Group Norms

The Influential Power of Norms

All groups have some system of norms that govern the behavior of its members. Indeed, a normless group would be chaotic and anarchic because there would be no boundaries for proper behavior. Norms help group members determine what to do in unfamiliar situations, and for many groups norms are vital to their very success—many companies would go bankrupt if the norm “do your job well” did not exist, for example. Norms of course exist in large groups and societies, but small groups that exist within these larger ones also have their own sets of norms, and these norms can, and often do, exist at odds with those of the larger group. For example, many retailers have policies against male employees wearing facial hair, though society as a whole takes no position on whether beards are appropriate. Within a group of delinquents, it may be acceptable to shoplift. Further, norms can be formal, in that they are officially and unambiguously recorded for all members to see, or informal, in that they are held in the collective conscious but not permanently recorded. Informal norms are at once harder to detect, more susceptible to inaccurate transmission, and more likely to change than formal norms. Examples of informal norms abound. Societal groups maintain many such norms regarding fashion, for example. What is considered a fashionable hairstyle for a woman changes frequently, yet there is never an official declaration that a certain style is “out” and women with that style need to immediately visit a stylist. Some women learn of the change more quickly than others, some never learn, and those who do change sometimes go in the wrong direction, and adopt a style that is less rather than more fashionable. All of this is characteristic of an informal norm.

Norms, then, perform a regulatory and often a survival function. For these reasons alone they are influential. Despite these definite values, however, group members will often be tempted to violate a norm in order to maximize their own gain. Such deviance could potentially harm the group, so to guard against it occurring, most groups will have developed a sanctioning system designed to punish non-normative behavior. The familiar example is the system of punishments most societies create for lawbreakers (e.g., the fine associated with exceeding the speed limit), but punishments can be intangible as well. Ostracism, or the social shunning of group members, is a common, and often effective, means of keeping deviants in line. Sanctioning systems, however, are largely ineffective if they are inconsistently applied, because this implies that punishment is probabilistic rather than deterministic (e.g., speeders are sometimes but not always fined); if the sanction itself is weak and has no real negative impact (the fine for speeding is only 25 cents); or if continued group membership is not especially attractive to the deviant (the speeder who loses his driver's license is willing to ride public transportation). Interestingly, evidence suggests that groups can be distinguished by the breadth of their sanctioning systems. In some groups any deviation from any norm will result in swift and sure retribution, while in other groups some deviance will be tolerated, as long at it is not too severe, and does not involve a crucial norm.

...