveal that 14 of the 31 disciplinary incidents involved peers, such as displaying “ver￾bal aggression toward peer, posturing to fight,” or “instigating a fight.” Thus, we add these specific incidents to the harassment code and create a dichotomous variable indicating whether each student was disciplined for peer harassment at school. The dichot￾omous variable reflects the fact that only three students were recorded more than once for a harassment incident. To test whether the intervention had an effect on poor behavior more generally, we also combined all reported disciplinary events for each student into a count variable. Wristband purchases. Although the wristbands only cost $1, we viewed them as a relatively more costly and more public indicator of support for the anti-harassment message, compared with survey responses. We gathered purchase receipts to record which students bought the wristbands. Results Analytic Approach We tested the effects of the randomly assigned intervention social referents on the rest of the students in the school, using linear fixed effects regressions. We measured the effect of social network ties to intervention social referent students (time spent together in the last week), accounting for their ties to control social referent students, on students’ perceptions of collective norms, their beliefs, and their behavior. As Table 1 indicates, there are many students in the sample who are directly exposed to both intervention and control social refer￾ents because they spend time with both. Indeed, some control social referents themselves are directly exposed to intervention social referents. Random assignment within a social network does not create isolated treatment and control groups; rather, random assignment creates different degrees of exposure to intervention social referents depending on the structure of social interactions within the network. Thus, we identified the frequency of social interactions using spend time ties in order to causally relate the dosage of exposure to intervention social referents from zero to n number of ties, and perceptions of norms or anti-harassment be￾havior. In our regressions, we examined the effect of each student’s treatment dosage, measured in terms of the number of the student’s direct ties to randomly assigned intervention social referents, con￾trolling for the student’s total number of ties. We only used ties that originated from each student, that is, their own nominations of the students they spent time with (in social network terms, their outdegree). A fixed effects regression based on each individual’s total number of ties to both intervention and control social refer￾ents controls for heterogeneous assignment probabilities induced by the fact that treatment was randomized over a network (see Aronow & Samii, 2012). Specifically, our fixed effects regression includes six dummy variables that index for each individual whether their total number of ties to intervention and control social referents at Wave 1 was zero, one, two, three, four, five, or six (we included a few outliers with more than six total ties in the dummy code for six ties, which did not change our results). The dummy variables of a fixed effects regression analysis account for each individual’s baseline levels of exposure to intervention and control students, and thus their probability of being treated within the network, because the probability of being treated is not equal for every individual. This approach is an appropriate estimation tech￾nique if there is an underlying linear relationship between expo￾sure and outcomes (Angrist, 1998; Angrist & Pischke, 2008), and it reflects our hypothesis that greater exposure to social referents who model anti-harassment behaviors should result in greater shifts toward anti-harassment norms and behavior. Finally, we used an instrumental variable approach to correct for the selection bias that was introduced when six students refused the invitation to participate in the intervention. This instrumental variable analysis examines the influence of the randomly assigned group of intervention social referent students, instead of the influ￾ence of the group consisting of the social referents who accepted the invitation to participate. Technically, an instrumental variable analysis rescales the effect size by the rate of compliance with the random assignment (here, the proportion of students—24 of 30— who agreed to participate in NAMES). By preserving random assignment in the analysis, we lose power to the extent that untreated students are included in the treatment condition, but we avoid the possibility of bias resulting from whatever factors led some students to agree to and others to refuse participation in the treatment. Thus, instrumental variable analysis is a