social norms in an essay

Social Norms and Their Violations Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Norms and Reactions to Norm Violations

How we learn social norms, observations of social norms in college, violation of social norms, works cited.

A norm is a complex concept traditionally defined as the standard of beliefs and understandings that control human behavior in society (Spillius 75). On the other hand, psychologists define norms as informal understanding that regulates people’s behavior in smaller units such as offices (Spillius 75).

In addition, psychologists accentuate two components of social norms, namely, the behavior exhibition and acceptance by the group. Specific norms may characterize expectations of the culture. Norms are important because they act as behavior guidelines and help maintain order in society.

Norms are classified into four dimensions, which are taboos, mores, laws, and folkways. Folkways constitute daily actions that accord to the custom. Violations of such rules usually do not amount to serious penalty.

A more is a set of norms that promotes moral values in the society, the violation of which is fraught with dire consequences. Laws are written norms enforceable by a state agency, the breach of which leads to criminal liability. As far as taboos are concerned, their violation leads to an extreme penalty such as condemnation from society.

Social norms shape the behaviors and actions of individuals to a considerable extent. They represent an unwritten policy concerning the expected human behavior. Social norms are fundamental in promoting order and control in society. These rules reflect the behavioral patterns of members of a certain group. The application of these norms can be achieved through sanctions or body language in case of unofficial enforcement.

Sanctions are the expressions constructed on the approval or disapproval of certain types of behavior that vary depending on the values of the society. Sanctions can either be positive or negative depending on the society’s thoughts (Spillius 175). Positive sanctions are rewarded with prizes such as gifts and money, while negative ones are heavily discouraged.

Socialization and internalization provide a framework for conformity to norms in the society (Spillius 205). In the event of nonconformity, social control tools such as punishments, fines, and ostracism are implemented to restore order and control.

The understanding of social norms begins with the individual’s upbringing. Socially acceptable behaviors become a part of the person’s values from childhood to adulthood. For example; I remember at my tender age, belching while eating was unacceptable in my family. But violations of such rules did not amount to moral punishment. Although the discovery did make me feel uncomfortable about my manners and culture, it only helped me become a decent member of society and learn to meet its standards.

Different settings have specific expectations on the behavior of individuals. A college is a place that brings people from all walks of life in terms of socio-economic and political backgrounds together (Spillius 65). Due to this cultural diversity, set rules and regulations help in restoring order and discipline.

Values like discipline, sharing, and trusts are highly valued at college and in any institution. During class work, students are expected to raise their hands before making contributions to the debate. I remember one of the students expressing her concern without the lecturer’s permission, which violated the provisions of the classroom norms.

Upon detection, the lecturer expelled the student from the classroom pending disciplinary action. Students reacted angrily because they felt that their peer had violated the classroom norms of the college. So I would say the behavior leading to ostracizing the students doing socially biased things is a negative social norm. The behavior resulted in a violation of mores. Secondly, the classroom rules should focus on promoting positive social norms.

Sharing information is encouraged through group discussions and joint assignments, and violations of such norms would amount to breaking norms of folkways. Sharing and respect are some of the norms that we practice in our daily activities, and violations of these social norms usually lead to stringent penalties.

Spillius, Elizabeth. Family and Social Network: Roles, Norms, and External Relationships in Ordinary Urban Families . New York, NY: Free Press, 1971. Print.

• Education Impact on Socialization
• The Changing Landscape of Love and Marriage
• Nature of Taboo Words
• Eating Horse Is a Taboo in the US
• Child Behavior Today and Ten Years Ago
• Divorce Rates in the United Arab Emirates
• Young Generation Healthy Lifestyle
• Respect for Elder's Wisdom
• Environmental Factors Influence on Life Aspirations
• Defining Characteristic of LGBTQ Community
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, April 10). Social Norms and Their Violations. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-norms/

"Social Norms and Their Violations." IvyPanda , 10 Apr. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/social-norms/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Social Norms and Their Violations'. 10 April.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Social Norms and Their Violations." April 10, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-norms/.

1. IvyPanda . "Social Norms and Their Violations." April 10, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-norms/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Social Norms and Their Violations." April 10, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-norms/.

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

Social Norms

Social norms, the informal rules that govern behavior in groups and societies, have been extensively studied in the social sciences. Anthropologists have described how social norms function in different cultures (Geertz 1973), sociologists have focused on their social functions and how they motivate people to act (Durkheim 1895 [1982], 1950 [1957]; Parsons 1937; Parsons & Shils 1951; James Coleman 1990; Hechter & Opp 2001), and economists have explored how adherence to norms influences market behavior (Akerlof 1976; Young 1998a). More recently, also legal scholars have touted social norms as efficient alternatives to legal rules, as they may internalize negative externalities and provide signaling mechanisms at little or no cost (Ellickson 1991; Posner 2000).

With a few exceptions, the social science literature conceives of norms as exogenous variables. Since norms are mainly seen as constraining behavior, some of the key differences between moral, social, and legal norms—as well as differences between norms and conventions—have been blurred. Much attention has instead been paid to the conditions under which norms will be obeyed. Because of that, the issue of sanctions has been paramount in the social science literature. Moreover, since social norms are seen as central to the production of social order or social coordination, research on norms has been focused on the functions they perform. Yet even if a norm may fulfill important social functions (such as welfare maximization or the elimination of externalities), it cannot be explained solely on the basis of the functions it performs. The simplistic functionalist perspective has been rejected on several accounts; in fact, even though a given norm can be conceived as a means to achieve some goal, this is usually not the reason why it emerged in the first place (Elster 1989a, 1989b). Moreover, although a particular norm may persist (as opposed to emerge) because of some positive social function it fulfills, there are many others that are inefficient and even widely unpopular.

Philosophers have taken a different approach to norms. In the literature on norms and conventions, both social constructs are seen as the endogenous product of individuals’ interactions (Lewis 1969; Ullmann-Margalit 1977; Vandershraaf 1995; Bicchieri 2006). Norms are represented as equilibria of games of strategy, and as such they are supported by a cluster of self-fulfilling expectations. Beliefs, expectations, group knowledge and common knowledge have thus become central concepts in the development of a philosophical view of social norms. Paying attention to the role played by expectations in supporting social norms has helped differentiate between social norms, conventions, and descriptive norms: an important distinction often overlooked in the social science accounts, but crucial when we need to diagnose the nature of a pattern of behavior in order to intervene on it.

1. General Issues

2. early theories: socialization, 3. early theories: social identity, 4. early theories: cost-benefit models, 5. game-theoretic accounts, 6. experimental evidence, 7. evolutionary models, 8. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries.

