Anchoring might work. Ask participants first if they think that most of their peers (or another reference group appropriate to your research question) would answer higher or lower than a given value on the response scale. By varying that value you should be able to influence participants' own responses.

For an application, see

Eyssel, F., Bohner, G., & Siebler, F. (2006). Perceived rape myth acceptance of others predicts rape proclivity: Social norm or judgmental anchoring? Swiss Journal of Psychology, 65, 93-99. doi: 10.1024/1421-0185.65.2.93

Anchoring might work. Ask participants first if they think that most of their peers (or another reference group appropriate to your research question) would answer higher or lower than a given value on the response scale. By varying that value you should be able to influence participants' own responses.

For an application, see

Eyssel, F., Bohner, G., & Siebler, F. (2006). Perceived rape myth acceptance of others predicts rape proclivity: Social norm or judgmental anchoring? Swiss Journal of Psychology, 65, 93-99. doi: 10.1024/1421-0185.65.2.93

Interesting.

I tried an approach which went more or less in the same direction. I presented a faked study of a reference group of the participants (students of their university).

I reported a high (condition 1) and a low acceptance rate (condition 2), hoping to get an increased norm acceptance in condition 1 and a decreased norm acceptance in condition 2. The problem here might have been that I should have controlled for the personal identification with that reference group.

But your idea seems to be more effective. I think by asking the participants for a personal comparison the effect of the manipulation should be stronger. Will try it I guess...

Did I get it right, that it should work the following:

1. High acceptance rate presented:

Those participants who report that they score lower should have a reduced norm salient.

2. Low acceptance rate presented:

Those participants who report that they score higher should have an enhanced norm salient?

Do you think I should control for identification with the reference group?

Thank you.

Michael

A direct norm feedback should also work (see Bohner, Siebler, & Schmelcher, 2006). And it may even work with a reference group that participants do not identify with (see Bohner, Pina, Viki, & Siebler, 2010).

But this kind of intervention involves a deception, whereas the anchoring manipulation does not. This is why I had thought of the anchoring manipulation first, assuming it may be easier to implement in a survey study, where debriefing procedures may be less effective.

Regarding the direction of the anchoring effect, it's the opposite to what you suggest above: High (low) anchors should lead to higher (lower) reports of own attitude. The beauty is that these effects may obtain even when it is patently clear that the anchor values themselves are arbitrary (see, e.g., Englich, Mussweiler, & Strack, 2006).

References:

Bohner, G., Pina, A., Viki, G. T., & Siebler, F. (2010). Using social norms to reduce men's rape proclivity: Perceived rape myth acceptance of out-groups may be more influential than that of in-groups. Psychology, Crime and Law, 16, 671-693. doi: 10.1080/1068316X.2010.492349

Bohner, G., Siebler, F., & Schmelcher, J. (2006). Social norms and the likelihood of raping: Perceived rape myth acceptance of others affects men's rape proclivity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 286-297. doi: 10.1177/0146167205280912

Englich, B., Mussweiler, T., & Strack, F. (2006). Playing dice with criminal sentences: The influence of irrelevant anchors on experts' judicial decision making. PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN , 32, 188-200. doi: 10.1177/0146167205282152

Have you tried Community Based Social Marketing (www.CBSM.com)? Used in the area of environmental psychology.

I understand that the attitude is the dependent variable but I'm not sure what your manipulation is. Can you say what you want to use as an independent variable?

I'm familiar with persuasion research. On the face of it, your research method seems to similar in that it uses attitude measures as a proxy for participants' beliefs about a social norm. The anchoring idea is like manipulating the normative validity of some proposition but, if I understood correctly, this is just to prevent a ceiling effect in the attitude you are researching. I'm also unsure if the proposition against which you are measuring attitude is a norm that is uncontroversially accepted (e.g. 'if someone offers to shake your hand, you should accept it') or if it is a norm that your participants are likely to feel strongly about (e.g. 'murders should normally be given a life sentence'). This matters because it is said that people who are highly 'issue involved' will process antinormative information more carefully ('elaborate' - Petty and Cacioppo) than if they are largely ambivalent about it. Issue involvement means that a person sees the attitude as an important to their own sense of self. Greenwald treats this as a matter of accordance with or rejection of the norm as being a part of 'who they are'.

Johnson, B.T., & Eagly, A.H. (1989). Effects of involvement on persuasion: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 106(2), 290-314.

Petty, R.E., & Cacioppo, J.T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 123-162.

Greenwald, A. G. (1982). Ego task analysis: A synthesis of research on ego-involvement and self-awareness. In A. H. Hastorf and A. M. Isen (Eds.), Cognitive social psychology (pp. 109-147). New York: Elsevier/North-Holland.

Hope that helps

I don't know if it can help but in the field of public health experience, there is an experience that can be tracked in case there are studies on it : tobacco. The use of tobacco has been desocialised wheit has been for example forbidden to smoke on TV for stars.

Basically, I don't have any experience of any survey but i will be very happy if i'll get the opportunity to do that till then ,I think it is a very difficult task to manipulate social norms because people accept them as a fear or want sometime , they do because of their unlimited desires ,they think if it would be successful,then why not, and even sometime it would. From that their believe get strong on that norms. Moreover at the end these social norms are made by the people they only made it for themselves.

I work with Focal Group, and includes transversal test into questions. But is important if the research is based theoretical framework as support. If you has response from social ator now is possible you make diagramation, table of contents, charts and graph. After, you will make finalization report with analisys and critical quality. Best wishes.

I ran an online survey experiment in 2010, in which I aimed to prime social norms through the public/private context of a behavioral scenario in the context of sun protection and nutrition. I was looking for a priming effect of observability of behavior on descriptive and injunctive norms rather than a direct effect, so the skew of the outcome wasn't a great obstacle. I'm not sure its helpful but in case you want to check out the methods the link is

http://www.academia.edu/3434021/Priming_effects_of_perceived_norms_on_behavioral_intention_through_observability_Lewis_2013_

I believe the work by Winnifred Louis and her colleagues provides a good array of methods to manipulate norm acceptance. Here is just one example to help you find the correct papers:

Louis, W., Davies, S., Smith, J., & Terry, D. (2007). Pizza and pop and the student identity: The role of referent group norms in healthy and unhealthy eating. The Journal of social psychology, 147(1), 57-74.

Thank you!

Michael, something also worth trying is running a pilot study providing a number of social norms. Just ask participants about their acceptance of these norms. This allows you to pick the one social norm with the greatest variability in acceptance for the main study. I also just ran a study in which we manipulated in the wrong direction because people were already much higher than we expected - frustrating (but fascinating nevertheless...).