conservative approach (see Gelman & Hill, 2007, p. 215). The number of any student’s ties to intervention and control social referents changes over time, as students form new ties and drop former ties. To account for changes in interactions over time, our critical predictor of normative influence, we used the number of ties to intervention social referents at the wave in which the outcome measure was collected in our regressions. For example, if we are predicting behavior at Wave 3 or measuring change from Table 1 Number of Students Spending Time With Intervention and Control Social Referents, Neither, or Both Variable Students with ties to intervention social referents, no ties to control Students with ties to control social referents, no ties to intervention Students with ties to both intervention and control students Students with no ties to either intervention or control social referents n for survey wave Wave 1 18 63 62 117 260 Wave 2 19 59 100 73 250 Wave 3 13 51 95 61 220 Note. Ties indicate student reports of time spent with the intervention or control student. SALIENCE OF SOCIAL REFERENTS 905 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly

906 PALUCK AND SHEPHERD e ed tie SR-020 e to ignore rmors about oneself .there was The Effect of Social Interaction Network Ties to Intervention Social Referents ent) Scho wide oms.Prior to the inervention,there were nt for t harassment-relatec ith one exception.The percep Thosocal refernts ocial referents (B0.58.SE0.23.p01).Because we ntion social referents ions examine change scores for each student's ly hig of no of ha mor (B 02.A at the end of the year 0.19.p bserved a significan 9.P school believe it isn mal to start dram or any other kind of rt no =0.13.p the ns of n ding hara it is r al to start ama o trategy interve n that it onnict at the school (B=-0.21.SE= SE 0.20,ns ry:Pre 05 change were no changes in perceived norms concering defense of mpare with thei mprovements across th of pr ctive norms re With respect to collective eke to perce that nd a s nificant decrease in =.01).That likelyto believe tha wing the assembl students we more likely to belie changes in t ceived prescriptive norms tool of han asing st did not c ve changes in percentions of whether more ikely to report these incident believe that some peers deserve to have rumors spread the ere no further shifts in ant social referents with more ties to ir ial re nts from Wa to Wave (B 0.39.SE =0.20.p =.06).Second.we observed further

Wave 1 to Wave 3, we use the number of ties to intervention social referents as measured at Wave 3. This analysis does not introduce bias, as we found no evidence that the intervention changed tie formation or dissolution differentially for the intervention com￾pared with the control social referents.2 The Effect of Social Interaction Network Ties to Intervention Social Referents Schoolwide norms. Prior to the intervention, there were no differences in perceptions of prescriptive or descriptive collective norms based on the number of ties to intervention social referents, with one exception. The perception that it is socially undesirable to ignore rumors was correlated with having more ties to intervention social referents (
0.58, SE
0.23, p
.01). Because we predict that intervention social referents will weaken this perceived norm among their peers, this initial difference biases our future analyses in a conservative direction against inflating our effects. We also controlled for the difference in our analyses. The follow￾ing regressions examine change scores for each student’s percep￾tion of norms from the preassembly survey at Wave 1 to the postassembly survey at Wave 2, and then from Wave 2 to Wave 3 at the end of the year. Prescriptive norms. After the assembly intervention at Wave 2, among students with more ties to intervention social referents, we observed a significant decrease in the perception of a general norm of harassment, namely that students at the school believe it is normal to start drama or any other kind of conflict with other students (
0.27, SE
0.13, p
.04; see Table 2). We also observed a significant decrease in per￾ceptions of norms regarding harassment as a desirable behav￾ioral strategy. Students with more ties to intervention social referents were more likely at Wave 2 to perceive a collective norm that it is acceptable to step back from conflict and not defend your friends (
0.41, SE
0.17, p
.02) and that it is normal to mind your own business (
0.30, SE
0.15, p
.05) compared with their perceptions at Wave 1. There were no changes in perceived norms concerning defense of friends and attempts to stop or ignore harassment. With respect to collective norms regarding a rationale for ha￾rassment, among students with more ties to intervention social referents, we observed an unexpected and a significant decrease in the perception that other students believe that harassment has serious emotional effects (
