Social Norms

Social norms are the unwritten rules that guide how people are expected to behave in a group or society. They include everyday habits like saying hello, waiting your turn in line, or dressing appropriately for an event. These norms help create order and predictability, and breaking them can lead to disapproval or even punishment.

Types of Social Norms

Social norms can be broadly categorised into formal and informal types. These are further divided by their moral weight and the severity of their sanctions, the rewards and punishments used to enforce them.

1. Formal Norms

Formal norms are established, written-down rules that are officially recognised and enforced. They are often codified into laws and supported by social institutions like the criminal justice system and schools.

Laws (Legal Norms):

These are the most specific and strictly enforced type of formal norm.

They exist to explicitly control people’s behaviour and are upheld by official sanctions from the legal system, such as fines or imprisonment. Examples include:

Other Formal Rules:

Not all formal norms are laws. They include any written, official rules found in various social institutions.

• Employee manuals that outline workplace conduct.
• College entrance exam requirements.
• Student behaviour codes in schools that address issues like cheating or hate speech.
• Signs such as “no running” at swimming pools.

According to sociologist Émile Durkheim, legal systems become a functional necessity as societies grow large and complex. Formal, codified rules step in to regulate relationships that informal norms alone can no longer manage between strangers.

2. Informal Norms

These are casual, unwritten rules of behaviour that are widely conformed to and learned through observation, imitation, and general socialisation.

They govern everyday interactions and are typically enforced through informal sanctions like disapproving looks, sarcasm, ridicule, or gossip.

Informal norms can be categorised into folkways and mores.

Folkways:

Folkways are norms that lack moral significance.

They direct appropriate day-to-day practices, and violating them is not seen as immoral, though it might be considered odd.

Sanctions for violating folkways are relatively mild. Examples include:

• Greeting etiquette, such as saying “hello” to an acquaintance.
• Everyday customs like sending birthday cards.
• Elevator etiquette, such as facing the front and not singing.
• Table manners and other common courtesies.
• Appropriate dress for specific events, like wearing a tie and blazer versus a T-shirt and sandals.

Mores:

Mores (pronounced ‘mor-ays’) are norms with great moral significance, considered essential to a society’s well-being and stability.

Violating mores can lead to strong social disapproval and being labelled as shameful or immoral. The strongest mores are often protected by laws. Examples of mores include:

• Respect for authority, such as showing respect to teachers. Cursing at a teacher would be a violation of a more.

• Honesty, reflected in the strong norm against plagiarism.

• Sexual fidelity within marriage is a highly valued more in the UK, and adultery is generally viewed as deviant behaviour.

Taboos:

Taboos are the most serious and strongly held mores.

Their violation is considered offensive, disgusting, and almost unthinkable, demanding severe punishment from the group.

The incest taboo, which prohibits sexual relations between certain close relatives, is considered the only taboo present in all societies and is almost universally prohibited.

Norm Entrepreneurs and Norm Cascades

Norms shape behaviour that looks irrational on paper.

Legal scholar Cass Sunstein (1996) argued that littering, charitable giving, and rarely haggling over posted prices make more sense as responses to shame and pride than to cost-benefit reasoning.

Sunstein calls people who deliberately try to overturn a norm norm entrepreneurs. Once enough people privately reject an old norm, a norm cascade can spread the change fast, as it suddenly becomes acceptable to say so in public.

Smoking indoors and drink-driving both declined this way. Private support eroded slowly and invisibly, then collapsed fast in public once enough people realised others already agreed. A change in the law can itself trigger the cascade, giving cover to people who privately rejected the old norm already.

Examples

Everyday Social Conventions

The following are some common social norms that people in the US and UK follow daily (Hechter & Opp, 2001):

• Shaking hands when greeting someone

• Saying “please” and “thank you”

• Apologizing when one makes a mistake

• Standing up when someone enters the room

• Making eye contact during a conversation

• Listening when someone is speaking

• Offering help when someone is struggling

• Respecting personal space

• Accepting others’ opinions even if we don’t agree with them

• Being on time

• Dressing appropriately for the occasion

• Thanking someone for a gift

• Paying attention to personal hygiene

• Speaking quietly in public and formal places

• Clearing one’s dishes from the table after a meal at one’s own home, or at one of a friend or stranger

• Not interrupting when someone else is speaking

• Asking before borrowing something that belongs to someone else

• Walking on the right side of a hallway or sidewalk

• Saying “bless you” or “gesundheit” after someone sneezes

• Standing in line and not cutting in front of others

• Yielding to pedestrians when driving

• Hanging up one’s coat when entering someone else’s home

• Taking off one’s shoes when entering someone else’s home (if this is the custom)

• Not talking with food in one’s mouth

• Chewing with one’s mouth closed

• Not staring at others

Cultural Norms

Social norms vary widely across cultures and contexts (Reno et al., 1993).

For example, in Japan, some social norms that are typically followed include:

• Bowing instead of shaking hands when greeting someone
• Removing shoes before entering a home or certain public places
• Eating quietly and with small bites
• Using chopsticks correctly
• Not blowing your nose in public
• Speaking softly
• Not making direct eye contact with others

Some social norms that are specific to meeting new people include:

• Dressing neatly and conservatively
• Exchanging business cards formally
• Presenting and receiving gifts with two hands

In South America, in contrast, people are expected to (Young, 2007):

• Greet others with a hug and a kiss on the cheek, even if one does not know them well
• Stand close to someone when talking to them
• Talk loudly for emphasis
• Make eye contact
• Use a lot of gestures when talking
• Dress more casually than in Japan or the UK
• In some cultures, it is considered rude to refuse a drink when offered one by someone else
• It is also considered rude to turn down food when offered some
• Table manners are not as formal as in Japan or the UK, and it is common to see people eating with their hands
• Burping and belching are also considered normal and not rude
• In some cultures, it is considered good luck to spit on someone or something
• Yawning is also considered normal and not rude

Social Norms For Students

School teaches children respect for authority, structure, and tolerance. The social norms expected of students follow suit (Hechter & Opp, 2001):

• Being respectful to teachers

• Listening in class

• Handing in homework on time

• Not talking when others are talking

• Taking turns

• Include everyone in activities

• Playing fairly

• Encouraging others

• Trying one’s best

• Respecting property and equipment

• Being a good listener

• Accepting differences among people

• Avoiding put-downs and hurtful teasing

Some social norms that are generally followed while taking exams include:

• Not cheating
• Arriving on time
• Not talking during the exam
• Listening to and following the instructions given by the person administering the exam
• Not leaving the room until the exam is over
• Not bringing in any outside materials that are not allowed
• Not looking at other people’s papers

Gender Social Norms

Gender roles refer to society’s concept of how men and women should behave, learned through socialization.

In the U.S., masculine roles are traditionally associated with strength and dominance, while feminine roles are linked to passivity and nurturing

Some social norms that are associated with being a woman include (Moi, 2001):

• Wearing makeup
• Dressing in feminine clothing
• Speaking softly
• Being polite and well mannered
• Keeping one’s legs and arms covered
• Not swearing
• Avoiding physical labor
• Letting men take the lead

Some social norms that are associated with being a man include (Moi, 2001):

• Wearing masculine clothing
• Having short hair
• Taking up space
• Talking loudly
• Being assertive and confident
• Engaging in physical labor
• Protecting and providing for others
• Leading and being in charge

Some social norms that are associated with being transgender or gender non-conforming include:

• Dressing in a way that does not conform to traditional gender norms
• Using pronouns that do not correspond to the sex assigned at birth
• Going by a different name than the one given at birth
• Requesting that others use the pronoun corresponding to their preferred gender
• Taking hormones or undergoing surgery to transition to the desired gender

Social Norms With Family

Young (2007) outlined numerous social norms pertaining to family, such as:

