Negative attitudes amplify the impact of not following disaster preparation norms.
Descriptive norms can sometimes have a negative impact on disaster preparation if people have negative attitudes. Two experiments were conducted to study how people's attitudes affect their behavior during natural disasters. The results showed that when people have negative attitudes, seeing others not preparing for disasters can actually make them less likely to prepare themselves. This means that descriptive norms can backfire and lead to undesirable consequences in disaster preparation.