0.41, SE
0.16, p
.01). That is, following the assembly, students were more likely to believe that other students were insensitive to the effects of harassment. This may reflect their exposure to student testimonials at the assembly about personal experiences of harassment, which often illustrated perpetrators’ insensitivity to the emotional pain of their targets. We did not observe changes in perceptions of whether students believe that some peers deserve to have rumors spread about them. By the end of the year at Wave 3, there were no further shifts in perceived collective norms, with a few exceptions in the predicted direction. First, reversing the pattern from Wave 1 to Wave 2, students with more ties to intervention social referents from Wave 2 to Wave 3 were more likely, as expected, to perceive that students believe that harassment has serious emotional effects (
0.39, SE
0.20, p
.06). Second, we observed further decreases in perceptions of norms regarding harassment as a desirable behavioral strategy, specifically that it is desirable to always defend one’s friends in conflict (
0.38, SE
0.20, p
.06) and that it is undesirable to ignore rumors about oneself (
0.65, SE
0.25, p
.01). Descriptive norms. Across the entire year, there was a signif￾icant increase in the perceived frequency of harassment behavior (descriptive norms of harassment) among all students at the school. Students reported a 20.5% increase in rumors and a 27% increase in forwarding e-mails across the three waves of the survey; the increase at each wave was significant for most harassment-related behaviors (see Table A1 in the Appendix). The number of ties to intervention social referents was un￾related to students’ perceptions of most descriptive norms from Wave 1 to Wave 2. However, descriptive norms reported at the end of the year suggest that students with more ties to inter￾vention social referents were more sensitive to or aware of the rise in harassment. Compared with Wave 1, at Wave 3 students with more ties to intervention social referents perceived a marginally higher rate of harassment via rumor (
0.34, SE
0.19, p
.08), and a significantly higher rate of e-mail forwarding, IMs, and texts (
0.44, SE
0.19, p
.02). At the same time, students with more ties to intervention social referents perceived that more students were ignoring harass￾ment at the end of the year compared with the beginning of the year (
0.43, SE
0.19, p
.02). Close friend norms. Students with more ties to intervention social referents at Wave 3 were less likely to report norms sup￾porting harassment among their close friends at Wave 3 (
0.35, SE
0.16, p
.03). Specifically, they did not perceive that their close friends believe that it is normal to start drama or that conflict is normal (
0.48, SE
0.22, p
.03), or that it is weird to try to stop conflict at the school (
0.21, SE
0.20, ns). Summary: Prescriptive and descriptive norm change. As predicted, among students with more ties to intervention social referent students, we observed significant improvements across the year in their perceptions of prescriptive collective norms regarding harassment. Students with more ties to intervention social referents were less likely to perceive that their peers see conflict as “normal” or consider harassment to be a desirable behavioral strategy. The only inconsistency in the predicted pattern, in which students with more ties to intervention students were less likely to believe that their peers saw the serious emotional effects of harassment, was reversed by the end of the year. All of these changes in perceived prescriptive norms took place against a backdrop of increasing student-reported inci￾dents of harassment. Students with greater ties to intervention students were significantly more likely to report these incidents at the end of the year relative to the start of the year. These findings are consistent with the idea that the behavior of chron￾ically salient and personally relevant social referents can change individuals’ perception of what is typical and acceptable 2 Relative to control social referents, the experimental assignment did not affect treatment students’ social network ties from the first to the last wave in terms of their indegree, or the number of nominations they received:
1.31, SE
1.2, p
.3. See also Table 4A in the Appendix. 906 PALUCK AND SHEPHERD This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