Social norms, like many other social phenomena, are the unplanned result of individuals’ interaction. It has been argued that social norms ought to be understood as a kind of grammar of social interactions. Like a grammar, a system of norms specifies what is acceptable and what is not in a society or group. And, analogously to a grammar, it is not the product of human design. This view suggests that a study of the conditions under which norms come into being—as opposed to one stressing the functions fulfilled by social norms—is important to understand the differences between social norms and other types of injunction (such as hypothetical imperatives, moral codes, or legal rules).

Another important issue often blurred in the literature on norms is the relationship between normative beliefs and behavior. Some authors identify norms with observable, recurrent patterns of behavior. Others only focus on normative beliefs and expectations. Such accounts find it difficult to explain the complexity and heterogeneity of norm-driven behaviors, as they offer an explanation of conformity that is at best partial.

Some popular accounts of why social norms exist are the following. Norms are efficient means to achieve social welfare (Arrow 1971; Akerlof 1976), prevent market failures (Jules Coleman 1989), or cut social costs (Thibaut & Kelley 1959; Homans 1961); norms are either Nash equilibria of coordination games or cooperative equilibria of prisoner’s dilemma-type games (Lewis 1969; Ullmann-Margalit 1977), and as such they solve collective action problems.

Akerlof’s (1976) analysis of the norms that regulate land systems is a good example of the tenet that “norms are efficient means to achieve social welfare”. Since the worker is much poorer and less liquid than the landlord, it would be more natural for the landlord rather than the tenant to bear the risk of crop failure. This would be the case if the landlord kept all the crops, and paid the worker a wage (i.e., the case of a “wage system”). Since the wage would not directly depend on the worker’s effort, this system leaves no incentive to the worker for any effort beyond the minimum necessary. In sharecropping, on the contrary, the worker is paid both for the effort and the time he puts in: a more efficient arrangement in that it increases production.

Thibaut and Kelley’s (1959) view of norms as substitutes for informal influence has a similar functionalist flavor. As an example, they consider a repeated battle of the sexes game. In this game, some bargaining is necessary for each party to obtain, at least occasionally, the preferred outcome. The parties can engage in a costly sequence of threats and promises, but it seems better to agree beforehand on a rule of behavior, such as alternating between the respectively preferred outcomes. Rules emerge because they reduce the costs involved in face-to-face personal influence.

Likewise, Ullman-Margalit (1977) uses game theory to show that norms solve collective action problems, such as prisoner’s dilemma-type situations; in her own words, “… a norm solving the problem inherent in a situation of this type is generated by it” (1977: 22). In a collective action problem, self-centered rational choices produce a Pareto-inefficient outcome. Pareto-efficiency is restored by means of norms backed by sanctions. James Coleman (1990), too, believes that norms emerge in situations in which there are externalities, that is, in all those cases in which an activity produces negative (positive) effects on other parties, without this being reflected in direct compensation; thus the producer of the externality pays no cost for (reaps no benefit from) the unintended effect of their activity. A norm solves the problem by regulating the externality-producing activity, introducing a system of sanctions (rewards).

Also Brennan, Eriksson, Goodin, and Southwood (2013) argue that norms have a function. Norms function to hold us accountable to each other for adherence to the principles that they cover. This may or may not create effective coordination over any given principle, but they place us in positions where we may praise and blame people for their behaviors and attitudes. This function of accountability, they argue, can help create another role for norms, which is imbuing practices with social meaning. This social meaning arises from the expectations that we can place on each other for compliance, and the fact that those behaviors can come to represent shared values, and even a sense of shared identity. This functional role of norms separates it from bare social practices or even common sets of desires, as those non-normative behaviors don’t carry with them the social accountability that is inherent in norms. The distinctive feature of the Brennan et al. account of norms is the centrality of accountability: this feature is what distinguishes norms from other social practices.

All of the above are examples of a functionalist explanation of norms. Functionalist accounts are sometimes criticized for offering a post hoc justification for the existence of norms (i.e., the mere presence of a norm does not justify inferring that that norm exists to accomplish some social function). Indeed, a purely functionalist view may not account for the fact that many social norms are harmful or inefficient (e.g., discriminatory norms against women and minorities), or are so rigid as to prevent the fine-tuning that would be necessary to accommodate new cases. There, one would expect increasing social pressure to abandon such norms.

According to some authors, we can explain the emergence of norms without any reference to the functions they eventually come to perform. Since the norms that are most interesting to study are those that emerge naturally from individuals’ interactions (Schelling 1978), an important theoretical task is to analyze the conditions under which such norms come into being. Because norms often provide a solution to the problem of maintaining social order—and social order requires cooperation—many studies on the emergence and dynamics of norms have focused on cooperation. Norms of honesty, loyalty, reciprocity and promise-keeping are indeed important to the smooth functioning of social groups. One hypothesis is that such cooperative norms emerge in close-knit groups where people have ongoing interactions with each other (Hardin 1982). Evolutionary game theory provides a useful framework for investigating this hypothesis, since repeated games serve as a simple approximation of life in a close-knit group (Axelrod 1984, 1986; Skyrms 1996; Gintis 2000). In repeated encounters people have an opportunity to learn from each other’s behavior, and to secure a pattern of reciprocity that minimizes the likelihood of misperception. In this regard, it has been argued that the cooperative norms likely to develop in close-knit groups are simple ones (Alexander 2000, 2005, 2007); in fact, delayed and disproportionate punishment, as well as belated rewards, are often difficult to understand and hence ineffective. Although norms originate in small, close-knit groups, they often spread well beyond the narrow boundaries of the original group. The challenge thus becomes one of explaining the dynamics of the norm propagation from small groups to large populations.

If norms can thrive and spread, they can also die out. A poorly understood phenomenon is the sudden and unexpected change of well-established patterns of behavior. For example, smoking in public without asking for permission has become unacceptable, and only a few years ago nobody would have worried about using gender-laden language. One would expect inefficient norms (such as discriminatory norms against women and minorities) to disappear more rapidly and with greater frequency than more efficient norms. However, Bicchieri (2016) points out that inefficiency is not a sufficient condition for a norm’s demise. This can be seen by the study of crime and corruption: corruption results in huge social costs, but such costs—even when they take a society to the brink of collapse—are not enough to generate an overhaul of the system. Muldoon (2018a, 2018b, 2020) has argued that social norms are a challenging form of social regulation precisely because there is no simple way to intentionally modify a social norm, as one can with a law or institutional rule. Social norms can even shape one's understanding of how much agency one has (Muldoon 2017).

