Responsible Drinking: the shock tactics clearly don't work

If someone told you to jump off a cliff you wouldn't do it would you? Well, apparently, you might if you thought lots of other people were. Sort of.

While it may sound a little crazy, this is based loosely on the powerful notion that people want to be like other people. Researchers, for example, have well documented the Werther Effect - which describes in layman's terms the phenomenon of copycat suicides.

"There is an immense hunger for people to find out what people like them do," according to Daniel Finkelstein, associate editor of The Times.

For example, as Finkelstein puts it, ludicrous statements such as 'he looks like a geography teacher' actually makes sense. The theory goes that people who look like a geography teacher are more likely to go into that profession and those who don't change their appearance accordingly so they do look more the part.

This may all seem a little abstract but according to Noctis, AB InBev and the NUS, the theory of social influence or 'social norm', has a very strong effect on the drinking culture of the UK, particularly students.

The three groups teamed up to host an event in London earlier this month to address student drinking. Speakers, including Finkelstein, addressed some of the negative stories put out in the mainstream media depicting young people as drunken, destructive and debauched. Following the theory of social norm, students are so often depicted in the media as drunken louts that they think this is normal.

Not representative

NUS vice president for welfare, Ben Whittaker, says students are "demonised" by the press. He argued that stories such as the now infamous incident where Sheffield Hallam university student Philip Laing was caught urinating on a war memorial during a student pub crawl are in "no way representative".

"The tendency to overestimate the negative behaviour is down, in part, to the fact that it is usually more memorable," adds Dr John McAlaney from the University of Bradford. Illustrating this tendency to focus on the negative, Dr McAlaney has collated material from five groups of students - from Amsterdam and Antwerp in the Netherlands, Southern Denmark, Karolinska in Sweden and Finland. Between 37 per cent and 74 per cent overestimated the amount their fellow students drunk, while between 72 per cent and 85 per cent overestimated the number of times their fellow students got drunk.

Yet public health campaigns are also reinforcing the idea that students are regularly out-of-control drunk, which is not a true picture and - the experts argue - could actually be making the situation worse.

Campaigns and news stories with a more positive message are more effective. A social norms approach (see box) aims to bridge the gap between misperceptions and reality. Campaigns using it would simply highlight the positive fact that the majority of students do drink responsibly.

"We tend to overestimate the negative, unhealthy behaviours and underestimate the positive things people are doing," says Jennifer Bauerle, director of the National Social Norms Institute at the University of Virginia in the US. "Health promotions sometimes normalise what we are trying to prevent".

So when politicians and the mainstream media talk about a childhood obesity epidemic or binge-drinking students they are actually pushing the idea that this is the norm, feeding into the cycle and potentially making the problem worse.

The effect is that the minority drinking over the recommended limits don't realise they are the exception, and that they might be on their way to having a serious drink problem.

"It would seem the shock tactics so often employed in the media and government-led marketing campaigns are exacerbating the problems and perceptions associated with alcohol misuse," says BII chief executive Neil Robertson. "Now, there's an interesting turn of events."

Accentuate the positive

On enforcing a negative picture Drinkaware Trust chief executive Chris Sorek says people might know, based on reported figures from the Office of National Statistics, that: "Thirty-seven per cent of men have more than four units on their heaviest drinking day and 32 per cent of women exceed three units on their heaviest drinking day.

"But that also means that 63 per cent of men and 68 per cent of women are not exceeding their daily limit at all."

AB InBev senior global director beer and better world, Amie Gianino, says: "One of the ways that social norms have been described to me was, in school we don't teach our kids to do maths or drive a car the wrong way.

"On the one hand it's about results and it portrays the positive message it isn't about shaming the consumer or demonising the product. From our perspective why would we support an approach that was saying how bad our product is."

Public health campaigns based on a social norms focus on the majority who are exhibiting healthy behaviours. Bauerle says it's about, "holding up a mirror to the positive healthy things and letting people make their own decisions".

A social norm approach is always positive and doesn't ridicule other groups, lowering their self esteem, making it harder for them to change their behaviour.

"There are a lot of ads that like to make fun of someone. I would not say that these are helpful," she says.

Drinkaware is now working with the Welsh Assembly and universities in Wales to back up a social norm approach in the UK as a lot of research so far has focused on the US and Europe.

"It has much promise," says Sorek. "We also want to see if it can be extrapolated beyond students." The results should be made public in early 2011.

However, advocates could argue that as there is evidence from other countries that social norms approaches work, it's not clear why it hasn't already been taken up here.

Gianino argues that there can be a tendency to think that - in the case of responsible drinking public health campaigns - if the industry is involved then it "can't be good".

She says: "I would assume there is some scepticism because it's not widely known and it's not widely implemented."

Late-night entertainment group Noctis executive director Paul Smith adds that there is a "huge chasm" between what public health officials think and what the industry thinks.

However, he argues that the social norms approach was potentially an area where they could find common ground.

This appears to be the case, according to chair of the Faculty of Public Health in Scotland, Emilia Crighton, who was quite up-beat about social norms. She says, in theory, her organisation would be "very supportive" of using a more positive approach.

But she adds: "We also need to look to appraise the evidence and if it's been shown to work we will very much be supportive of that."

Noctis has already piloted a social norms scheme and is in the process of finalising details of the main project that will involve four universities.

Robertson adds: "I definitely feel that the government needs to sit up and take notice of this research."

So it appears that in this instance, it's a case of social norm supporters saying go on, take the leap, be a Lemming.