The June 12 Times reported that ad campaigns at 10 schools have produced major drops in heavy drinking. Northern Illinois University, for example, says it’s reduced heavy drinking (defined as more than five drinks at a party) by 44 percent over the past decade. Other benefits have flowed from that trend; alcohol-related injuries and fighting, for example, are down 76 percent.

So how did they pull that off? Through a rapidly growing practice called "social norms marketing," which boils down to — as the Times puts it — "show[ing] them it’s not popular." Or as the Web site through which I linked to the story said, "It’s Hip to Be Square."

The premise, the Times says, stems from "the realization that scolding, scaring, educating and even passing laws can’t stop young people from harming themselves and others. In sharp contrast to generations of adults who argued, ‘If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?’ the new theory encourages the young to conform, since most of their peers aren’t up to much anyway." (That last part comes from studies showing that students tend to think other students drink a lot more than most of them actually do.)

"The reality is, we’re herd animals," according to sociology professor H. Wesley Perkins of Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., who’s considered the father of social norms marketing. "We’re taking conformity behavior and using it in a positive way."

Social-norms marketing is catching on fast, apparently: Michael Haines of the National Social Norms Resource Center at Northern Illinois University says something like a fifth of colleges and universities are using it these days, applying it not only to drinking but to smoking, overeating, sexual harassment and other behaviors. And to the extent it seems to change those behaviors, some people might say "why argue with success?"

I beg to differ. Social pressure has its place, to be sure; it can serve to re-enforce standards and restrain outbreaks of especially destructive actions. But conformity can’t substitute for conscience.

The social-norms approach is all too reminiscent of the 1950s, the decade when a girl’s main defense for her virginity was to invoke not Christian morality but popular standards. ("What about my reputation?") While such an approach produced a cosmetic wholesomeness in the short term, it didn’t instill any convictions, much less the strength of character to stand by them when tempted. When the sexual revolution hit a few years later — the work of a few cultural leaders, with a technological assist from The Pill — good girls scarcely put up a fight.

Things have only gotten worse in America since then, and if mere conformity wasn’t sufficient to preserve our moral foundations a few decades ago, it certainly won’t suffice to restore them today. It’s more likely to foster more of the moral relativism and self-serving utilitarianism that’s far too common as it is.

At Northern Illinois, the ad campaign credited with reducing binge drinking features posters of smiling students bearing the following copy: "Most men drink 0-5 drinks when they party. Most women drink 0-3 drinks when they party." Trouble is, in Illinois the legal drinking age is 21. So what NIU is really telling its students boils down to "Feel free to break the law; all that really matters is staying in step with your peers."

Such ethically rootless standards are bound to shift again, and at best it’s only a matter of time before they shift back — toward more drinking, more drugs, more sex. But the main problem isn’t just the limits of "social norms" in affecting behavior. The greater problem is the sort of people they produce — in the words of the Apostle Paul, "infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming" (Ephesians 4:14).

Christians, after all, know that there’s no real value in making people into well-behaved herd animals. In fact, our ultimate hope isn’t to see people behave any way at all, since behavior can’t save them. It’s to see them believe in the God who does save them.

But that involves believing in things that don’t change, both God Himself, "the same yesterday, today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8), and the moral laws which flow from Him. The person who holds those beliefs must be prepared to be out of step, unpopular and maybe even outright persecuted. In short, he must not care all that much about social norms. He must care about God’s norms.