An influential view of norms considers them as clusters of self-fulfilling expectations (Schelling 1960), in that some expectations often result in behavior that reinforces them. A related view emphasizes the importance of conditional preferences in supporting social norms (Sugden 2000). In particular, according to Bicchieri’s (2006) account, preferences for conformity to social norms are conditional on “empirical expectations” (i.e., first-order beliefs that a certain behavior will be followed) as well as “normative expectations” (i.e., second-order beliefs that a certain behavior ought to be followed). Thus, norm compliance results from the joint presence of a conditional preference for conformity and the belief that other people will conform as well as approve of conformity.

Note that characterizing norms simply as clusters of expectations might be misleading; similarly, a norm cannot simply be identified with a recurrent behavioral pattern either. If we were to adopt a purely behavioral account of norms there would be no way to distinguish shared rules of fairness from, say, the collective morning habit of tooth brushing. After all, such a practice does not depend on whether one expects others to do the same; however, one would not even try to ask for a salary proportionate to one’s education, if one expected compensation to merely follow a seniority rule. In fact, there are behavioral patterns that can only be explained by the existence of norms, even if the behavior prescribed by the norm in question is currently unobserved. For example, in a study of the Ik people, Turnbull (1972) reported that starved hunters-gatherers tried hard to avoid situations where their compliance with norms of reciprocity was expected. Thus they would go out of their way not to be in the position of gift-taker, and hunted alone so that they would not be forced to share their prey with anyone else. Much of the Ik’s behavior could be explained as a way of eluding existing reciprocity norms.

There are many other instances of discrepancies between expectations and behavior . For example, it is remarkable to observe how often people expect others to act selfishly, even when they are prepared to act altruistically themselves (Miller & Ratner 1996). Studies have shown that people’s willingness to give blood is not altered by monetary incentives, but typically those very people who are willing to donate blood for free expect others to donate blood only in the presence of monetary rewards. Similarly, all the interviewed landlords answered positively to a question about whether they would rent an apartment to an unmarried couple; however, they estimated that only 50% of other landlords would accept unmarried couples as tenants (Dawes 1972). Such cases of pluralistic ignorance are rather common; what is puzzling is that people may expect a given norm to be upheld in the face of personal evidence to the contrary (Bicchieri & Fukui 1999). Furthermore, there is evidence suggesting that people who donate blood, tip on a foreign trip, give money to beggars or return a lost wallet often attempt to downplay their altruistic behavior (by supplying selfish motives that seemingly align their actions with a norm of self-interest; Wuthnow 1991, 77).

In a nutshell, norms refer to actions over which people have control, and are supported by shared expectations about what should or should not be done in different types of social situations. However, norms cannot be identified just with observable behavior, nor can they merely be equated with normative beliefs.

The varying degrees of correlation between normative beliefs and actions are an important factor researchers can use to differentiate among various types of norms. Such a correlation is also a key element to consider when critically assessing competing theories of norms: we begin by surveying the socialized actor theory, the social identity theory, and some early rational choice (cost-benefit) models of conformity.

In the theory of the socialized actor (Parsons 1951), individual action is intended as a choice among alternatives. Human action is understood within a utilitarian framework as instrumentally oriented and utility maximizing. Although a utilitarian setting does not necessarily imply a view of human motives as essentially egoistic, this is the preferred interpretation of utilitarianism adopted by Talcott Parsons and much contemporary sociology. In this context, it becomes crucial to explain through which mechanisms social order and stability are attained in a society that would otherwise be in a permanent Hobbesian state of nature. In short, order and stability are essentially socially derived phenomena, brought about by a common value system —the “cement” of society. The common values of a society are embodied in norms that, when conformed to, guarantee the orderly functioning and reproduction of the social system. In the Parsonian framework norms are exogenous: how such a common value system is created and how it may change are issues left unexplored. The most important question is rather how norms get to be followed, and what prompts rational egoists to abide by them. The answer given by the theory of the socialized actor is that people voluntarily adhere to the shared value system, because it is introjected to form a constitutive element of the personality itself (Parsons 1951).

In Parsons’ own words, a norm is

a verbal description of a concrete course of action, … , regarded as desirable, combined with an injunction to make certain future actions conform to this course. (1937: 75)

Norms play a crucial role in individual choice since—by shaping individual needs and preferences—they serve as criteria for selecting among alternatives. Such criteria are shared by a given community and embody a common value system. People may choose what they prefer, but what they prefer in turn conforms to social expectations: norms influence behavior because, through a process of socialization that starts in infancy, they become part of one’s motives for action. Conformity to standing norms is a stable, acquired disposition that is independent of the consequences of conforming. Such lasting dispositions are formed by long-term interactions with significant others (e.g., one’s parents): through repeated socialization, individuals come to learn and internalize the common values embodied in the norms. Internalization is conceived as the process by which people develop a psychological need or motive to conform to a set of shared norms. When norms are internalized norm-abiding behavior will be perceived as good or appropriate, and people will typically feel guilt or shame at the prospect of behaving in a deviant way. If internalization is successful external sanctions will play no role in eliciting conformity and, since individuals are motivated to conform, it follows that normative beliefs and actions will be consistent.

Although Parsons’ analysis of social systems starts with a theory of individual action, he views social actors as behaving according to roles that define their identities and actions (through socialization and internalization). The goal of individual action is to maximize satisfaction. The potential conflict between individual desires and collective goals is resolved by characterizing the common value system as one that precedes and constrains the social actor. The price of this solution is the disappearance of the individual actor as the basic unit of analysis. Insofar as individuals are role-bearers, in Parsons’ theory it is social entities that act: entities that are completely detached from the individual actions that created them. This consideration forms the basis for most of the criticisms raised against the theory of the socialized actor (Wrong 1961); such criticisms are typically somewhat abstract as they are cast in the framework of the holism/individualism controversy.

On the other hand, one may easily verify whether empirical predictions drawn from the socialized actor theory are supported by experimental evidence. For instance, the following predictions can be derived from the theory and easily put to test. (a) Norms will change very slowly and only through intensive social interaction. (b) Normative beliefs are positively correlated to actions; whenever such beliefs change, behavior will follow. (c) If a norm is successfully internalized, expectations of others’ conformity will have no effect on an individual’s choice to conform.

