Varieties of Social Norms

In the past semester I had the pleasure of teaching a ‘Philosophy of Social Norms’ course, where the students’ very first task was to list what they – prior to reading any theory on this subject – considered to be examples of social norms. The result was an interestingly varied list of prescriptions with a broad scope but also some overlapping focus, including several identical entries. Since it reflects students’ understanding of social norms before reading the literature, I take this list to be a useful resource for theorists who have gotten used to the same standard examples (and especially for those stuck on unrepresentative examples). In addition, the variety in these examples suggests different subcategories of social norms to distinguish, which prompt their own questions about the nature and normative force of these norms.

The following examples are all written by my students, categorised and lightly edited by me.

First off, we have specific rules for behaving in particular public contexts:

• Return the shopping cart
• Don’t have a conversation at the cash register
• Do not get up and leave a restaurant when you have already sat down
• Do not go to the bathroom in a restaurant if you are not buying anything there
• Give a tip
• Don’t stand in the middle of the sidewalk

We can understand these as rules for coordination: we want to be able to do certain activities (buy groceries, eat at a restaurant, walk on a sidewalk) and these norms provide scripts that make this work, as long as everyone plays their part.

Then, there are norms that do not simply coordinate practices and interactions, but push us to be respectful or considerate towards others, including strangers:

• Respect personal space
• Throw trash away
• Saying please
• Saying thank you
• If someone offers you a little, don’t take too much
• Give up your seat for anyone who may need it
• Hold the door for a woman, child, or elderly person
• Give back someone’s wallet if they dropped it on the street
• Remember people’s names
• Share chewing gum
• Don’t sneeze or cough
• Don’t comment on people’s weight

These examples immediately raise the question of where the line is between moral and social norms. Refusing to give up your seat for someone who struggles to stand or insulting others with painful comments warrants moral blame. We plausibly have a moral duty to be respectful towards others, which requires just the sort of behaviour that the norms in this list prescribe. Yet, we must not overlook that this list consists of perceived examples of social norms: regardless of their intuitive moral flavour, somehow these norms at least appear to be unified in their own class, whether as a particular niche of morality or as an independent normative domain. 

Next to norms telling us to act in a respectful way towards others, there are norms specifying which particular actions express respect:

• Ways of greeting people (standing up/kisses on the cheek/shaking hands/folding hands and bowing…)
• Clapping for a long time after theatre performances
• Knock on the table at the end of a seminar
• Taking off shoes when entering a house
• Waiting for everybody to eat
• Eat with cutlery
• RSVP
• Put ‘best wishes’ at the end of an email, even if you dislike the person
• Say thank you to the bus driver

The content of these norms clearly depends on the relevant culture and context. This variation and contingency firmly establishes them as social norms rather than general moral requirements. To be able to convey respect, we need a shared ‘language’ that determines which actions have this meaning. The function of some social norms is to provide this language. Unlike helping people out by offering them a seat they need, there is nothing inherently considerate about knocking on a table. That the latter action does express respect in my classroom is due to the local norm that one thanks their lecturer by knocking on the table at the end of a seminar. This shows clearly how social norms do not merely restrict, but also enable. Another question about the connection to morality arises here: do all the contingent norms for acting respectfully in particular contexts fall under morality, or is only the general norm that one must be respectful moral? If we want to maintain that moral norms are universal and also avoid an endless list of moral duties indexed to particular times and contexts, the second option looks more attractive.

A quite different category of examples, which formed the primary focus of some students, is gender norms:

• Male and female clothing
• Male and female movement, e.g., the way one walks or stands
• Shaving legs for women, not wearing skirts for men

We may see gender norms as part of a broader category of norms about ‘how things are done’ in a specific role. Other examples:

• Expectation to be dressed up in a particular social circle
• Class-dependent clothing norms
• Wear a suit to university

The primary function of these norms does not seem to be to achieve a goal we all value nor to enable us to be friendly towards each other; instead, they set a standard for what is normal and hold us to it, thereby often restricting particular groups in harmful ways. These norms are the main target for worries about social norms creating and upholding injustices. Below the surface, even these norms do not merely restrict: they enable us to have particular cultural practices and to occupy roles that would not exist without norms on how someone in that role acts. The problem is that these can be practices or roles that we would be better off without.

Remarkably, the last example in this list was written by a student in a context where he is consistently the only one wearing a suit to class. This suggests that even for norms most directly connected to what is ‘normal’ rather than to usefulness or respect, the belief that a particular social norm applies is not dependent on seeing widespread conformity with it.

The last group of examples I have put together are relatively general principles or values we are supposed to follow:

• Be modest
• Respect your elders
• Don’t be a burden
• Fit into the standard
• Don’t stand out
• You should want to be thin
• Honesty is less important than being polite

With their abstract form, these sound like moral principles. Their content suggests something else. The last four, especially, are not usually brought up as plausible moral requirements to be covered by our best moral theory. Yet, we are very familiar with the pressure of these principles. We can classify them as distinctly social principles, upheld and sanctioned by our society. Social norms need not be focused on very particular behaviours. Nor are they limited to addressing behaviour, as the ‘you should want to be thin’ norm shows: our society’s norms also concern what to want, what to aim for, and what to have a negative attitude about. The last example in this list illustrates how social norms can even provide value rankings. All of this points to a normative richness that establishes social norms as an independent normative domain. There can be general, fundamental social principles with the same shape as moral ones – which is why things are so complicated when they conflict. 

I will end with three individual examples that especially drew my attention.

• Pray before eating

While praying is in the first place required by religious norms, failing to pray before eating in a context where that is normally done can yield the consequences of a social norm violation. What is the relation between social norms and the norms of an accepted religion, and can a distinction really be drawn between them?

• Say bless you [here: Gesundheit] after someone sneezes

This common example turned out to be less simple than it appears. One student remarked that this is no longer a norm, because ‘the Knigge’ now prescribes that a sneeze should be followed by the sneezer’s apology instead of the hearer’s blessing. The Knigge, it turns out, is the classic German conduct book that is so authoritative that modern updates still borrow the name of the 18^th-century original. Most Germans in my seminar were not aware that the sneezing rule had been changed in the Knigge, leading to a conflict between the content of the norm as pronounced by the recognised ‘authority’ and the content of the norm as judged by widespread beliefs and behaviour. Who determines which social norms apply, the experts or the people? The answer may be ‘whoever makes their claim the most convincingly’, since the important thing is that we all converge on the same norm. (Since I told my office mate about the new Knigge rule going against common practice, we have followed each sneeze with a confused pause, unsure of how to be polite.)

• Wear shoes

I was surprised by this example and expected it to be withdrawn later, once we had read about the distinction between social norms and habits. Surely we wear shoes just because that is best for us as individuals, independently of any normative expectations. My students managed to convince me that there is a social norm in play here, after all: they simply had me imagine my response to seeing someone enter a train with no shoes on. The example ‘shower enough so that you don’t smell’ seems to be a similar combination of a personal habit and a social norm, due to the potential effect on other people.

Overall, my students’ responses illustrate well how varied the social norms we face in our daily lives are, as well as how fine the lines are between these and other kinds of norms.