• Saying “please” and “thank you”
• Listening to elders
• Treating siblings and cousins with love and respect
• Doing chores without being asked
• Children not talking back to parents
• Paying attention during family gatherings
• Showing affection in appropriate ways
• Respecting others’ privacy
• Keeping family secrets
• Being grateful for what you have
• Appreciating the sacrifices made by your parents or guardians
• Celebrating birthdays and other special occasions together
• Sharing in family traditions

Social Norms At Work

Social norms at work are similar to those enforced at school (Hechter & Opp, 2001):

• Coming to work on time

• Dressing appropriately for the job

• Putting in a full day’s work

• Not calling in sick unnecessarily

• Not taking extended lunches or coffee breaks

• Not spending excessive time chatting with co-workers

• Following company policies and procedures

• Being a team player

• Respecting others’ opinions

• Listening to and considering others’ suggestions

• Being an active participant in meetings

• Completing assigned tasks on time

• Respecting the decisions of the group even if you don’t agree with them

Social Norms While Dining Out

Some social norms that are typically followed while dining out include (Hechter & Opp, 2001):

• Dressing neatly and appropriately for the occasion
• Arriving on time for reservations
• Refraining from talking loudly
• Putting phones away and not using them at the table
• Not ordering food that is too smelly
• Ordering an appropriate amount of food
• Not leaving a mess behind
• Tipping the server generously (in American cultures)
• Saying “please” and “thank you” to the staff
• In many cultures, it is also considered rude to:
• Critique the food or drink
• Send food back
• Make a scene
• Interrupt others while they are talking
• Leave without saying goodbye

Using Your Phone

Social norms surrounding using phones include (Carter et al., 2014):

• Putting one’s phone away when one is with other people
• In many formal situations, only using one’s phone in designated areas
• Silencing one’s phone when in class, at a meeting, or in any other situation where it would be disruptive to have one’s phone make noise
• Asking permission before using someone else’s phone
• Returning a missed call or voicemail within a reasonable amount of time
• Not texting or talking on the phone while walking if it means one’s not paying attention to where they are going and could bump into someone or something

Social Norms While Driving

Although often broken, there are expectations surrounding one’s behavior on the road (Carter et al., 2014), such as:

• Obeying the speed limit
• Yielding to pedestrians
• Coming to a complete stop at stop signs and red lights
• Using turn signals when changing lanes or making turns
• Yielding to other drivers who have the right of way
• Not driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol
• Not using a cell phone while driving
• Paying attention to the road and not being distracted by passengers, music, or other things going on inside or outside of the car

Social Norms When Meeting A New Person

In general, some social norms that are typically followed when interacting with others include (Hechter & Opp, 2001):

• Making eye contact
• Standing up straight
• Offering a handshake
• Introducing oneself
• Speaking clearly
• Listening attentively
• Asking questions
• Smiling
• Some social norms that are specific to meeting new people include:
• Dressing neatly and conservatively
• Not interrupting others while they are talking
• Refraining from talking too much about oneself
• Being polite and well-mannered
• Not making any offensive jokes or comments

Social Norms With Friends

In general, close confidants follow a more relaxed set of social norms than acquaintances and strangers.

Nonetheless, there are still expectations as to what constitutes a friend in many Western cultures, including (Young, 2007):

• Giving each other honest feedback, though often without a harsh start-up
• Accepting each other’s differences
• Forgiving each other
• Celebrating each other’s successes
• Comforting each other during tough times
• Laughing together and in response to each other’s jokes
• Sharing common interests
• Spending time together
• Making sacrifices for each other

Purpose and Function

Norms are the visible and invisible rules of conduct that govern social life, dictating what is considered appropriate behaviour in various situations. They are essential because, without them, social life would be unpredictable and chaotic.

1. Norms exist as fundamental mechanisms for structuring society. From a Functionalist viewpoint, they are essential for social order, stability, and the harmonious functioning of society.
2. From a Conflict perspective, they serve as instruments of power, used by dominant groups to maintain inequality.
3. Finally, from a Symbolic Interactionist lens, norms are dynamic, socially constructed guidelines that shape and are shaped by our daily interactions and shared meanings.