SALIENCE OF SOCIAL REFERENTS 907 Table2 of Collective Norms of Ha ease Significantly Among Suudents With More Ties to Social Referents Collective norms:The number of students at this school who believe Cle friend wwn busines Variable Waves 1-2 Waves 1-2 Waves 1-2 Waves 1-2 Waves 2-3 Waves 2-3 Waves 2-3 Wave 3 -02013-04017-030(01-0401039020-0380.20-06302-035016 ded last year 0.060.14 0590.48) 9046 0.026 .043 004 0.022 0.02 with with any ge from the 200 -2010ch vear.T p<10.·p<0s for the social collective intervention student referents seem t SE =0.22.ns).or with respect to voting for a similar anti oher students able in the school.Our next stion is whether changes in membered slogans from intervention ugh the y:Individual beliefs, experiences,and attitude d no smentas problem schoo n social referen eferents were sment and anti-hara rassment behavior is along with cach their perceived collective norms about harassment om Wave I o Wave nd Behavior In april.6 months after the interver Students in general re ported signific ntly more per tion.teacherswere more likely to nominate more ti with tions (B33.18.p06:see Table ention social referents as studen s who contribute to a nes We found no shool environment (08.SE-0.36.p02) elfect of the inter Disciplinary act to believing that the NAMES important (7

for the social collective. Intervention student referents seem to have drawn other students’ attention to harassment, and changed their perceptions of whether harassment was accept￾able in the school. Our next question is whether changes in norms due to interaction with intervention social referents are accompanied by changes in personal beliefs, experiences, and attitudes. Personal beliefs and experiences. Prior to the intervention, having more ties to intervention social referents was unrelated to students’ personal beliefs about harassment as a problem at school, to their beliefs about the emotional harm of harassment, or to their personal experience of harassment. We did not find any effect of ties to intervention social referents on changes in students’ per￾sonal beliefs that harassment is a problem or that students are negatively emotionally affected by harassment. At each wave, the total sample of students reported a signifi￾cantly greater belief that gossip and drama was a problem at the school (a 26% increase from Wave 1 to Wave 2, and an 11% increase from Wave 2 to Wave 3; see Table 1A in the Appendix), which reflects the overall pattern of perceived descriptive norms of harassment. Students in general reported significantly more per￾sonal problems with harassment at Waves 2 and 3; students with more ties to intervention social referents report marginally fewer personal problems with harassment at Wave 3 compared with Wave 1 (
0.25, SE
0.15, p
.09), and significantly fewer problems at Wave 3 compared with Wave 2 (
0.33, SE
0.15, p
.03). Program endorsement and cognitive salience. We found no effect of the intervention social referents on their ties with respect to believing that the NAMES program was important (
0.27, SE
0.22, ns), or with respect to voting for a similar anti￾harassment program the following year (
0.20, SE
0.21, ns). More students tied to intervention social referents correctly re￾membered slogans from intervention posters hung around the school at Wave 3, though the effect was not significant when demographic controls were added. Summary: Individual beliefs, experiences, and attitudes. Although social referents influence perceptions of collective norms over the school year, they did not influence students’ personal beliefs about harassment or their attitudes toward the anti-harassment intervention. In terms of how they experience the school environment, students with more ties to intervention social referents were significantly less likely to report personal trouble with harassment. We now turn to the question of whether students’ harassment and anti-harassment behavior is affected along with their perceived collective norms about harassment. Behavior Teacher nominations. In april, 6 months after the interven￾tion, teachers were more likely to nominate students with more ties to intervention social referents as students who defend other stu￾dents from harassment, controlling for preintervention nomina￾tions (
0.33, SE
0.18, p
.06; see Table 3). Teachers were significantly less likely to nominate students with more ties to intervention social referents as students who contribute to a neg￾ative school environment (
0.88, SE
0.36, p
.02), controlling for preintervention nominations. Disciplinary actions. According to year-long school disci￾plinary records, students with more ties to intervention social Table 2 Perceptions of Collective Norms of Harassment Decrease Significantly Among Students With More Ties to Intervention Social Referents Collective norms: The number of students at this school who believe . . . Close friend norms It is normal to start drama It’s weird to not defend friends It’s normal to mind your own business People are seriously affected by harassment People are seriously affected by harassment It is impt. to defend friends It is weird to ignore rumors about self Combined close friend norms: Variable Waves 1–2 Waves 1–2 Waves 1–2 Waves 1–2 Waves 2–3 Waves 2–3 Waves 2–3 Wave 3 Ties to intervention social referents 0.27
