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Social norms and their consequences on society
Essay on the effects of social norms
Essay on the effects of social norms
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Norms Project Paper When you were a kid, your parents most likely told you things like “hold the door open for the person behind you” or “chew with your mouth closed”. Have you ever wondered why you had to do these things? Phrases like these are considered to be social norms. Norms are rules or behaviors that are found acceptable by a society. People should be aware of the norms within their society because there are often sanctions associated with them. If someone follows a norm, they are likely to receive a positive sanction, such as a compliment or a smile. If someone breaks a norm, they could receive a frown or be publicly humiliated. These norms vary among different societies and cultures and can lead to conflict when these different …show more content…
cultures interact. For example, in the United States, it is a social norm that making eye contact with someone while speaking is a sign of respect. On the other hand, in several other cultures around the world, such as Middle Eastern and Asian cultures, eye contact is viewed as a sign of disrespect. Understanding social norms and how they differ between cultures is important for people to fit into society. For my experiment, I decided to have my boyfriend’s help in breaking the social norm of wearing regular clothes in public. Specifically, I broke the norm of what is acceptable to wear in a fancy restaurant. In my opinion, Olive Garden is a fancy restaurant usually filled with people having business meetings, dates, or important celebration dinners. In general, it is normal for guys to wear jeans with a nice button-up shirt or a suit. Women usually wear jeans and a dressy shirt or a dress. My boyfriend and I broke this social norm by going to Olive Garden for a date on a Friday night dressed completely in our pajamas. We wore baggy pajama pants, hoodies, and comfy house shoes. There were many other couples having dates in the establishment, but they were all dressed more formal than us. Since we looked different from many other couples around us, we were definitely noticed and there were some interesting reactions. Every reaction that we observed was a negative sanction for breaking this social norm. We received humiliation, rude comments, and odd looks as a result of our experiment. Almost everyone who noticed us gave us odd looks and then quickly looked away. They usually glanced back when they thought we weren’t looking. Several individuals sneered at us and responded with dirty looks. When we were seated in a booth, there were couples in the booths on both sides of us. I heard a young girl behind me speaking negatively about us. The girl said, “Ugh, did you see them? Who wears that in public?” In addition to this, our waitress did not seem to take us seriously and the service was poor as a result. She seemed rude and in a hurry to help her other tables before us. I even received a reaction from my boyfriend during this experiment. He asked me multiple times if we could leave. He constantly felt like people were staring at us and he felt humiliated. Everyone who saw our attire did not approve that we were breaking the norm and responded with dirty looks and rude comments. If it weren’t for this assignment, I would have never broken this norm or any other one on purpose. Mainly because it is super embarrassing. Norms are widely shared ideas about behaviors. This means that most people within the society agree that the norm should be followed. When it is broken, a negative sanction is the result. We experienced this first hand. Since we violated their idea of what is normal, I believe the meaning behind their reaction was simply telling us that we don’t belong. They were implying that our actions were not accepted by society and that we don’t fit in. They wanted to make us feel like outsiders. I also believe that our attire was interpreted by some as though we were poor or didn’t take pride in our appearance. I saw this to be especially true in our waitress’s reaction. She went beyond what was expected for her table of four near us. She brought them extra dressing for their salad and made sure their drinks were refilled almost immediately. When I was completely out of sweet tea, I had to ask her to refill my glass. I feel as though she acting differently towards us because of how we were dressed. She assumed that since we were in sloppy clothes that we didn’t have money and weren’t going to tip her well. This experiment proved that breaking a social norm results in a negative sanction and I, personally, do not want to experience that again. Overall, this experiment was a success and I received the results I thought I would.
I expected everyone to think of us as being sloppy and poor. I also expected the dirty looks and rude comments associated with breaking this social norm. People do not like it when you act differently than how they believe you should. This is just like when parents punish their children for behaving in an unacceptable way. The people in Olive Garden responded negatively to show us that our behavior was not okay and that we should have followed the norm. Although this was just an experiment, it proves how important of a role norms play in societies. I now understand how different cultures feel in America when they break our norms. For example, in different religions and cultures, women are expected to wear head coverings. When these individuals are in the United States, they probably experience exactly what I did in my experiment. In my case, it was just a silly experiment to see how people would react. For those individuals, it is part of their religious beliefs and they should not be treated differently because of it. Although norms important in guiding the behavior of a society, people need to be more aware of how norms vary between societies and be accepting of cultural
differences.