Some of the above statements are not supported by empirical evidence from social psychology. For example, it has been shown that there may not be a relation between people’s normative beliefs (or attitudes) and what people in fact do. In this respect, it should be noted that experimental psychologists have generally focused on “attitudes”, that is, “evaluative feelings of pro or con, favorable or unfavorable, with regard to particular objects” (where the objects may be “concrete representations of things or actions, or abstract concepts”; Insko & Schopler 1967: 361–362). As such, the concept of attitude is quite broad: it includes normative beliefs, as well as personal opinions and preferences. That said, a series of field experiments has provided evidence contrary to the assumption that attitudes and behaviors are closely related. LaPiere (1934) famously reported a sharp divergence between the widespread anti-Chinese attitudes in the United States and the tolerant behavior he witnessed. Other studies have pointed to inconsistencies between an individual’s stated normative beliefs and her actions (Wicker 1969): several reasons may account for such a discrepancy. For example, studies of racial prejudice indicate that normative beliefs are more likely to determine behavior in long-lasting relationships, and least likely to determine behavior in the transient situations typical of experimental studies (Harding et al. 1954 [1969]; Gaertner & Dovidio 1986). Warner and DeFleur (1969) reported that the main variable affecting discriminatory behavior is one’s belief about what society (e.g., most other people) says one should do, as opposed to what one personally thinks one should do.

In brief, the social psychology literature provides mixed evidence in support of the claim that an individual’s normative beliefs and attitudes influence her actions. Such studies, however, do not carefully discriminate among various types of normative beliefs. In particular, one should distinguish between “personal normative beliefs” (i.e., beliefs that a certain behavior ought to be followed) and “normative expectations” (i.e., what one believes others believe ought to be done, that is, a second-order belief): it then becomes apparent that oftentimes only such second-order beliefs affect behavior.

The above constitutes an important criticism of the socialized actor theory. According to Parsons, once a norm is internalized, members of society are motivated to conform by an internal sanctioning system; therefore, one should observe a high correlation among all orders of normative beliefs and behavior. However, experimental evidence does not support such a view (see also: Fishbein 1967; Cialdini et al. 1991). Another indication that the socialized actor theory lacks generality is the observation that norms can change rather quickly, and that new norms often emerge in a short period of time among complete strangers (Mackie 1996). Long-term or close interactions do not seem to be necessary for someone to acquire a given normative disposition, as is testified by the relative ease with which individuals learn new norms when they change status or group (e.g., from single to married, from student to faculty, etc.). Moreover, studies of emergent social and political groups have shown that new norms may form rather rapidly, and that the demise of old patterns of behavior is often abrupt (Robinson 1932; Klassen et al. 1989; Prentice & Miller 1993; Matza 1964). Given the aforementioned limitations, Parsons’ theory might perhaps be taken as an explanation of a particular conception of moral norms (in the sense of internalized, unconditional imperatives), but it cannot be viewed as a general theory of social norms.

It has been argued that behavior is often closely embedded in a network of personal relations, and that a theory of norms should not leave the specific social context out of consideration (Granovetter 1985). Critics of the socialized actor theory have called for an alternative conception of norms that may account for the often weak relation between beliefs and behavior (Deutscher 1973). This alternative approach takes social relations to be crucial in explaining social action, and considers social identity as a key motivating factor. (A strong support for this view among anthropologists is to be found in the work of Cancian 1975.)

Since the notion of social identity is inextricably linked to that of group behavior, it is important to clarify the relation between these concepts. By “social identity” we refer, in Tajfel’s own words, to

that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership. (Tajfel 1981: 255)

Note that a crucial feature of social identity is that one’s identification with the group is in some sense a conscious choice: one may accidentally belong to a group, but we can meaningfully talk of social identification only when being a group-member becomes (at least in part) constitutive of who one is. According to Tajfel’s theory, when we categorize ourselves as belonging to a particular group, the perception and definition of the self—as well as our motives—change. That is, we start perceiving ourselves and our fellow group-members along impersonal, “typical” dimensions that characterize the group to which we belong. Such dimensions include specific roles and the beliefs (or actions) that accompany them.

Turner et al.’s (1987) “self-categorization theory” provides a more specific characterization of self-perception, or self-definition, as a system of cognitive self-schemata that filter and process information. Such schemata result in a representation of the social situation that guides the choice of appropriate action. This system has at least two major components, i.e., social and personal identity. Social identity refers to self-descriptions related to group memberships. Personal identity refers to self-descriptions such as individual character traits, abilities, and tastes. Although personal and social identities are mutually exclusive levels of self-definition, this distinction must be taken as an approximation (in that there are many interconnections between social and personal identities). It is, however, important to recognize that we often perceive ourselves primarily in terms of our relevant group memberships rather than as differentiated, unique individuals. So—depending on the situation—personal or group identity will become salient (Brewer 1991).

For example, when one makes interpersonal comparisons between oneself and other group-members, personal identity will become salient; instead, group identity will become salient in situations in which one’s group is compared to another group. Within a group, all those factors that lead members to categorize themselves as different (or endowed with special characteristics and traits) will enhance personal identity. If a group has to solve a common task, but each member is to be rewarded according to her contribution, personal abilities are highlighted and individuals will perceive themselves as unique and different from the rest of the group. Conversely, if all group-members are to equally share the reward for a jointly performed task, group identification will be enhanced. When the difference between self and fellow group-members is accentuated, we are likely to observe selfish motives and self-favoritism against other group-members. When instead group identification is enhanced, in-group favoritism against out-group members will be activated, as well as behavior contrary to self-interest.

According to Turner, social identity is basically a cognitive mechanism whose adaptive function is to make “group behavior” possible. Whenever social identification becomes salient, a cognitive mechanism of categorization is activated in such a way to produce perceptual and behavioral changes. Such categorization is called a stereotype, the prototypical description of what members of a given category are (or are believed to be). It is a cluster of physical, mental and psychological characteristics attributed to a “typical” member of a given group. Stereotyping, like any other categorization process, activates scripts or schemata, and what we call group behavior is nothing but scripted behavior. For example, the category “Asian student” is associated with a cluster of behaviors, personality traits, and values: we often think of Asian students as respectful, diligent, disciplined, and especially good with technical subjects. When thinking of an Asian student solely in terms of group membership, we attribute her the stereotypical characteristics associated with her group, so she becomes interchangeable with other group-members. When we perceive people in terms of stereotypes, we depersonalize them and see them as “typical” members of their group. The same process is at work when we perceive ourselves as group-members: self-stereotyping is a cognitive shift from “perceiving oneself as unique” to “perceiving oneself in terms of the attributes that characterize the group”. It is this cognitive shift that mediates group behavior.

Group behavior (as opposed to individual behavior) is characterized by features such as a perceived similarity between group-members, cohesiveness, a tendency to cooperate to achieve common goals, shared attitudes or beliefs, and conformity to group norms. Once an individual self-categorizes as member of a group, she will perceive herself as “depersonalized” and similar to other group-members in the relevant stereotypical dimensions. Insofar as group-members perceive their interests and goals as identical—because such interests and goals are stereotypical attributes of the group—self-stereotyping will induce a group-member to embrace such interests and goals as her own. It is thus predicted that pro-social behavior will be enhanced by group membership, and diluted when people act in an individualistic mode (Brewer 1979).