(0.13) 0.41
(0.17) 0.30‡ (0.15) 0.41
(0.16) 0.39‡ (0.20) 0.38‡ (0.20) 0.65
(0.25) 0.35
(0.16) Total number ties 0.01 (0.02) 0.05‡ (0.03) 0.03 (0.02) 0.02 (0.02) 0.04‡ (0.02) 0.05
(0.02) 0.05‡ (0.03) 0.03 (0.02) Male 0.35 (0.21) 0.02 (0.28) 0.03 (0.25) 0.26 (0.26) 0.18 (0.25) 0.44‡ (0.24) 0.31 (0.32) 0.20 (0.20) Attended last year 0.23 (0.21) 0.01 (0.28) 0.76
(0.25) 0.18 (0.25) 0.04 (0.25) 0.00 (0.24) 0.34 (0.32) 0.19 (0.20) GPA 0.10 (0.14) 0.26 (0.18) 0.16 (0.16) 0.03 (0.16) 0.34
(0.17) 0.09 (0.16) 0.21 (0.21) 0.06 (0.14) Ign. rumors Wave 1 0.10 (0.11) Constant 0.32 (0.41) 0.21 (0.54) 0.33 (0.48) 0.53 (0.48) 0.59 (0.48) 0.02 (0.46) 0.06 (0.68) 2.52
(0.39) N 193 185 189 187 174 173 156 184 Adj. R2 0.060 0.026 0.043 0.004 0.022 0.022 0.006 0.002 Note. Coefficients are regression coefficients. Standard errors are provided in parentheses. Ties to intervention social referents is a count variable of the number of times respondents indicated that they spent time with an intervention student. Total ties is a count variable of the number of times a respondent indicated that they spent time with any other student at the school. “Male” is a dummy variable (0
female, 1
male), as is “Attended last year,” (0
no, 1
yes), which captures sophomores and students who attended a different school the previous year. “GPA” is a continuous variable measuring students’ grade-point average from the 2009 –2010 school year. The regression includes fixed effects: six dummy variables (not shown) that index for each individual whether their total number of ties to intervention and control social referents at Wave 1 was zero, one, two, three, four, five, or six. Fixed effects account for the fact that individuals in the network have a different probability of exposure to the treatment social referents. impt.
important; Ign.
Ignore. ‡ p  .10.
p  .05. SALIENCE OF SOCIAL REFERENTS 907 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

908 PALUCK AND SHEPHERD Table3 Behavioral Change Among Individuals With More Ties to Intervention Social Referents Public behavio Variable Wave Purchaband 033018 -0890.30 -120060 -069036 050018 210-06 0.1102 -0.0704 -229847 -0.54026 791.29 0312 0208 1g5 Log likelihood -83.63 -144.11 eferents at Wave 3 were marginally less likely to be cited for within the collective.which is captured in our analyses by their 30.SE=0.60n= 05)Dis We also s of social referents might he strongly her nomir plinary in and r .74 ed with teach ing others' 01 and r ffect is particularly socially risky.given that they are more ablet ction or support peers who belong to their more intimate,close bea oral chanees In this section.we dec ose our main findings to sepa harassmen ctive norms ncluding separate variables for the number of ties to widel y.for official eader students are significantly different in size.we report the Behavioral Change Among Individuals With More Ties to Intervention Social Referents Widely known students and cliaue leader The rate coour hypothesis okay to step back from ink ssment.A few differences emerged from Wave I to Wave 2omytiestonciaueleadtcrstodemtspmctictedalowerkchood 49 SE 20=01)and only ties to widely known student students choose to socially interact with them across situations predicted a lower likelihood of perceiving that it is normal to mind

referents at Wave 3 were marginally less likely to be cited for harassment-related disciplinary infractions (OR
0.50, SE
0.36, p
.06), and for all disciplinary infractions generally (
.30, SE
0.60, p
.05). Disciplinary action taken by the school correlated strongly with springtime teacher nominations of stu￾dents who “create a negative school environment” (r
.42, p  .001, for harassment-related disciplinary infractions, and r
.74, p  .001, for all disciplinary infractions). Neither type of disci￾plinary infraction correlated with teacher nominations from the beginning of the year (r
.01 and r
.05, respectively). Wristband purchases. Students with more ties to interven￾tion social referents over and above ties to control at Wave 3 purchased significantly more wristbands bearing the anti￾harassment slogan (OR
1.65, SE
0.18, p
