Essay on Human Behaviour and Social Norms

“Social norms are rules and standards that are understood by members of a group, and that guide and/or constrain human behavior without the force of laws” (Steg, 2013, p. 154). Social norms have two areas or types they fall into. Injunctive norms are considered behavior that is approved or disapproved and descriptive norms are described as behavior shown by the members of a group. Individuals follow social norms for the rewards involved and the individual wants to avoid rejection and ridicule from societal members. “Social norms can exert a powerful influence on pro-environmental behavior through normative and informational influence” (Steg, 2013, p. 162). Behavior is influenced through normative and informational influences, also moderator variables that may decrease or increase the strength of the influence. Moderator variables contain the size of the group in question, the salience of the norm, if the group is considered an in-group, and the individual personal norms. “A wide variety of research shows that the behavior of others in the social environment shape individuals’ interpretations of, and responses to, the situation, especially in novel, ambiguous, or uncertain

One may find this interesting as it demonstrates the unconscious influence we are all subject to throughout life by the other members of our cultural group. Another factor that would make people more susceptible to group influence is the size of the group. While one may naturally think this seems obvious, with the more members in a group the more likely one is to be influenced, investigations have identified that a group of 3-5 is the ideal number for influence to occur. A group size of less than 3 people sees conformity significantly reduced (Bond, 2005), while there appears to be little difference in the effect of the size of the group once the group has reached a size of 5. One may challenge this, as it would seem to contradict slightly the phenomenon of de-individualisation which can see individuals doing things they would never dream of doing if acting independently, though as a result of the big group setting in which the individual finds themself, they lose their sense of individual identity and act in line with the crowd. One would expect this to occur much more readily when in a crowd of 20,000, as opposed to a group of 5. Above and beyond one’s cultural tendencies and the size of the group, there are

I also agree that management has to be able to change and grow and continue to listen to any upward communication from the staff. In order to accomplish better communication, management should provide an ‘open-door’ policy and also informal meetings where employees can either feel free to go to their supervisors first with any questions or concerns and also raise issues with resources or basically anything that interferes with their job performance (Newstrom, 2014, p. 70).

As human beings we live in a society in which we have rules, morals, values, and behavioral expectations. These are some of the things that we as humans have to be able to function as a society, and for our society to be less chaotic. Therefore, we have norms in which help us have a better understating in what is expected of us and our behavior. According to Henslin (2015) he states that “norms describe those expectations that develop out of groups values” (p. 49). What it’s meant by this is that our values and what we believe in shape up our expectations of one another’s behavior, and what we categorize as being right or unethical. For example, when we meet a person for the first time it is expected of us to properly introduce ourselves, and to properly great that person, whether if it’s by shacking their hand, a hug, or a kiss on the cheek. This is something that we have expectations on when meeting someone new, and just by this simply gesture we can give the expression that we have and education and that we have manners.

People have been changing their behavior or obeying someone else’s commands for years. This continues today in our everyday lives. Conformity and obedience seem similar but differ in several ways. Conformity is defined by psychologists as a change in behavior or belief to accord with others. Similar to this, is obedience. Obedience is defined acting in accordance with a direct order or command. Normally people conform to reap a reward or to avoid punishment. If we comply with a direct order or command it is considered obedience. Most of the time when people comply, it is to be accepted among others so they are not seen as outsiders. On the other hand, when we obey, we are obeying a command an authority figure

Obedience and Conformity Both obedience and conformity involve social pressure in obedience the pressure comes from behaving as you are instructed to do; whereas in conformity the pressure comes from group norms Behaviour in obedience is determined by social power, whereas in conformity it is influenced mostly by the need for acceptance. In nearly all societies, certain people are given power and authority over others. Our society, for example, parents, teachers, and managers are invested with various degrees of authority. Most of the time, this does not cause any problems.