The Functionalist Perspective: Creating Stability and Social Order

The Functionalist perspective, particularly associated with sociologists like Émile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons, argues that norms are indispensable for the health and stability of society.

In this view, society is seen as a complex system of interconnected parts, similar to a living organism, where each part serves a vital purpose.

Norms function as the “social glue” that binds people together, ensuring the system runs smoothly.

The key functions of norms from this perspective include:

1. Ensuring Predictability and Social Order:

   • Norms provide a blueprint for social living, guiding our thinking, feeling, and behaving. They make social life predictable by establishing shared expectations.

     For example, knowing the norms for riding an elevator (facing the front, not singing) or interacting with a cashier allows for automatic and orderly social interaction without constant thought and potential error.

   • This predictability is essential for maintaining social order, which is an arrangement of practices that society’s members use to base their daily lives on.

     Violating these norms can lead to confusion and discomfort, as demonstrated in Harold Garfinkel’s breaching experiments, where students deliberately broke unwritten rules, causing others to become angry or puzzled.

2. Promoting Social Cohesion and Integration:

   • According to Émile Durkheim, norms are a key part of the collective conscience – the shared morals, beliefs, and attitudes of a society that bind individuals together.

     This collective conscience creates social integration, the strength of ties people have to their social groups, which is a key factor in social life.

   • Norms are transmitted through socialization, a lifelong process where individuals learn their culture’s values and expected behaviours.

     Social institutions like the family, schools, and religion act as agents of socialization, teaching shared norms and values to ensure societal members agree on rules and cooperate.

   • This process helps to create value consensus – societal-wide agreement on the most appropriate values and norms – which Durkheim saw as essential for social solidarity and order.

3. Regulating Behaviour through Social Control:

   • Norms are maintained through social control, which involves the regulation and enforcement of societal rules.

     Social control is exercised through sanctions—rewards for conforming to norms (positive sanctions) and punishments for violating them (negative sanctions).

   • Sanctions can be formal (applied by officially designated persons like judges or teachers, such as imprisonment or getting a good grade) or informal (emerging in face-to-face interactions, such as ridicule, praise, or a disapproving look).

     The fear of these sanctions encourages conformity and discourages deviance.

4. Clarifying Moral Boundaries and Facilitating Social Change:

   • Durkheim argued that even deviance (the violation of norms) serves positive functions.

     When deviance is punished, it reaffirms society’s shared norms and values, thereby clarifying moral boundaries and strengthening social bonds among those who react to the violation.

   • Deviance can also be a catalyst for social change. By challenging existing norms, deviants can highlight injustices or problems in the social structure, which can lead to changes in laws and social definitions of what is acceptable.

     The U.S. Civil Rights movement is a key example, where activists violated segregation norms to bring about necessary social change.

The Conflict Perspective: Norms as Tools of Power and Inequality

Conflict theorists, heavily influenced by Karl Marx, offer a contrasting view. They argue that norms do not exist for the benefit of all society but are created and enforced by dominant groups to maintain and perpetuate their own power, wealth, and privilege.

1. Maintaining the Status Quo and Reinforcing Inequality:

   • From this perspective, the law and the criminal justice system function as an ‘ideological state apparatus’ that serves the interests of the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie).

     Norms and laws criminalise the activities of the powerless while often ignoring the harms caused by the powerful, such as corporate crime.

   • Social institutions, including schools and the family, transmit a ‘hidden curriculum‘: informal norms like punctuality, deference to authority, and accepting hierarchy, taught alongside the official syllabus. This socialises people to accept the existing social hierarchy and their place within it.

     This process reproduces class inequality and encourages conformity and obedience among the working class.

2. Justifying Domination through Ideology:

   • Conflict theory emphasises the role of ideology – a set of ideas that justifies the status quo—in maintaining stratification.

     The ruling class shapes a society’s dominant ideas and norms to justify the existing order and prevent the poor from challenging it, thereby creating a ‘false consciousness‘.

