One sunny afternoon in a crowded city park, something strange happened. I first noticed, from my seat on one of the benches scattered around the green square, a couple moving increasingly fast towards the centre. Their rushed walking turned into running. Then, confusingly, I saw the same occurring in the opposite corner of the park: two people sped towards the middle, facing the other runners. What was going on? I figured they must be friends meeting up, rushing upon spotting the others. Perhaps they had not seen each other in a long time and were eager to get close. Yet, they did not look at each other happily at all; in contrast, they avoided eye contact and grimaced. Before long, one of the pairs reached a bench and quickly sat down. The other two made exasperated gestures and walked away. They had lost the race for the last free bench.
Why was this little event strange to me? Why had I assumed, against the evidence, that the runners must be friends meeting up rather than bench competitors? The reason is that, at least in the cultural context of this park, running to claim a bench is not done. It is inappropriate. If you see a bench you want to sit on, you walk up to it in a normal to slightly faster speed. If someone gets there first, you keep walking, hiding your failed plan. We may call this a social norm: it is an implicit and uncodified rule that one must not run towards a public bench to claim it. I misinterpreted the runners’ behaviour because I expected all parkgoers to play by the rules, while here both sides violated the norm.
In the study of normativity – the kind of normativity metaethicists are interested in – social norms are neglected. It is taken for granted, with very little critical discussion, that social norms are not normative in the significant, authoritative sense – we are not bound by them, we do not have a real reason to comply with them. It may be thought that their subject matter is too trivial: a norm about bench-claiming speed is hardly as serious and consequential as moral norms about not harming each other, or rules of logic, or epistemic norms on how to respond to evidence. Another qualm may be that social norms are culturally contingent. The bench norm described applies to this park in Groningen, in the rest of the Netherlands, and I am confident it applies in neighbouring countries as well, but (in)appropriate bench behaviour could easily be different elsewhere.
Yet, it is not clear that these characteristics of social norms warrant the conclusion that they lack a significant normative force. Moreover, our everyday experience of such norms suggests the opposite. We feel bound by social norms: we are constantly shaping our behaviour in accordance with the implicit rules in play. As my response to the runners in the park illustrates, we expect others to respect the social norms and are likely to judge them if they do not. We do not treat social norms as if they lack normative force. A careful analysis of the normative status of this large domain of norms is therefore called for.
Social norms are not as trivial as they may seem. They help us to form accurate expectations of others and provide incentives to cooperate. It may be arbitrary which particular rules we have, but it is far from unimportant whether the unwritten rules are followed. Upon reflection, even the bench-running rule has a point: it allows everyone to have a chance at obtaining a bench without the effort of having to compete in a race.
This raises the question what kind of reason we have to comply with social norms. We may have a prudential reason to respect the bench norm because it is better for us that such a norm is in place. Alternatively, we can conceive of a moral reason to obey the unwritten rules of one’s society: for example, running towards a bench may be disrespectful to other parkgoers hoping to claim it. In this way, we can plausibly deny that social norms are insignificant by arguing that they have an indirect normative force, dependent on their relation to another normative domain. Still, it is worthwhile to explore whether social norms could have a direct normative force themselves, not least because of what this might teach us about normativity in general. What does it reveal about our conception of normativity that it is generally accepted that moral norms can provide authoritative reasons and social norms cannot? And is this correct?
Aside from these fundamental issues, there are questions to ask about the conditions under which we should obey social norms. What role does the compliance of others play – if other persons are violating the rule, may I also run towards the bench? How should we act when norms clash, either within or between cultures? Do we have reasons to comply with the norms it would be good to have, or with the norms we actually have? What if the norms that regulate cooperation in our society arise from historical injustices and/or are morally bad? If we have good reasons for respecting the norms in place, how could we improve the status quo?
Inquiring about social norms is not new; different disciplines inside and outside of philosophy provide important insights on this major part of our lives as social beings. My project is to study social norms from a metanormative perspective, with the double aim of analysing the normative status of these norms and developing a better understanding of normativity in general. I explicitly intend to build on an interdisciplinary picture of social norms, moving beyond abstract metanormative debates to gain a realistic and nuanced grasp of this everyday normative phenomenon. I take the normative force of social norms to be an open question, to be answered by considering how these norms arise and persist, what role they play for individuals and society, what connections they have to moral and other norms, how we experience the bindingness of social norms in daily life, and what the pressure of clearly human-made norms may reveal about the nature of normativity. Even a simple walk in the park can fuel fruitful metanormative reflections.
Eline Gerritsen 
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