If there’s more participation in approved social activities, then the person is more likely to conform. Lastly, a strong belief in society’s norms and values is present, then conformity will

Behavioral economists understand that human are impacted by heuristics. Heuristics is important for understanding our humanness; they shape our biases. The Bible teaches that God is the only perfect being. Christians try to attain spiritual perfection, but know that is not possible. Economic behaviorists understand that humans will never be perfect. Humans are impulsive, emotional, and commit sin. The Lord and Savior is without sin. Christians, like economic behaviorists, recognize their humanness and sinfulness, and are better able to make adjustments, thereby controlling their behavior and facilitating long-term positive health care changes.

To commence with, conformity and obedience are ubiquitous. The roles of authority are easily found from school, workplace, home and government. Childhood can be influenced by parenting styles, students can be educated by instructors, and workers can be monitored by supervisors. According to Kiesler and Kiesler (1969), conformity is a change in one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of others. People do not know what to do in a confusing or unusual situation and the behavior of people around serve as a cue as to how to respond.

First, an individual usually internalizes compliance, but this is not necessarily the case in obedience. The latter can occur through internalization as well as through the existence of cognitive dissonance. In other words, conformity is a form of social influence that emanates from within the individual (Milgram, 2010). As it has been mentioned earlier, one does not have to be asked to do something for them to do it in the case of conformity. It is a decision they make due to the external pressures caused by group influence or the influence of another individual. Compliance is ethologically a survival tactic whereby one is forced to do certain things to fit in the group as doing the contrary will make them appear odd. This is not the case in

Social norms are the standards that are viewed as acceptable by a group of individuals or by society. Individuals look to conform because they do not want to be looked down upon. In most occasions when an individual does not conform they will be excluded from the group. A group is a sense of security to most individuals, therefore when they are left without a group to conform with, they will feel isolated. We will be conducting a study, analyzing the reaction of complete strangers conforming to the social norms expected at a shopping mall to individuals who are not conforming to the social norm by acting silly and breaking these norms.

Conformity, as defined by Simply Psychology, is “a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior in order to fit in with a group”. The term conformity is a term that’s common place in the psychology community because of how applicable the idea is to the common person and their actions. Conformity can be caused by a myriad of different things, some of which being because the individual desires to either fit in with the majority of the group or because they genuinely feel the popular within the group is the correct one. Both of these phenomena are known as social normative and social informative influence respectively. If we go further into detail, social normative influence is caused by real and imagined group pressure. For example, if one were to stop reading a certain book series because their classmate viewed it as immature and tacky that would be conformity in response to real group pressure.

To understand why we have a sense of conformity, we must first understand value. “Values are used to learn people’s culture, ideas, and what they want out of life (Henslin 49). Every culture has similar and different values. “Norms are the expectations a group develops concerning the ‘right’ way to reflects its values” (Henslin49). An example of a norm would be personal space and speaking quietly in certain places such as a library. When norms are violated people often begin to question the person’s sanity and well-being based on how extreme the norm violation was.

Social norms can generally be defined as the set of abstract or concrete rules and regulations given by a society. Social norms often tell individuals how to behave in most, if not all, aspects of their lives. Values, beliefs, behaviors, morals, and attitudes are all taken into consideration when deciding whether or not one wants to follow the social norm. Whether it be at school, the workplace, church, or at home, people are faced with a slew of decisions they need to make on a daily basis. These decisions, however, are often influenced by society rather than their own conscience. When a society implements a set of expected behaviors, problems are bound to arise due to diversity amongst humans.

As social animals, human beings interact and influence one another in profound, meaningful ways. The ways in which we affect each other’s behaviors, beliefs and attitudes is defined as social psychology; it’s study can help elucidate how and why we act, think, communicate and behave the way we do. Topics included under the umbrella of social psychology include: the importance of human relationships and interactions; the impact of social influences, such as group pressures and obedience; developmental and situational considerations of prosocial and antisocial behaviors; and the relationship between our attitudes and beliefs and our behaviors (Lilienfeld, Lynn, Namy &