For other uses, see Norm. 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.
Overview
Social norms can also be viewed as statements that regulate behavior and act as informal social controls. They are usually based in some degree of consensus and are enforced through social sanctions. In order to explain the content of normative rules, three different models are identified:
- Focus on the actions of ones personal ego,
- Focus on ego's reactions to actions of alter, and
- Negotiation between ego and alter.
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 they should behave. However, a rational person only acts according to the rule if only it is optimal for them. 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 accounts for the vast variety? From a 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 simple example, driving is common throughout the world, but in some countries people drive on the right and in other countries people drive on the left (see coordination game). A framework called comparative institutional analysis is proposed to deal with the game theoretical structural understanding of the variety of social 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 prisoner's dilemma game. Coordination with communication may be necessary to get out of the prisoner's dilemma situation.
References
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- Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society, ed. by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Horne, Christine. 2001. Social Norms, ed. by Michael Hechter and Karl-Dieter Opp. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
- Opp, Karl-Dieter. 1982. "The Evolutionary Emergence of Norms." British Journal of Social Psychology 21(2): 139-49.
- Durkheim, Emile. 1915. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New York: Free Press.
- Hechter, Michael. 1984. "When Actors Comply: Monitoring Costs and the Production of Social Order." Acta Sociologica 27(3): 161-83.
- Scott, John Finley. 1971. Internalization of Norms: A Sociological Theory of Moral Commitment. Englewoods Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
- McCarthy, Jon D. 1994. "Activists, Authorities, and Media Framing of Drunk Driving." In New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity, edited by Enrique Larana, Hank Johnston, and Joseph R. Gusfield. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
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- Blumer, Herbert. 1956. "Sociological Analysis and the 'Variable'." American Sociological Review 21(6): 683-90.
- Fine, Gary Alan. 2001. Social Norms, ed. by Michael Hechter and Karl-Dieter Opp. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
- Hochschild, Arlie. 1989. "The Economy of Gratitude." In The Sociology of Emotions: Original Essays and Research Papers, edited by David D. Franks and E. Doyle McCarthy. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press.
- Axelrod, Robert. 1984. The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books.
- Posner, Eric. 1996. "The Regulation of Solidary Groups: The Influence of Legal and Nonlegal Sanctions on Collective Action." University of Chicago Law Review 63(1): 133-97.
- Yamagishi, Toshio, Karen S. Cook, and Motoki Watabe. 1998. "Uncertainty, Trust, and Commitment Formation in the United States and Japan." American Journal of Sociology 104(1): 165-94.
- Kollock, Peter. 1994. "The Emergence of Exchange Structures: An Experimental Study of Uncertainty, Commitment, and Trust." American Journal of Sociology 100(2): 313-45.
- Macy, Michael W. and John Skvoretz. 1998. "The Evolution of Trust and Cooperation Between Strangers: A Computational Model." American Sociological Review 63(5): 638-60.
- Burt, Ronald S. 1987. "Social Contagion and Innovation: Cohesive Versus Structural Equivalence." American Journal of Sociology 92(6): 1287-1335.
- Mark, Noah. 1998. "Birds of a Feather Sing Together." Social Forces 77(2): 453-85.
- Sumner, William Graham. 1979. Folkways. New York: Arno Press.
- Park, Robert E. and Ernest W. Burgess. 1924. Introduction to The Science of Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Kohn, Melvin L. 1977. Class and Conformity: A Study in Values . 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Romanelli, Elaine. 1991. "The Evolution of New Organizational Forms." Annual Review of Sociology 17: 79-103.
- Boyd, Robert and Peter J. Richerson. 1985. Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
See also
Further reading
- Cialdini, R., 2007, Descriptive Social Norms as Underappreciated Sources of Social Control. Psychometrika, vol. 72, no. 2, 263-268, [1].
- McElreath, R., Boyd, R., & Richerson, P.J. (2003). Shared norms and the evolution of ethnic markers. Current Anthropology, 44(1): 122-129. Full text
- Quah, Stella R. and Sales, Arnaud, 2000, The International Handbook of Sociology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN 0-7169-5378-7.
- Schultz, P.W., Nolan, J. M., Cialdini, R. B., Goldstein, N. J., Griskevicius, V., 2007, The Constructive, Destructive, and Reconstructive Power of Social Norms. Psychological Science, vol. 18, no. 5, 429-434, 2007. [2].
- Stark, Rodney. 2007 Sociology, 10th ed. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth. ISBN 0-495-09344-0.
External links
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