Preview

Breaking a Social Norm

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
847 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Breaking a Social Norm
Breaking a social norm

In our society we have a number of society norms that we abide by. For example, there is an unwritten rule of how one should behave in an elevator. For example, it is proper to face front, stand away from strangers, and not to look at others. When a social norm is broken people may respond with alarm, humor, fear, irritation, or an array of other emotions. When you think of a norm, you are probably thinking about being normal. But in psychology terms, norm means, a standard or representative value for a group. The norm that is more common to people is a social norm. Meaning expectations about what behavior, thoughts, or feelings are appropriate within a given group within a given context.
In society today us as people decide what is normal and abnormal. I surveyed five people and asked them two questions of what they thought was normal and abnormal. The first question was “Do you think dressing weird out in the public eye is normal”? There response were “No, because everybody does that anyway.” My next question was, “Does being rude to an elder normal?” There response was “ No, you have to give respect to older people.” Well, I did this survey to get an idea on what people thought of what was normal and what wasn’t. This survey also helped me chose a norm to break.
When I broke the norms I actually broke two and didn’t even know it until I was done with my acting. The two social norms that I broke were, wearing pajamas to the movie theatre with my boyfriend and being rude to authority such as elders. When my boyfriend picked me up for the movies, he just looked at me strangely. I know he wanted to ask why did I have on pajamas but he just kept quiet. By the way I did bring a extra pair of clothes with me, so I wouldn’t look like an idiot that whole night. Well anyway, on our way to the movies, my boyfriend just kept staring at me, but mind you he never said a word. When we went to get the tickets I received many looks from people and

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Im Not Scared Questions

    • 1217 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The norm is the type of behaviour or way of doing something that is accepted by the society you are in.…

    • 1217 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Like a well-oiled machine social normality keep communities running smoothly. Social norms provide guidelines to follow. These guidelines help interactions with others run smoothly, and effectively so. It becomes easier to move through social life when the community generally follows the norms created by the collective of people. The community-driven normality’s will normally be simplistic in nature. This causes said norms to become subconscious overtime when becoming used to them. As Saul McLeod states “Social norms are unwritten rules about how to behave. We need them because they provide us with an expected idea of how to behave in a particular social group or culture” (McLeod 1). Eventually, people forget the norms they follow until they…

    • 169 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Norms are made by historical ideals that have gained power once becoming part of the society. They continue to grow in strength, due to society’s belief that they cannot change what has been made in the past. All norms have a positive and negative impact; they are…

    • 1513 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Social norms are acceptable or expected patterns of behaviour. According to this definition, abnormality is deviation or violation of acceptable patterns of behaviour or social norms. For example it is not acceptable to say you hear voices in your head (schizophrenia). It is not a social norm to starve yourself to death (anorexia). Social norms can be explicit (clearly set down in society such as laws) or implicit (common expectations of behaviour).…

    • 521 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Norm Break

    • 1595 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Social norms, as Diane Kendall (2012) states, is an “Established rules of behavior or standards of conduct”(p. 54). The levels of these norms vary, as do the consequences of breaking those said norms. Some norms may just be a slight annoyance, and will not cause much of a rouse from outside perspectives. More severs norms, called Mores, strongly dictate how one should behave, and breaking one of these can cause severe negative sanctions. Taboos are even worse, I wish I could tell you what they are (get it? no? damn.). Norms are everywhere, and are so interconnected with society that they are often hard to come up with when doing a norm break.…

    • 1595 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Social Norm is a belief formed by a group of people that how members should behave, in other words these are the unwritten rules. Social norms are developed to control the behaviour. I violated a social norm about 4 years back in India to which I got different reactions from different people, It is a social norm in India that when the bride leaves her paternal house after marriage everybody cries because after marriage she is going to stay at her in laws house and she is now their responsibility, she will come to her parent’s house occasionally .They all will miss her and remember the memories from her childhood. It was the occasion of my cousin’s marriage, when she was about to leave with her husband for her in laws house everybody…

    • 386 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Breaking the norm

    • 477 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Considering the time of year I used Thanksgiving versus Christmas when I broke the norm. I went to homeland grocery store one night and as I was standing in line to check out I started to Singapore Christmas song before Thanksgiving. As I started singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" I could see I was starting to get some attention. A few of the people reacted differently. One older man probably in his 60's just smiled at me, while a younger woman started giving me a death glare. When I finally made it to the register the cashier had the nerve to ask me rudely "you know its not even Thanksgiving right?"…

    • 477 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Cultural Norm” is known as an acceptable behavior, beliefs, and expectation in society. For an example, if you go into a grocery store you would expect to see a woman wearing women’s clothing and a man wearing men’s clothing. But if you walked in and saw a man wearing a dress, you may be taken back for a moment. This deviance is what we recognize as a violation of cultural norm. Something that is out of the norm, not expected, unwanted, or even seen as breaking the rules…

    • 1078 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Kipling's The Jungle Book

    • 604 Words
    • 3 Pages

    One can either choose to fit in, or aspire to stand out. Social norms have always been around. In “A Focus Theory of Normative Conduct, a piece by Wesley Schultz, abiding by society's normal behavior is beneficial to not only the person, but society (Page 1).The piece describes people’s reaction to the movement “Keep America Beautiful,” as empowering and many people jumped on the train and went full throttle. Advocates continued to create new movements and speeches such as “People start pollution, they can stop it. Schultz talks about how social norms can benefit society by empowering others to participate in something so great that it changed…

    • 604 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Cultural values in a society are a collective idea set by the society members of what a societal group thinks is morally correct. The societal norm refers to the most common characteristics among a group of people or community. The norms are guidelines or a set of informal rules that manage behavior in different events. Social norms develop overtime whether they are learned independently or taught. Saying please and thank you are social norms most often taught to children by their parents or a parental figure. Other types of social norms are developed by interaction with others. An example of this would be that boys do not wear dresses or girls do not play football.…

    • 215 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    If I would violate any of the norms that are mentioned above than I would expect to get the reactions that these people get. It someone saw me walking into school with all black and dyed my hair black, and had that kind of make up on, I think that I would get enough looks to make me want to go home and change. I don’t think that I would be able to violate the norms because I just don’t like people thinking of me in a bad manner. I also don’t like people to stare at me everywhere I go that would drive me…

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In today’s society, norms are behaviors that are socially accepted by the majority, and they are decided by the people within it. They normally are dependent on their environment, culture or religion within that society. If anyone exhibits behaviors or ideas contrary to the norms it can be perceived as deviant. If deviance itself is followed by the majority of people, it can then become the norm; even if that devious behavior is eating dead bodies.…

    • 1290 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Norms Essay

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages

    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.…

    • 616 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Social Norm Violations

    • 623 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In today society social norms are little things in life that make people feel comfortable and help them to go through everyday activities. Social Norms are beliefs about what is acceptable in society. They are rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. These rules may be explicit or implicit. People often associate the most memorable behavior with the majority behavior and hence the rules about that is normative in that social context.…

    • 623 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Jbjb

    • 306 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Social norms are shared expectations about what kinds of behaviors are and are not acceptable. These are not actual rules because you cannot get in actual legal trouble for breaking them. However, breaking social norms can make people very uncomfortable and can mark me as weird and…

    • 306 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays