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.
