Koreen Johannessen was able to reduce Arizona students’ drinking by making the private public. She created ads in the school newspaper that merely stated the true norm. That most students had only one or two drinks, and 69 percent have four or fewer drinks, when they party. She didn’t focus on the health consequences of drinking, she focused on social information. By showing students that the majority of their peers weren’t bingeing, she helped them realize that others felt the same way. That most students didn’t want to binge. This corrected the false inferences students had made about
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