Abstract
Social norm evolution is essential to the development of society but can be blocked by norm entrenchment. The opinion leaders, with more media coverage and more access to information, can help induce breaking the norm by endorsement but they take different actions by their own motives. This research studies how an opinion leader with access to general social preference on the social norm will lead the society to - the socially optimal way or not - under different circumstances. The theoretical model shows that when the opinion leader is ideological but not extremely, they tend to only partially transmit the information to individuals through their endorsements and may lead the society in a non-socially optimal direction. We designed an experiment to test this in the lab to feedback on the theory.