# Identity and entitlement in accounts of (morally) normative and informational social influence for sustainability

## TL;DR

This paper explores how professionals describe influencing others to prioritize environmental sustainability, focusing on identity and moral norms in professional settings.

## Contribution

The paper introduces the role of entitlement and moral norms in depicting social influence for sustainability in professional contexts.

## Key findings

- Two main ways of constructing social influence are identified: morally normative 'pushing' and informational education.
- Entitlement to influence is a key element in how influencers portray their professional identity.
- Moral norms, not just social norms, are central to influencing decisions for sustainability.

## Abstract

Recent discursive psychology research has sought to respecify social influence as a discursive accomplishment and has also begun to identify how the psychological thesaurus is used to portray social influence in situated talk. The present paper contributes to this project by examining how social influence is depicted in accounts of influencing others in professional settings. Product designers' portrayals of influencing decision‐makers to prioritize environmental sustainability, collected through semi‐structured research interviews and from conference panel discussions, are analysed. Two recurring ways of constructing social influence are found—morally normative influence involving effort and force against resistance (‘pushing’) and informational influence through educating. The analysis shows how these depictions of influencing represent situated identity work. Two contributions are made to understanding ways of depicting social influence in professional settings. First, whether people claim entitlement to influence others at work is highlighted as a key element in how an influencer's identity is portrayed. Second, the participants' orientation to moral norms, not just social norms, is offered to extend to the concept of normative social influence in the context of sustainability. Implications for understanding how people relate to the shared moral challenge of environmental sustainability in different interactional contexts are discussed.