   • Feminist theorists extend this analysis to gender, arguing that norms reinforce patriarchy (male domination) by socialising people into traditional gender roles that subordinate women.

The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective: Norms as Socially Constructed Realities

Symbolic interactionism takes a micro-level approach, focusing on how norms are created, maintained, and modified through everyday, face-to-face interactions.

1. Creating Shared Meanings:

   • Norms are not rigid rules but are socially constructed through the meanings people assign to symbols, language, and actions.

     Social order is possible because people learn what various symbols mean and apply these meanings to situations. For example, a handshake is a symbol with a shared meaning that guides interaction.

   • Our reality is a social construction, shaped by the subjective meanings we give to experiences. Norms are part of this constructed reality, guiding our role performance and making interactions orderly.

2. Defining and Responding to Deviance:

   • Labelling theory, a key part of this perspective, posits that deviance is not inherent in an act but is a consequence of others defining and labelling it as deviant. Powerful groups are often able to impose their definitions of deviance on less powerful groups.
   • Being labelled as deviant can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, where an individual internalises the label and acts accordingly, thus shaping their identity and future behaviour.

Cultural Variation

Cultural norms differ widely across societies because each culture has its own values, beliefs, and ways of organizing life.

Norms are not biologically fixed but learned through socialization.

What seems “normal” in one culture may be unusual – or even unacceptable – in another.

Interpersonal Interaction and Communication

Everyday behaviors like greetings, gestures, and personal space vary greatly across cultures.

• Personal space: In the U.S., people usually stand three to four feet apart. In parts of Latin America, the Middle East, and southern Europe, standing close shows warmth and friendliness.

• Gestures: A nod means “yes” in the U.S. but “no” in Bulgaria. The “OK” sign is positive in the U.S. but offensive in parts of Europe. A thumbs-up is friendly in the U.S., but insulting in Russia or Australia.

• Greetings: Customs differ, from handshakes in many Western countries to kisses on the cheek in southern Europe. In Japan, kissing was historically avoided, and hand-holding between men is a sign of friendship in many countries, not romance.

Family, Marriage, and Gender

Norms about families and relationships are strongly shaped by culture.

• Marriage: Western societies stress marrying for love, while arranged marriages are common in India and were once common in Europe. Monogamy is the norm in the U.S., while polygamy is accepted in parts of Africa and Asia. Most cultures forbid incest, but the exact definition of “close relative” varies.

• Family structure: In the U.S., nuclear families are common, and independence is encouraged. In many Asian cultures, extended families live together. Some societies expect couples to live with the husband’s family (patrilocal), others with the wife’s (matrilocal), and others independently (neolocal).

• Gender roles: Anthropologist Margaret Mead showed that expectations for men and women differ across societies. Some cultures value gentleness in both sexes, others emphasize competitiveness, and some recognize more than two gender categories. One such role among some Indigenous North American nations was labeled “berdache” by European ethnographers, a term now outdated and, to many communities, offensive. Today, the community itself often calls it Two-Spirit.

Societal Values and Institutions

Shared values shape norms in schools, workplaces, and laws.

• Individualism vs. collectivism: U.S. culture stresses independence and competition. Japan emphasizes group harmony, with students and workers judged more on group performance than individual achievement.

• Education: U.S. schools promote values like patriotism and punctuality. Danish schools highlight equality and emotional development, providing free preschool to support social well-being.

• Alcohol use: Drinking is banned in Saudi Arabia for religious reasons but is a common pastime in Britain. Even the way people behave when drunk is cultural—some societies see no rowdy behavior despite heavy drinking, while others, like the U.S., associate alcohol with losing inhibitions.

The Relativity of Deviance

What counts as “deviant” behavior depends on the culture.

• Sexual behavior: Some cultures discourage sexual enjoyment, while others encourage it as natural and positive.

• Homosexuality: Once condemned in many societies, same-sex behavior has been accepted or even integrated into life stages in others, such as the Azande of East Africa or the Sambia of New Guinea.

Critical Evaluation

The three perspectives above make claims that research can test directly. Four classic and contemporary studies show how norms are actually formed, misjudged, and changed.

