Social Norms: A Comparative Analysis

Misfit. Rebel. Troublemaker. These are all names that may be given to people who go against the social norm. According to Andersen, Taylor, and Logio, the authors of Sociology: The Essentials, norms are defined as the specific cultural expectations for how to act in a given situation (2016). When someone disrupts the expectations, they commit a norm violation and may display deviant behavior. Since norms are so automatically built into our everyday lives, the rules of social interaction can be subtle and may be imperceptible to the people who participate in them. Therefore, sociologists often purposefully commit a norm violation in order to study what the rules or norms are. This approach, known as ethnomethodology, interprets society as being

Summary The video, “Social Norms and Conformity,” discusses the role of gender, conformity, and deviance in today’s society. It first outlines how gender and one’s definition of it is socially constructed from the moment we are born. At birth, we are automatically bestowed with the status of belonging to a group; we are welcomed as a member into society and we are consequentially influenced by the beliefs, ideals, and social norms that that particular society holds. As the video highlights, Western society holds very different expectations for what constitutes being “female” and “male.”

How do people like to eat ramen? Do they like to eat with sounds or eating quietly? It means that ramen is delicious when people are eating it with sounds in Japan. While in china, eating food with sounds means rudeness. This interesting example shows that there are huge differences among kinds of social norms. In the film Witness, director Peter Weir explores the distinct and huge cultural conflicts between the old Amish society of western Pennsylvania and the modern American world of crime and violence. The main character, Philadelphia police detective John Book, is forced into hiding by a group of corrupt fellow officers looking for a little Amish boy, Samuel. The boy witnesses a merciless killing and identifies that one of the murders is Book’s boss. John Book and his witness hide in the house of the boy's mother Rachel on a farm in the Amish country. Even though Book tries to adopt plain living in the Amish country and helps Rachel and Samuel secure from all of danger, he has to leave them and along his satisfactorily destined path. Based on different social norms, sometimes people are willing to adapt those different social norms when they realize that breaking established rules is wrong. On the contrast, different social norms will burn the fire of fight. On the other hand, different social norms could help people learn about more cultures.

they act in the manner they act due to certain social norms that have been instilled in their minds. Also it is important to note that a state may change the way in which it chooses to interact with other states. This is an idea that both realists and liberalist do not mention.

Strict social codes were the backbone of elite society in 19th-century New York. Disregarding such formalities would ensure rejection by the upper class. Writing about her experiences in Old New York high society, Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence reflects on the social life of elite New Yorkers. The novel follows the life of Newland Archer, one of New York’s elites, his fiancé May Welland, and his mistress, Ellen Olenska.

Why her sitting down would have made a scene can be traced back to the idea of gender norms, and when people go against what is considered to be normal, they face sanctions – “an action that indicates the approval or disapproval of conduct relating to a social norm" (Johnston et al. 2017). Miriam would have faced critical side-glances and Bernie may have had people approach him to ask what was wrong with Miriam. Similar to what Miriam and Bernie may have experienced, sanctions are usually not what people hear on the news today like new sanctions and ordinances being imposed on Russia, North Korea, or Iran, but are smaller actions that show disapproval. An example of sanctions that actually occurred in The Finest Hours took place before Bernie

Sociology can be used to explain the social norms and sanctions that are associated with everything that we do. In order to examine social norms, we must use the sociological imagination to make the familiar strange. To do that, we must critically think about the social interactions that take place around us and look at them from different points of view. I observed students interacting with each other and with dining hall employees in Campus Center Dining Hall (CCDH) in order to determine the social norms and sanctions that occur there.

Throughout my K-12 school experience, as a student, I was held to many standards throughout my school years. In Kindergarten, I was taught to be quiet when the teacher was talking, to chew with my mouth closed, standards that were held not just at school, but at home as well. As a student, I fulfill a role in society, in my school, and in my classrooms. As a college freshman, I am to follow certain behaviors and attitudes to help identify social norms found in my reference group. A reference group is where individuals take on several “generalized others” to define and direct themselves and their behavior (Sandstrom 2003:87).

Iris is a Graduate Assistant at the College of Business, she has been here for two years working on a MBA. Iris was willing to let me interview her about her Chinese culture, and had some surprising things to say. To begin, Iris is the first member of her family to live abroad. So, she has had to learn how to manage her time between work and studying on her own. That has been her greatest challenge here at Kent. Iris believed that to be more challenging because the academic environment is more serious with higher comprehensive requirements.

Deviance is a title that insinuates the violation of social norms in society. This can be described as adjacent to criminal and improper behaviour imposed by the people who break the social norms of a society. Thus, becoming subjective to a label of 'deviant'. Deviants often have punishment bestowed upon them by authoritive figures such as the enforcers of law. There are many universal types of deviance throughout societys over the world such as alcoholism, addiction, mental illness and homosexuality. All of these may be a result of biological and social constructionist theories of deviance, this essay will define the opposing differences and the relation of the two in this essay. Both hold contributing factors to the construction of

One example of a relationship that I have with someone that is governed by social norms is with my roommate at school. When it comes to our friendship, it is almost entirely governed by social norms and never by money. There are very few times when our friendship has required us to pay each other money in return for help. Also, we like to do activities that don’t require money, like playing tennis, throwing a football, or biking. These types of activities make it very easy to stay away from market norms and keep our friendship more as a social norm. This sort of relationship is an easy sort of relationship that I enjoy because we both benefit from participating in fun events but don’t have to worry about paying each other. Even if we did have to pay to do something we would both have to pay the same price so there is no issue of market norms. These

The five social norms that I am glad exist are the standards of personal space, the expected standard for personal hygiene, the expected standard for manners in public i.e. avoiding belching or flatulating in public areas, the norm of individual choices, and the social norm of education being a standard.

Social norms hold the power to change and develop the way people act, in valuable ways or bad, in this case, bad. During the 1700’s the slave trade industry in the thirteen colonies was a rapidly growing commerce, this was the dawning of the peak of one of the largest negative social norms, racism. Racism was an ordinary instance throughout of the world during the 1700’s and through the 1900’s and it still exists today. Racism has alternated the United States and the rest of the world. It was very challenging to change the social norm itself and it still hasn’t been defeated. Throughout history the majority of people have held the power to create influential or harmful social norms and

Normative social influences guide people to understand what is and what is not acceptable behaviour in certain social contexts, and for the most part, people seem to conform (Droogendyk, 2016). The normative social influence or “social norm” that was violated and that this paper focuses on is sitting in the back seat of a car when there is only two people in the vehicle. This is classed as a descriptive social norm, and is so because it does not have any sort of moral component. It is a common understanding of how a person should act in a given situation (Aronson, Wilson, Fehr, & Akert, 2013). These descriptive norms usually have a powerful impact on how a person behaves and motivates them to act a certain way (Droogendyk, 2016). In this case,

Norms are regarded as important rules and expectations set by the society as their way of not only organizing a group but more importantly as their way of maintaining order. More often than not, these rules and expectations are implicitly dictated by the society and are valued as a standard how an individual should behave. At times, expected behaviors are explicitly set by the group. Although the reason behind the emergence and existence of norms are unclear, what is certain is that these norms are seen as important. Thus, breaking it or deviating from the social standards are often frowned upon and even condemned by the society.