The groups with which we happen to identify ourselves may be very large (as in the case in which one self-defines as Muslim or French), or as small as a friends’ group. Some general group identities may not involve specific norms, but there are many cases in which group identification and social norms are inextricably connected. In that case group-members believe that certain patterns of behavior are unique to them, and use their distinctive norms to define group membership. Many close-knit groups (such as the Amish or the Hasidic Jews) enforce norms of separation proscribing marriage with outsiders, as well as specific dress codes and a host of other prescriptive and proscriptive norms. There, once an individual perceives herself as a group-member, she will adhere to the group prototype and behave in accordance with it. Hogg and Turner (1987) have called the process through which individuals come to conform to group norms “referent informational influence”.

Group-specific norms have (among other things) the twofold function of minimizing perceived differences among group-members and maximizing differences between the group and outsiders. Once formed, such norms become stable cognitive representations of appropriate behavior as a group-member. Social identity is built around group characteristics and behavioral standards, and hence any perceived lack of conformity to group norms is seen as a threat to the legitimacy of the group. Self-categorization accentuates the similarities between one’s behavior and that prescribed by the group norm, thus causing conformity as well as the disposition to control and punish transgressors. In the social identity framework, group norms are obeyed because one identifies with the group, and conformity is mediated by self-categorization as an in-group member. A telling historical example of the relationship between norms and group membership was the division of England into the two parties of the Roundheads and Cavaliers. Charles Mackay reports that

in those days every species of vice and iniquity was thought by the Puritans to lurk in the long curly tresses of the monarchists, while the latter imagined that their opponents were as destitute of wit, of wisdom, and of virtue, as they were of hair. A man’s locks were a symbol of his creed, both in politics and religion. The more abundant the hair, the more scant the faith; and the balder the head, the more sincere the piety. (Mackay 1841: 351)

It should be noted that in this framework social norms are defined by collective—as opposed to personal—beliefs about appropriate behaviors (Homans 1950, 1961). To a certain extent, this characterization of social norms is closer to recent accounts than it is to Parsons’ socialized actor theory. On the other hand, a distinct feature of the social identity framework is that people’s motivation to conform comes from their desire to validate their identity as group-members. In short, there are several empirical predictions one can draw from such a framework. Given the theory’s emphasis on identity as a motivating factor, conformity to a norm is not assumed to depend on an individual’s internalization of that norm; in fact, a change in social status or group membership will bring about a change in the norms relevant to the new status/group. Thus a new norm can be quickly adopted without much interaction, and beliefs about identity validation may change very rapidly under the pressure of external circumstances. In this case, not just norm compliance, but norms themselves are potentially unstable.

The experimental literature on social dilemmas has utilized the “priming of group identity” as a mechanism for promoting cooperative behavior (Dawes 1980; Brewer & Schneider 1990). The typical hypothesis is that a pre-play, face-to-face communication stage may induce identification with the group, and thus promote cooperative behavior among group-members. In effect, rates of cooperation have been shown to be generally higher in social dilemma experiments preceded by a pre-play communication stage (Dawes 1991). However, it has been argued that face-to-face communication may actually help group-members gather relevant information about one another: such information may therefore induce subjects to trust each other’s promises and act cooperatively, regardless of any group identification. In this respect, it has been shown that communication per se does not foster cooperation, unless subjects are allowed to talk about relevant topics (Bicchieri & Lev-On 2007). This provides support for the view that communication does not enhance cohesion but rather focuses subjects on relevant rules of behavior, which do not necessarily depend on group identification.

Cooperative outcomes can thus be explained without resorting to the concept of social identity. A social identity explanation appears to be more appropriate in the context of a relatively stable environment, where individuals have had time to make emotional investments (or at least can expect repeated future interactions within the same group). In artificial lab settings, where there are no expectations of future interactions, the concept of social identity seems less persuasive as an explanation of the observed rates of cooperation. On the other hand, we note that social identity does appear to play a role in experimental settings in which participants are divided into separate groups. (In that case, it has been shown that participants categorize the situation as “we versus them”, activating in-group loyalty and trust, and an equal degree of mistrust toward the out-group; Kramer & Brewer 1984; Bornstein & Ben-Yossef 1994.)

Even with stable environments and repeated interactions, however, a theory of norm compliance in terms of social identity cannot avoid the difficulty of making predictions when one is simultaneously committed to different identities. We may concurrently be workers, parents, spouses, friends, club members, and party affiliates, to name but a few of the possible identities we embrace. For each of them there are rules that define what is appropriate, acceptable, or good behavior. In the social identity framework, however, it is not clear what happens when one is committed to different identities that may involve conflicting behaviors.

Finally, there is ample evidence that people’s perceptions may change very rapidly. Since in this framework norms are defined as shared perceptions about group beliefs, one would expect that—whenever all members of a group happen to believe that others have changed their beliefs about core membership rules—the very norms that define membership will change. The study of fashion, fads and speculative bubbles clearly shows that there are some domains in which rapid (and possibly disruptive) changes of collective expectations may occur; it is, however, much less clear what sort of norms are more likely to be subject to rapid changes (think of dress codes rather than codes of honor). The social identity view does not offer a theoretical framework for differentiating these cases: although some norms are indeed related to group membership, and thus compliance may be explained through identity-validation mechanisms, there appear to be limits to the social identity explanation.

Early rational choice models of conformity maintained that, since norms are upheld by sanctions, compliance is merely a payoff-maximizing strategy (Rommetveit 1955; Thibaut & Kelley 1959): when others’ approval and disapproval act as external sanctions, we have a “cost-benefit model” of compliance (Axelrod 1986; James Coleman 1990). Rule-complying strategies are rationally chosen in order to avoid negative sanctions or to attract positive sanctions. This class of rational choice models defines norms behaviorally, equating them with patterns of behavior (while disregarding expectations or values). Such approach relies heavily on sanctions as a motivating factor. According to Axelrod (1986), for example, if we observe individuals to follow a regular pattern of behavior and to be punished if they act otherwise, then we have a norm. Similarly, Coleman (1990) argues that a norm coincides with a set of sanctions that act to direct a given behavior.

However, it has been shown that not all social norms involve sanctions (Diamond 1935; Hoebel 1954). Moreover, sanctioning works generally well in small groups and in the context of repeated interactions, where the identity of participants is known and monitoring is relatively easy. Still, even in such cases there may be a so-called second-order public goods problem. That is, imposing negative sanctions on transgressors is in everybody’s interest, but the individual who observes a transgression faces a dilemma: she is to decide whether or not to punish the transgressor, where punishing typically involves costs; besides, there is no guarantee that other individuals will also impose a penalty on transgressors when faced with the same dilemma. An answer to this problem has been to assume that there exist “meta-norms” that tell people to punish transgressors of lower-level norms (Axelrod 1986). This solution, however, only shifts the problem one level up: upholding the meta-norm itself requires the existence of a higher-level sanctioning system.

Another problem with sanctions is the following: a sanction, to be effective, must be recognized as such. Coleman and Axelrod typically take the repeated prisoner’s dilemma game as an example of the working of sanctions. However, in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma the same action (“C” or “D”) must serve as both the sanctioning action and the target action. By simply looking at behavior, it is unclear whether the action is a function of a sanction or a sanction itself. It thus becomes difficult to determine the presence of a norm, or to assess its effect on choice as distinct from the individual strategies of players.

A further consideration weakens the credibility of the view that norms are upheld only because of external sanctions. Often we keep conforming to a norm even in situations of complete anonymity, where the probability of being caught transgressing is almost zero. In this case fear of sanctions cannot be a motivating force. As a consequence, it is often argued that cases of “spontaneous” compliance are the result of internalization (Scott 1971): people who have developed an internal sanctioning system feel guilt and shame at behaving in a deviant way. Yet, we have seen that the Parsonian view of internalization and socialization is inadequate, as it leads to predictions about compliance that often run counter to empirical evidence.

In particular, James Coleman (1990) has argued in favor of reducing internalization to rational choice, insofar as it is in the interest of a group to get another group to internalize certain norms. In this case internalization would still be the result of some form of socialization. This theory faces some of the same objections raised against Parsons’ theory: norms that are passed on from parents to children, for example, should be extremely resistant to change; hence, one should expect a high degree of correlation between such norms and behavior, especially in those cases where norms prescribe specific kinds of actions. However, studies of normative beliefs about honesty—which one typically acquires during childhood—show that such beliefs are often uncorrelated with behavior (Freeman & Ataöv 1960).

Bicchieri (1990, 1997) has presented a third, alternative view about internalization. This view of internalization is cognitive, and is grounded on the assumption that social norms develop in small, close-knit groups where ongoing interactions are the rule. Once an individual has learned to behave in a way consistent with the group’s interests, she will tend to persist in the learned behavior unless it becomes clear that—on average—the cost of upholding the norm significantly outweighs the benefits. Small groups can typically monitor their members’ behavior and successfully employ retaliation whenever free-riding is observed. In such groups an individual will learn, maybe at some personal cost, to cooperate; she will then uphold the cooperative norm as a “default rule” in any new encounter, unless it becomes evident that the cost of conformity has become excessive. The idea that norms may be “sluggish” is in line with well-known results from cognitive psychology showing that, once a norm has emerged in a group, it will tend to guide the behavior of its members even when they face a new situation (or are isolated from the original group; Sherif 1936).

Empirical evidence shows that norm-abiding behavior is not, as the early rational choice models would have it, a matter of cost/benefit calculation. Upholding a norm that has led one to fare reasonably well in the past is a way of economizing on the effort one would have to exert to devise a strategy when facing a new situation . This kind of “bounded rationality” approach explains why people tend to obey norms that sometimes put them at a disadvantage, as is the case with norms of honesty. This does not mean, however, that external sanctions never play a role in compliance: for example, in the initial development of a norm sanctions may indeed play an important role. Yet, once a norm is established, there are several mechanisms that may account for conformity.

Finally, the view that one conforms only because of the threat of negative sanctions does not distinguish norm-abiding behavior from an obsession or an entrenched habit; nor does that view distinguish social norms from hypothetical imperatives enforced by sanctions (such as the rule that prohibits naked sunbathing on public beaches). In these cases avoidance of the sanctions associated with transgressions constitutes a decisive reason to conform, independently of what others do. In fact, in the traditional rational choice perspective, the only expectations that matter are those about the sanctions that follow compliance or non-compliance. In those frameworks, beliefs about how other people will act—as opposed to what they expect us to do—are not a relevant explanatory variable: however, this leads to predictions about norm compliance that often run counter to empirical evidence.

The traditional rational choice model of compliance depicts the individual as facing a decision problem in isolation: if there are sanctions for non-compliance, the individual will calculate the benefit of transgression against the cost of norm compliance, and eventually choose so as to maximize her expected utility. Individuals, however, seldom choose in isolation: they know the outcome of their choice will depend on the actions and beliefs of other individuals. Game theory provides a formal framework for modeling strategic interactions.

Thomas Schelling (1960), David Lewis (1969), Edna Ullmann-Margalit (1977), Robert Sugden (1986) and, more recently, Peyton Young (1993), Cristina Bicchieri (1993), and Peter Vanderschraaf (1995) have proposed a game-theoretic account according to which a norm is broadly defined as an equilibrium of a strategic interaction. In particular, a Nash equilibrium is a combination of strategies (one for each individual), such that each individual’s strategy is a best reply to the others’ strategies. Since it is an equilibrium, a norm is supported by self-fulfilling expectations in the sense that players’ beliefs are consistent, and thus the actions that follow from players’ beliefs will validate those very beliefs. Characterizing social norms as equilibria has the advantage of emphasizing the role that expectations play in upholding norms. On the other hand, this interpretation of social norms does not prima facie explain why people prefer to conform if they expect others to conform.

Take for example conventions such as putting the fork to the left of the plate, adopting a dress code, or using a particular sign language. In all these cases, my choice to follow a certain rule is conditional upon expecting most other people to follow it. Once my expectation is met, I have every reason to adopt the rule in question. In fact, if I do not use the sign language everybody else uses, I will not be able to communicate. It is in my immediate interest to follow the convention, since my main goal is to coordinate with other people. In the case of conventions, there is a continuity between the individual’s self-interest and the interests of the community that supports the convention. This is the reason why David Lewis models conventions as equilibria of coordination games . Such games have multiple equilibria, but once one of them has been established, players will have every incentive to keep playing it (as any deviation will be costly).

Take instead a norm of cooperation. In this case, the expectation that almost everyone abides by it may not be sufficient to induce compliance. If everyone is expected to cooperate one may be tempted, if unmonitored, to behave in the opposite way. The point is that conforming to social norms , as opposed to conventions, is almost never in the immediate interest of the individual. Often there is a discontinuity between the individual’s self-interest and the interests of the community that supports the social norm.