.01). Summary: Behavioral changes. As predicted, significant de￾creases in harassment behavior and increases in anti-harassment behavior accompanied improvements in perceived prescriptive collective norms about harassment among students with more ties to intervention social referents. This finding holds for teacher nominations across a two-wave survey, for official school disci￾plinary records, and for directly observed student behavior (see Table 3). Behavioral Change Among Individuals With More Ties to Intervention Social Referents Widely known students and clique leaders. The separate effects of widely known and clique leader students. The above evidence supports our hypothesis that when students think about the collective social norms of a school, they heavily weight the perceived actions of widely known and clique leader students who serve as social referents. The effect of these social referents is stronger to the extent that students choose to socially interact with them across situations within the collective, which is captured in our analyses by their measured number of ties to the intervention social referents in the school social network. We also predicted that the two types of social referents might be particularly effective along different dimensions, given their pat￾tern of social ties. Specifically, given the widespread social ties and relatively high social status of widely known students, they might be particularly effective at influencing others’ perceptions of collective norms. Likewise, clique leaders might be particularly effective at influencing norms of local subgroups and behavior that is particularly socially risky, given that they are more able to sanction or support peers who belong to their more intimate, closed subgroups. In this section, we decompose our main findings to separately test the effects of widely known and clique leader intervention social referents. We ran analyses similar to those reported above, including separate variables for the number of ties to widely known intervention social referents and to clique leader interven￾tion social referents. Where the effects of widely known and clique leader students are significantly different in size, we report the contrast using postestimation Wald tests. Collective and close friend norms. Contrary to our predic￾tions, widely known and clique leader students were similarly effective at communicating collective school norms to the students tied to them (see Table 4). Students with ties to widely known and clique leader treatment students were more likely to perceive that students at the school believe it is okay to step back from conflict by not defending friends, and there are negative emotional effects of harassment. A few differences emerged from Wave 1 to Wave 2; only ties to clique leader students predicted a lower likelihood of perceiving that it was normal to start drama at the school (
.49, SE
.20, p
.01), and only ties to widely known students predicted a lower likelihood of perceiving that it is normal to mind Table 3 Behavioral Change Among Individuals With More Ties to Intervention Social Referents Teacher nominations School disciplinary action Public behavior Variable Defends others: Wave 3 Contributes to negative environment: Wave 3 All action: Wave 3 Harassment related: Wave 3 Purchased wristband: Wave 3 Ties to intervention social referents 0.33‡ (0.18) 0.89
(0.36) 1.20
(0.60) 0.69‡ (0.36) 0.50
(0.18) Total number ties 0.01 (0.02) 0.07‡ (0.04) 0.10 (0.07) 0.05 (0.04) 0.02 (0.02) Male 0.35‡ (0.20) 1.45
(0.40) 2.19
(0.67) 0.74
(0.33) 0.11 (0.25) Attended last year 0.01 (0.21) 0.07 (0.42) 0.07 (0.67) 0.05 (0.32) 0.36 (0.25) GPA 0.31
(0.13) 0.82
(0.28) 2.29
(0.44) 0.54
(0.26) 0.07 (0.16) Wave 1 Teacher nomination 0.78
(0.12) 1.01
(0.25) Constant 0.13 (0.38) 2.51
(0.81) 7.94
(1.29) 1.12‡ (0.64) 1.55
(0.49) N 227 227 227 209 227 Adj. R2 0.312 0.208 0.195 Log likelihood 83.63 144.11 Note. Coefficients are regression coefficients, except for harassment-specific disciplinary behaviors and wristband purchases, which are reported as log odds. Standard errors are provided in parentheses. Ties to intervention social referents is a count variable of the number of times respondents indicated that they spent time with an intervention student. Total ties is a count variable of the number of times a respondent indicated that they spent time with any other student at the school. “Male” is a dummy variable (0
female, 1
male), as is “Attended last year,” (0
no, 1
yes), which captures sophomores and other students who attended a different school the previous year. “GPA” is a continuous variable measuring student grade-point average from the 2009 –2010 school year. The regression includes fixed effects: six dummy variables (not shown) that index for each individual whether their total number of ties to intervention and control social referents at Wave 1 was zero, one, two, three, four, five, or six. Fixed effects account for the fact that individuals in the network have a different probability of exposure to the treatment social referents. ‡ p  .10.
p  .05. 908 PALUCK AND SHEPHERD This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.