Social Norms Term Paper

On a starry night a child is roaming the streets of New York trying to find food and shelter for the night. The child's name is Jim, he is only 10 years old. Ran away from home, because of bullies that would beat him up on the way home, so he decided to run away, because his parents forced him to go to school. He just couldn’t take it. That night he ran away.

The idea of societal norms has evolved rapidly since the late 1800s. Mankind has made advancements from mobility to media, warfare to work, and everything in between. The lives that we, people of the 21st century, are accustom to would not have been able to come into fruition if it werent for the advancements made by our predocessors. As simple as they may seem to us they carved the way  for modern living. Four key points I am going to talk about are: The Second Industrial Revolution, The Great War, The Interwar Period, and World War II.

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

The media is shown to people to create social norms in society. The media feeds on assumptions about " the ways in which we believe men and women are supposed to behave". It doesn't focus on experiences in real people (Ryle, 2015). In the media, women are shown as objects to men. In the video, it shows different food commercials how women are portrayed in advertisements as prostitutes and moms taking care of food for the children.

Social norms and deviant behaviors are important to society. These standards of behaviors are principles for society’s members to follow and to find their own thoughts and beliefs. Social norms can vary due to societies all over the world and the cultures that lie within them. The norms are known as the principles or rules that are expected by others in various types of social situations. These situations can vary from walking downtown to going to a formal dance.

Social norms can be defined as “set standards of correctness and appropriateness, thus guiding participants’ actions in social practice and serving as reasons for justifications and as ground for critique” (Hannes and Schmidt 2013). Essentially, social norms are a set of rules that dictate how people should act in certain situations. Social

The social norm that I decided to violate fits more into a category of society's unspoken norms. Most people would agree that when riding public transportation you do not sit next to somebody else unless there are no other seats available. Therefore, I decided that during this past week I would sit next to people on the bus and max, even if there were many more seats available. This usually worked better in the mornings on my way to class, for most buses were pretty empty. For the past couple of days, I been getting on the bus and sat next to someone without hesitation, even if the bus was half empty.

One of the main ways in which society functions is based on social norms, which help regulate the actions that people will carry out on a daily basis. Social norms can be learned as part of someone 's culture or can be influenced by authority such as a government. Examples of the different types of norms could be walking on the sidewalk, sitting during a class and going through a green light. Norms will change over time as society grows and times change, but social norms will sometimes be conflicting with one another when the environment or people change. As stated by Eric Jorrey 's PowerPoint slides, norms are "a society 's established standards of behavior-"appropriate" ways to behave-widely shared and understood" (P. 8).

There have been countless debates as to whether a person’s actions are molded by nature or nurture. Nature is simply looking at the person’s DNA. While nurture primarily focuses on the environment and experience a specific person encounters. In addition, nurture can be seen as the social norms and traditional values that most people follow in order to fit in. Gender also plays a big role on how a person is molded. Women tend to have it harder when it comes to following social rules because more is expected of them. A man, however, can do just about anything. Around the late 1870’s women did not have the social freedoms they do now. For instance, a woman could not take out a loan without the permission of a man. In addition, women did not have careers because the men in their lives would take care of them. Instead of worrying about financial troubles, women spend the majority of their time raising their children. Since social norms and traditional values play a big role on how women act, many writers have written plays, short stories, and books that focus on these issues. A writer named Henrik Ibsen wrote a play called A Doll House that exemplifies how the main character, Nora, deals with having to keep a secret from her family and friends; in the end, she reveals her secret to her husband and he concludes that she is unfit to raise their children, which causes Nora to decide to leave her family in hopes of trying to find out what life would be like if she lived on her own.

We use social interaction to discover more about the people and the world around us. People can influence our behavior in many ways. Our behavior is determined the social situation. Social roles are the different positions a person can become within a group. These roles are important because each role is a different set of behaviors. When individuals grow and mature, their role may change. Some roles change for the better, some change in an undesirable way. Social norms are defined as a set of unwritten rules about how we behave. The behaviors that fulfill a social norm is called conformity. Conformity can be defined as the change in behavior due other people’s influences (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2013).

Norms, according to the text, are the established standards of behavior maintained by a society. These standards of behavior run and function in different societies. Norms help communities connect to each other forming interactions, such as human conversation and strong relationships. From simple connections, interactions would eventually grow into a vast community network within a group then onto many other groups. Besides how norms are influenced as a network, norms also have a huge effect on the people. Through human interactions, people are easily impacted by social norms of society. Different smaller societies grow within other societies influencing the system as a whole, critiquing and forming a normalized set of rules in which people follow. Norms helps societal groups function! One could say it is the medium in which communities connect. Without norms, there would be no overall system on earth or no similarities within communities. Norms are the continually mechanism for society to operate. Especially in ethnocentrism and cultural relativism, norms are the basis of these specific cultural perceptions. It is the building blocks of forming the concept of a cultural viewpoint.

Norms are the mutual understandings that members of society come to see as guidelines for acceptable behavior. They set expectations about how people are to act in a variety of social situations and can vary based on time, place, and culture. As such, social norms are often ingrained in us when we are young; we learn as children what constitutes “proper” behavior by observing those around us. We later model these behaviors ourselves.

Social norms are the rules of behavior that are considered acceptable in a group or society. (Social norm examples) People in society are expected to follow these norms by their piers, or they may suffer some kind of consequence or social shun. Social norms change according to the environment or situation and may change or be modified over time. Some examples of social norms people regularly abide by include making eye contact with someone while you are speaking with them, saying please and thank you, not cursing in polite and everyday conversation and covering your mouth when you sneeze. The social norm I chose to break for my experiment was personal space. Personal space is defined by the physical space immediately surrounding someone, into which any encroachment feels threatening to or uncomfortable for them. In American society the idea of personal space is very much valued and subconsciously seen as a right to each individual. The physical closeness individuals practice is dependent on their relationship status. For example, two people in a romantic relationship are going to treat the idea of each others personal space much differently than two complete strangers will. (Personal Space)

Societies expect from people not to behave randomly but depending on the situation to adjust their personality to the unwritten rules of every social occasion. William Shakespeare describes these roles perfectly by writing: “All the world is a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits, and their entrances And one man in his time plays many parts.”

Social norms are guideline that are set by society as a proper way for humans to interact, within boundaries, with one another (Humphrey & Schmalleger, 2012). Social norms do change according to each society’s traditional beliefs or morals. Social norms are classified as the ‘must or should do’s or do not’s’ in a certain society. Some may be stricter than others according to the community or group one lives within (“Social Norms, n.d.). For instance, in most social environment everyone knows it is not acceptable behavior to belch in public nor to be naked in public. Whereas, in the other countries, this is an accepted behavior. Then there are stricter communities that have higher expectations and if the people within do not go by the social norms they can be shunned or pushed out of the group. Social norms are typically stated, known, and/or passed down generation from generation. Behavioral expectations as well as changes with in certain areas are more set rules than taught behaviors. For instance teachers are taught to behave more formally around students, whereas professors ethically should not date