The typical game in which following a norm would provide a better solution (than the one attained by self-centered agents) is a mixed-motive game such as the prisoner’s dilemma or the trust game. In such games the unique Nash equilibrium represents a suboptimal outcome. It should be stressed that—whereas a convention is one among several equilibria of a coordination game—a social norm can never be an equilibrium of a mixed-motive game. However, Bicchieri (2006) has argued that when a norm exists it transforms the original mixed-motive game into a coordination one. As an example, consider the following prisoner’s dilemma game ( Figure 1 ), where the payoffs are B=Best, S=Second, T=Third, and W=Worst. Clearly the only Nash equilibrium is to defect (D), in which case both players get (T,T), a suboptimal outcome. Suppose, however, that society has developed a norm of cooperation; that is, whenever a social dilemma occurs, it is commonly understood that the parties should privilege a cooperative attitude. Should, however, does not imply “will”, therefore the new game generated by the existence of the cooperative norm has two equilibria: either both players defect or both cooperate.

Note that, in the new coordination game (which was created by the existence of the cooperative norm), the payoffs are quite different from those of the original prisoner’s dilemma. Thus there are two equilibria: if both players follow the cooperative norm they will play an optimal equilibrium and get (B,B), whereas if they both choose to defect they will get the suboptimal outcome (S,S). Players’ payoffs in the new coordination game differ from the original payoffs because their preferences and beliefs will reflect the existence of the norm. More specifically, if a player knows that a cooperative norm exists and has the right kind of expectations, then she will have a preference to conform to the norm in a situation in which she can choose to cooperate or to defect. In the new game generated by the norm’s existence, choosing to defect when others cooperate is not a good choice anymore (T,W). To understand why, let us look more closely to the preferences and expectations that underlie the conditional choice to conform to a social norm.

Bicchieri (2006) defines the expectations that underlie norm compliance, as follows:

Note that universal compliance is not usually needed for a norm to exist. However, how much deviance is socially tolerable will depend on the norm in question. Group norms and well-entrenched social norms will typically be followed by almost all members of a group or population, whereas greater deviance is usually accepted when norms are new or they are not deemed to be socially important. Furthermore, as it is usually unclear how many people follow a norm, different individuals may have different beliefs about the size of the group of followers, and may also have different thresholds for what “sufficiently large” means. What matters to conformity is that an individual believes that her threshold has been reached or surpassed. For a critical assessment of the above definition of norm-driven preferences, see Hausman (2008).

Brennan et al. (2013) also argue that norms of all kinds share in an essential structure. Norms are clusters of normative attitudes in a group, combined with the knowledge that such a cluster of attitudes exists. On their account, “A normative principle P is a norm within a group G if and only if:

• A significant proportion of the members of G have P -corresponding normative attitudes; and
• A significant proportion of the members of G know that a significant proportion of the members of G have P -corresponding attitudes” (Brennan et al. 2013: 29)

On this account, a “ P -corresponding normative attitude” is understood to be a judgment, emotional state, expectation, or other properly first personal normative belief that supports the principle P (e.g., Alice thinking most people should P would count as a normative attitude). Condition (i) is meant to reflect genuine first personal normative commitments, attitudes or beliefs. Condition (ii) is meant to capture those cases where individuals know that a large part of their group also shares in those attitudes. Putting conditions (i) and (ii) together offers a picture that the authors argue allows for explanatory work to be done on a social-level normative concept while remaining grounded in individual-level attitudes.

Consider again the new coordination game of Figure 1 : for players to obey the norm, and thus choose C, it must be the case that each expects the other to follow it. In the original prisoner’s dilemma, empirical beliefs would not be sufficient to induce cooperative behavior. When a norm exists, however, players also believe that others believe they should obey the norm, and may even punish them if they do not. The combined force of empirical and normative expectations makes norm conformity a compelling choice, be it because punishment may follow or just because one recognizes the legitimacy of others’ expectations (Sugden 2000).

It is important to understand that conformity to a social norm is always conditional on the expectations of what the relevant other/s will do. We prefer to comply with the norm as we have certain expectations. To make this point clear, think of the player who is facing a typical one-shot prisoner’s dilemma with an unknown opponent. Suppose the player knows a norm of cooperation exists and is generally followed, but she is uncertain as to whether the opponent is a norm-follower. In this case the player is facing the following situation ( Figure 2 ).

With probability p , the opponent is a norm-following type, and with probability \(1 - p\) she is not. According to Bicchieri, conditional preferences imply that having a reason to be fair, reciprocate or cooperate in a given situation does not entail having any general motive or disposition to be fair, reciprocate or cooperate as such. Having conditional preferences means that one may follow a norm in the presence of the relevant expectations, but disregard it in its absence. Whether a norm is followed at a given time depends on the actual proportion of followers, on the expectations of conditional followers about such proportion, and on the combination of individual thresholds.

As an example, consider a community that abides by strict norms of honesty. A person who, upon entering the community, systematically violates these norms will certainly be met with hostility, if not utterly excluded from the group. But suppose that a large group of thieves makes its way into this community. In due time, people would cease to expect honesty on the part of others, and would find no reason to be honest themselves in a world overtaken by crime. In this case, probably norms of honesty would cease to exist, as the strength of a norm lies in its being followed by many of the members of the relevant group (which in turn reinforces people’s expectations of conformity).

What we have discussed is a “rational reconstruction” of what a social norm is. Such a reconstruction is meant to capture some essential features of norm-driven behavior; also, this analysis helps us distinguish social norms from other constructs such as conventions or personal norms. A limit of this account, however, is that it does not indicate how such equilibria are attained or, in other terms, how expectations become self-fulfilling.

While neoclassical economics and game theory traditionally conceived of institutions as exogenous constraints, research in political economy has generated new insights into the study of endogenous institutions . Specifically, endogenous norms have been shown to restrict the individual’s action set and drive preferences over action profiles (Bowles 1998; Ostrom 2000). As a result, the “standard” economic framework positing exogenous (and in particular self-centered) preferences has come under scrutiny. Widely documented deviations from the predictions of models with self-centered agents have informed alternative accounts of individual choice (for one of the first models of “interdependent preferences”, see Stigler & Becker 1977).

Some alternative accounts have helped reconcile insights about norm-driven behavior with instrumental rationality (Elster 1989b). Moreover, they have contributed to informing the design of laboratory experiments on non-standard preferences (for a survey of early experiments, see Ledyard 1995; more recent experiments are reviewed by Fehr & Schmidt 2006 and Kagel & Roth 2016). In turn, experimental findings have inspired the formulation of a wide range of models aiming to rationalize the behavior observed in the lab (Camerer 2003; Dhami 2016).