In order for you to continue to stay accepted in the current social society you live in today you must follow a certain set of social norms throughout your life, most of the time you do without even realizing it. As well as be followed social norms are broken everyday all around you on all sorts of different levels some harmless and some more serious and punishable such as stealing. Since I have moved out to Santa Barbara and have been experiencing life here now in school and outside of class I have really come to love the beautiful scenic and friendly feel that is given off here with the excessive palm trees on the streets filled with young eager students adjusting to the new college feel and experience finally living away from home on their own. I have definitely been noticing many new changes compared to back at home in Berkeley California where I had grown up my whole life realizing that social norms seem to slightly change as I travel down south. A distinct difference I had noticed when first moving out here is the drop in disabled homeless around town asking for change or money which seemed like an ordinary social norm back home. In Berkeley I would take the bart track to San Francisco every week for school and would rarely go a day without encountering all types of people everywhere asking for help and offering something for sale. I have noticed here in Santa Barbara the community is much more wealthy and seems to not be exposed to as much poverty everyday like you may living in a big city. I began to wonder what the reaction would be if I chose to break the social norm loitering around campus and downtown Isle Vista asking around for money or help. I decided to try testing out this experiment with a few different types of ...
A norm is a group-held belief about how followers should perform in a given environment.[1] Sociologists describe norms as informal identifications that administer society’s performances, while psychologists have adopted a more general classification, recognizing smaller group divisions, like a team or an office, may also endorse norms detached or in addition to cultural or societal expectations. [2] Norms running counter to the activities of the primary society or culture may be conducted and retained within small subgroups of society. [3] For example, Crandall (1988) noted that certain groups like cheerleading squads, dance troupes, sports teams, and sororities have a rate of bulimia, a publicly recognized life-threatening disease that is much higher than society as a whole. Social norms have a way of maintaining order and organizing groups. [4]
While breaking the three social norms there was one feeling that I felt was mutual throughout. Breaking those norms made me felt extremely out of place and rude. They made me feel that way because I knew what I was doing wasn 't socially right and people would get mad or be rude to me with their reactions. For the most part throughout my experiment, most people reacted the way I thought they would. You could tell that most people felt awkward or uncomfortable while I was breaking the norm. I faced a couple of difficulties through my assignment when it came to violating the social norms. While trying to break the movie theater norm, it was difficult for me to pick movies with different variety of people and movies that were a little older so less people would be attending them. I also had a little trouble when it came to answering the phone and waiting for the other person to talk first. The problem with this one was that I had to wait for people to actually call me which doesn 't happen that often in this day and age anymore. To conclude, these social norms forced people to be in uncomfortable situations and make a decision as to how they would react to
There are many different things that influence our behavior from internal influences to social norms. Social norms are explicit rules that govern how we behave in our society. Social norms influence our behavior more than any of us realize, but we all notice when a norm has been broken. Breaking a social norm is not an easy task and often leads us feeling uncomfortable whether we broke the norm ourselves or witnessed someone else breaking it. Sometimes however, you just have to break a norm to see what happens our professor gave us an assignment that is really easy, but also difficult to do because we have to break a norm in from of people. We had two choices, choice number one, facing people while standing in an elevator, and the other choice
It is 9:00 PM on a Sunday night. Televisions all across America tune into MTV. Millions of viewers will now spend the next thirty minutes watching a television program titled 'Jackass'. While watching this program, the viewers will observe everything from people eating hard boiled eggs in an attempt to purposely vomit, to a man testing out various self defense devices on himself. Next week viewers will tune into the same program to see the same kinds of stunts performed. The reason that America watches these kinds of programs, and the participants in them perform these stunts, are because 'norms' are being broken. A norm is something that is generally accepted by a society as the right thing to do, or the way things are supposed to be. For example, a norm would be to enter an elevator and stand facing the front for the duration of the trip. Breaking that norm would be to enter the elevator and face the back for the duration of the trip. It is not what is expected. Different norms exist in different societies, and when these norms are broken within these societies people pay attention, because it is not an occurrence observed on a regular basis.
Lets start by understanding that cultures are a melting pot of people’s beliefs, language, behaviors, values, material objects, and norms. Norms are written and non-written “expectations of behavior” that govern a certain location, place, or culture (26). These norms also vary from culture to culture meaning what is a norm in the U.S may not be a norm in India. For example, a norm in America would be tipping a waiter after a meal. Another would be acknowledging someone as you walk past him or her, typically done at work or in a public place. In all, norms are folkways, mores, taboos, and written laws that are an established standard of one’s behavior.