Garfinkel’s Breaching Experiments

Aim: Harold Garfinkel wanted to show that everyday social order rests on invisible background assumptions, not just the formal rules people could state if asked.

Method: Student researchers were sent to subtly break a minor social rule and record how people reacted. In one version, students acted as formal lodgers in their own family homes, using surnames and asking permission before using the bathroom.

Results: People confronted with the breach rarely shrugged it off. Family members grew tense, demanded explanations, and often reacted with real anger or confusion, not mild surprise.

Conclusion: Garfinkel concluded that social order rests on a deep, mostly unspoken web of shared expectations. A small, harmless broken rule still felt like an offence. This supports the functionalist claim that violating a norm provokes genuine moral outrage, not just confusion.

Evaluation: The method has strong ecological validity: it reveals norms too taken-for-granted for any questionnaire to surface, and it gave rise to the field of ethnomethodology. It is also small-scale and qualitative, and raises real ethical concerns, since people were deceived without giving consent.

Asch’s Line-Judgement Studies

Aim: Solomon Asch tested whether group pressure could make someone give an answer they knew was wrong.

Method: A real participant sat among several confederates. On each trial, they judged which of three lines matched a standard line in length. On key trials, every confederate gave the same wrong answer first.

Results: About a third of answers on critical trials matched the group’s wrong answer. About three in four participants conformed at least once.

Conclusion: Group pressure won more often than expected. Asch concluded that it can override what a person can plainly see with their own eyes. Even a norm set by strangers in a lab for minutes proved strong enough to bend some people’s public answers.

Evaluation: The study is historic. It takes little social pressure to produce conformity. A later meta-analysis (Bond & Smith, 1996) found lower conformity rates outside the 1950s United States. Read the full Asch conformity experiment for the method’s variations.

Pluralistic Ignorance

Aim: Deborah Prentice and Dale Miller tested whether college students misjudge how comfortable their peers really are with heavy drinking, and what follows from getting that judgement wrong.

Method: Surveys asked undergraduates to rate their own comfort with typical campus drinking, and separately to estimate the average student’s comfort with the same behaviour. A subset was followed up over time.

Results: Students consistently overestimated how comfortable their peers actually were with heavy drinking. That gap mattered. The false belief predicted heavier personal drinking over time, especially among men, as attitudes drifted toward the assumed norm.

Conclusion: The norm that shapes behaviour is often not the real, descriptive norm, but an inflated perception of it.

Belief became reality here: simply believing a norm was widely held created genuine private conformity to it over time.

Evaluation: This finding cuts against every theory covered above. Functionalist, conflict, and interactionist accounts all assume people know the prevailing norm fairly accurately. It also relies on self-report data from a single US college sample. See pluralistic ignorance for further examples of this effect.

Contemporary Research

Since the mid-2010s, research has moved from basic distinctions toward a sharper question: does making a norm salient actually change real behaviour? And under what conditions does it work best?

The strongest evidence is a large meta-analysis. Bergquist, Nilsson, and Schultz (2019) pooled 91 field experiments covering over 227,000 participants.

Every study tested norm-based messages against a no-message control. Most compared a household’s energy or water use with what their neighbours used.

The effect was real, but modest (around d = 0.32). It was not uniform, either. Messages that let a comparison speak for itself, like a simple chart, worked better than ones that stated the norm bluntly. The effect was also larger in individualistic countries than in collectivistic ones.

Since 2019, the theoretical model has matured too. Rimal and Lapinski (2015) refined their earlier account of how norms work. A norm’s power now depends on three things: its strength, how “typical” it feels, and how strongly a person identifies with the group it belongs to.

A third strand asks a more practical question: what kind of intervention does a norm problem actually need? Cislaghi and Berkowitz (2021) distinguished two strategies.

A norms-correction approach fixes a misperception, useful when people already privately hold a healthier view than they realise. A norms-transformation approach is needed instead when the harmful norm really is widely held, so the belief itself must change.

References

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