Laws and perceptions of social norms: the lockdown

Laws and perceptions of social norms: Lessons from the lockdown: In order to promote social distancing to contain the spread of Covid-19, governments introduced strict regulations. This column uses interviews from before the 23 March announcement of a nationwide UK lockdown and after the announcement to show that the introduction of the new laws affected the perception of social norms regarding the various containment measures – that is, what people thought the prevalent norms were. This appears to have been the result of fewer misperceptions about the social norms after the introduction of the laws, rather than actual changes in the social norms.