I do not take the elevator a lot in my day to day life because I live on the second floor in my residence hall and my farthest I have to travel to get to class is three flights of stairs. I never see the need to wait for the elevator, but even though I probably have not been on one for over four months, I still, like most people, remember the social norms that go along with riding in one. When you go in you either push the button for the floor you need or you ask someone to press the button for you. If you were having a conversation with someone either you wait to continue it when you get off or you lower your voice considerably. These rules obviously only apply if there are strangers in the elevator with you. If you are alone in an elevator you can essentially do anything (that still follows all of the laws. You could sing to yourself, run in place, or even play patty cake and no one would know. The problem is, once someone gets on the elevator with you, these behaviors are now breaking a norm. I decided to take this concept of a quiet environment
Social norms refer to the way that members of a society are expected to act and behave. These norms provide structure and conformity for individuals within a society. They also provide a sense of “normalcy” amongst individuals within a society. In a society, “we tend to follow our own cultural norms without questioning them, because we regard them as the ‘norm’.” (Henslin,2012). To intentionally break a cultural norm, takes some thought and effort to consciously go against our inbred “culture within us.” When pondering about social norms that I could break and the reactions of others, I began brainstorming various social norms. One in particular norm came to mind. In American society there is a social norm that if you use the drive thru window
American literature often examines people and motives. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, and in Arthur Miller’s dramatic classic, The Crucible, people and motives often depict patterns of Puritans struggling for life during a precarious time.
The reactions of people when you break a social norm can vary quite drastically. Sometimes the reactions are quite large and other times they are rather subtle. The reactions typically vary based on what norm you break and how strong of a norm it is. In the case of invading people’s personal space, I did not receive and intense reactions. All of the reactions I received were subtle. Not ma...
The daunting task of violating a social norm, something that I could be ostracized and ridiculed for, I still chose to do. Social norms are the rules of behavior that are considered acceptable in a group or society. Doing weird things in public while surrounded by strangers is a recipe for disaster, especially for somebody like myself. I am awkward and have plenty of trouble talking to new people. Most of us are told not to talk to strangers when we are younger because there are all sorts of crazy people out there. There could not be a better way to break out of my shell and violate a social norm than to sit down and talk to total strangers while they eat.
Norms are a part of everyday life. Without norms the world would be in total chaos. Norms by definition are rules of behavior shared by members of a society and rooted in the value system. ( ) Norms are held at a high standard in a society and are valued by its members. Norms vary from society to society. What is considered normal in one society may not be acceptable in another society. Norms are a societies way of living if a member of society breaks that norm they may be looked at as strange or even penalized depending on what kind of norm is broken. Norms are broken into three categories which are folkways, mores, and laws. Folkways are customs or desirable behaviors that are not strictly enforced. Violating a folkway is not criminal, but violating a folkway may have you looked at as weird. Mores are the strongest form of norms they have great moral significance in a society. Violating a more is considered immoral or borderline criminal. The strongest form of mores are taboos which are unthinkable action within a society. Laws are the third category of norms that a...
I chose to break a social norm by sitting/ laying on the floor of an aisle in a grocery store, engaging in deviant behavior, instead of shopping for groceries. Sitting on the floor of a grocery store is a case of deviant behavior because it goes against society by breaking the norm. Because the standard behavior of people in a grocery store is to walk and look around, with usually a basket or cart, shopping for desired items, the expected response of others would be feeling uncomfortable, awkward, and confused. Upon performing my act of social deviance, numerous people demonstrated the anticipated reaction. As people turned down the aisle, I occupied, conversations died down to whispers or stopped altogether. Of the people who questioned me on my
In every society, there is conformity and nonconformity, although we may not notice it. Conformity is when someone is doing the same thing as others because they do not want to be the only one doing differently. Example, if there was a whole class raising their hands would you want to be the only one with your hand down, no so you would raise it with the rest of the class to not look like you don't know anything. This is called social pressures it when a large group is doing something and you're the only one not then you want to be doing whatever that large group is doing.
Society is composed of "norms" and "sanctions." Norms are rules which mandate which things people should or should not do, say, or think in different situations(from: Sociology An Introduction). Norms are both written and non-written. The more flexible non-written norms are called "folkways." These unspoken social rules know as folkways are usually ideas or habits that society has developed overtime and which are done as almost a second nature. An example of this would be to say "thank you" after you have received something or praying before going to sleep as a child. Written norms such as laws are usually rigidly unyielding, these norms are called "mores". The violation of these mores are unthinkable and therefore are enforced by some form of punitive measure. These measures are examples of a "sanctions". Sanctions are the punishments or rewards that a society has placed on norms to discourage and encourage people from