Norm (sociology)
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In sociology, a norm, or social norm, is a rule that is socially enforced. Social sanctioning is what distinguishes norms from other cultural products or social constructions such as meaning and values. Norms and normlessness are thought to affect a wide variety of human behavior.
Justification and origins
A norm can be a standard that a society expects or accepts thought or conduct approved by a society. A norm may or may not have a rational justification or origin. Norms with common sense origins may, over time, lose their original context as society changes: an action that was once performed because it was necessary to survive may over the years become a social norm, even once the circumstances that made it necessary for survival are no longer applicable.There are at least two reasons for the stability of a norm. First, a large part of the socialization process is the definition, for the individual, of prevailing social norms; since these habits or customs generally lead to a relatively seamless integration into a society or social group, few refuse to adopt them. Second, even if a particular instance of normative behavior goes against an individual's instincts or previous habits, the weight of social pressure may induce that person, nonetheless, to follow the norm.
Traditional norms, including reciprocation in gift-giving and the obligation of hospitality to strangers, have been followed by people in disparate cultures over a long period of time. Such norms become elaborated upon in the more complex area of social custom. Detailed customs may outlast the social norms of which they were originally an expression, in which case they may, perhaps totally outside their original context, help define a new norm which relates to the common sense of a new time or context. In Europe, for example, certain feudal customs survive centuries after the norms that inspired them passed away (see examples in custom (law)).
The existence of a norm becomes most evident when it is ignored or violated. An individual who finds him/herself in a foreign environment dealing with an unfamiliar culture is likely to have this experience involuntarily. Such missteps are often milestones along the way toward becoming socialized to a new environment. The exotic individual may also on purpose or by accident introduce exotic norms that claim legitimacy in the new environment. While this is a common way that norms change over time, as in Europe through the introduction of Germanic elements into inherited Latin norms, attempts at cultural importation may also be seen as a threat to cultural identity and provoke sanctions.
In organized group situations, such as meetings, norms include unwritten and often unspoken rules that govern individual behavior. In some groups, norms are consciously prescribed as a set of ground rules. Persons skilled in facilitation assist groups in recognizing norms, as well as establishing norms to promote greater group (or team) effectiveness.
Levels of enforcement
Levels of enforcement, in decreasing order:
- Violations of norms are punished with sanctions, possibly enforced by law.
- Violators of norms are considered eccentric or even deviant and are stigmatized.
- Alternative behaviors are not acknowledged. The norm is presumed, often to an extreme, in an attempt to avoid any challenge that might provoke stigma or sanction or even lead to redefinition of normative behavior. As a series of examples that are under tremendous contemporary pressure as norms evolve: the term "lover" once was presumed to denote a person of the opposite sex; a "mature" adult once was presumed to be or have been married; and a "couple" once was presumed to have or want children.
Types of norms
There are 3 types of norms:
Folkways
A society's web of cultural rituals, traditions and routines. Deviation is not usually considered a serious threat to social organization and is thus sanctioned less severely than moral deviation. Example: In certain households in the U.S., it is a folkway to say grace before eating Thanksgiving dinner. See Faux pas
Mores
Moral judgements that define wrong and right behavior, the allowed and the disallowed, what is wanted and not wanted within a culture. The word is the plural of the Latin mor-, mos, which means 'custom'. A violation of mores is usually considered by society as a threat to social organization and harshly sanctioned. Examples: rape, theft, lying under oath.Laws
In highly organized societies, formalised and precisely delimited norms. The breaking of legal norms, or laws, invokes procedures and judgements through formal, legal institutions, such as police and the courts, set up to enforce them. These norms generally relate to individual violations of mores or to the adjustment of proprietary relationships.Game Theoretical Analysis of Norms
A general formal framework that can be used to represent the essential elements of the social situation surrounding a norm is the repeated game of game theory.A norm gives a person a rule of thumb for how she should behave. However, a rational person only acts according to the rule if only it is optimal for her. The situation can be described as follows. A norm gives an expectation of how other people act in a given situation (macro). A person acts optimally given the expectation (micro). In order for a norm to be stable, people's actions must reconstitute the expectation without change (micro-macro feedback loop). A set of such correct stable expectations is known as a Nash equilibrium. Thus, a stable norm must constitute a Nash equilibrium.
There exist various norms throughout the world. What account for the vast variety? From game theoretical point of view, there are two explanans for this. One is the difference in games. Different parts of the world may give different environmental contexts and different people may have different values, which may result in a difference in games. The other is equilibrium selection not explicable by the game itself. Equilibrium selection is closely related to coordination. For a simplest example, the game of choosing which side of the road you drive is common throughout the world, but in some countries you coordinate to drive on the right side and in other countries you coordinate on the left side (see coordination game). A framework called comparative institutional analysis is proposed to deal with the game theoretical structural understanding of the variety of norms.
Example (gift exchange)
The Norm of Reciprocity:In the western world, it is a custom to exchange gifts on various holidays. It is so deeply ingrained in the minds of people that many do not think of acting otherwise.
Now, suppose you become fed up with exchanging gifts. It is not necessarily easy to change your actions. Unilaterally changing your actions to stop giving gifts may give others the impression that you are a selfish person, and that impression is probably not in your interest. Notice, that your friends may be following the norm for the same reasons as you. If that is the case, you are wrongly coordinating due to the customary norm of gift exchange and are trapped in a prisoners' dilemma game. Coordination with communication may be necessary to get out of the prisoners' dilemma situation.
See also
External links
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