It has been argued that the upholding of social norms could simply be modeled as the optimization of a utility function that includes the others’ welfare as an argument. For instance, consider some of the early “social preference” theories, such as Bolton and Ockenfels’ (2000) or Fehr and Schmidt’s (1999) models of inequity aversion. These frameworks can explain a good wealth of evidence on preferences for equitable income distributions; they cannot however account for conditional preferences like those reflecting principles of reciprocity (e.g., I will keep the common bathroom clean, if I believe my roommates do the same). As noted above, the approach to social norms taken by philosophically-inclined scholars has emphasized the importance of conditional preferences in supporting social norms. In this connection, we note that some of the social preference theories do account for motivations conditional on empirical beliefs, whereby a player upholds a principle of “fair” behavior if she believes her co-players will uphold it too (Rabin 1993; Dufwenberg & Kirchsteiger 2004; Falk & Fischbacher 2006; Charness & Rabin 2002). These theories presuppose that players are hardwired with a notion of fair or kind behavior, as exogenously defined by the theorist. Since they implicitly assume that all players have internalized a unique—exogenous—normative standpoint (as reflected in some notion of fairness or kindness), these theories do not explicitly model normative expectations. Hence, players’ preferences are assumed to be conditional solely on their empirical beliefs; that is, preferences are conditional on whether others will behave fairly (according to an exogenous principle) or not.

That said, we stress that social preferences should not be conflated with social norms. Social preferences capture stable dispositions toward an exogenously defined principle of conduct (Binmore 2010). By contrast, social norms are better studied as group-specific solutions to strategic problems (Sugden 1986; Bicchieri 1993; Young 1998b). Such solutions are brought about by a particular class of preferences (“norm-driven preferences”), conditional on the relevant set of empirical beliefs and normative expectations. In fact, we stress that “what constitutes fair or appropriate behavior” often varies with cultural or situational factors (Henrich et al. 2001; Cappelen et al. 2007; Ellingsen et al. 2012). Accounting for endogenous expectations is therefore key to a full understanding of social norms.

Relatedly, Guala (2016) offers a game-theoretic account of institutions, arguing that institutions are sets of rules in equilibrium. Guala’s view incorporates insights from two competing accounts of institutions: institutions-as-rules (perhaps best rendered by North 1990), and institutions-as-equilibria. From the first account, he captures the idea that institutions create rules that help to guide our behaviors and reduce uncertainty. With rules in place, we more or less know what to do, even in new situations. From the second, he captures the idea that institutions are solutions to coordination problems that arise from our normal interactions. The institutions give us reasons to follow them. The function of the rules, then, is to point to actions that promote coordination and cooperation. Because of the equilibrium nature of the rules, each individual has an incentive to choose those actions, provided others do too. Guala relies on a correlated equilibrium concept to unite the rules and equilibria accounts. On this picture, an institution is simply a correlated equilibrium in a game, where other correlated equilibria would have been possible.

Thrasher (2018) offers a comparative-functional analysis of norms that broadly aligns with the Bicchieri (2006) framework to help understand the durability of “bad norms.” Abbink et al. (2017) use public goods-like experiments to show how peer punishment can hold inefficient norms in place. This general framework can be helpful to understand why duels and honor killings can become stable (e.g. Thrasher and Handfield 2018, Handfield and Thrasher 2019). This work explores the signaling function of socially costly norms.

An alternative class of models explains norm compliance in terms of social image or self-image concerns (e.g., Andreoni and Bernheim 2009; Bénabou and Tirole 2006, 2011). These models assume that one tries to signal (to others or to one’s future self) that one has good “personal traits”, with such type-specific traits being imperfectly observed. More precisely, Bénabou and Tirole (2006) model the individual’s utility from contributing to a public good as a function of (i) material payoffs, (ii) intrinsic rewards from behaving altruistically, and (iii) reputational returns; in particular, the authors assume that reputational returns depend on the observers’ posterior expectations of the individual’s type. Bénabou and Tirole then consider (a refinement of) signaling equilibria, thereby allowing for multiple solutions to occur as a result of the interplay of individual motivations and of the level of observability of the actions. While models with reputational concerns do not explicitly define normative expectations, they generally posit that players care about their reputation under the assumption that acting altruistically is good or appropriate. Looking ahead, there is still work to do to fully formalize the interplay of (endogenous) normative expectations and empirical beliefs within a general model that is applicable to any game setting. Such a model should probably build on the “psychological game theory” framework (for discussion, see Battigalli and Dufwenberg 2022, p. 857; see also Bicchieri and Sontuoso 2015).

In what follows we focus on lab experiments that identify social norms by explicitly measuring both empirical and normative expectations.

Xiao and Bicchieri (2010) designed an experiment to investigate the impact on trust games of two potentially applicable—but conflicting—principles of conduct, namely, equality and reciprocity . Note that the former can be broadly defined as a rule that recommends minimizing payoff differences, whereas the latter recommends taking a similar action as others (regardless of payoff considerations). The experimental design involved two trust game variants: in the first one, players started with equal endowments; in the second one, the investor was endowed with twice the money that the trustee was given. In both cases, the investor could choose to transfer a preset amount of money to the trustee or keep it all. Upon receiving the money, the trustee could in turn keep it or else transfer back some of it to the investor: in the equal endowment condition (“baseline treatment”), both equality and reciprocity dictate that the trustee transfer some money back to the investor; by contrast, in the unequal endowment condition (“asymmetry treatment”), equality and reciprocity dictate different actions as the trustee could guarantee payoff equality only by making a zero back-transfer. Xiao and Bicchieri elicited subjects’ first- and second-order empirical beliefs (“how much do you think other participants in your role will transfer to their counterpart?”; “what does your counterpart think you will do?”) and normative expectations (“how much do you think your counterpart believes you should transfer to her?”). The experimental results show that a majority of trustees returned a positive amount whenever reciprocity would reduce payoff inequality (in the baseline treatment); by contrast, a majority of trustees did not reciprocate the investors’ transfer when doing so would increase payoff inequality (in the asymmetry treatment). Moreover, investors correctly believed that less money would be returned in the asymmetry treatment than in the baseline treatment, and most trustees correctly estimated investors’ beliefs in both treatments. However, in the asymmetry treatment empirical beliefs and normative expectations conflicted: this highlights that, when there is ambiguity as to which principle of conduct is in place, each subject will support the rule of behavior that favors her most.

Reuben and Riedl (2013) examine the enforcement of norms of contribution to public goods in homogeneous and heterogeneous groups, such as groups whose members vary in their endowment, contribution capacity, or marginal benefits. In particular, Reuben and Riedl are interested in the normative appeal of two potentially applicable rules: the efficiency rule (prescribing maximal contributions by all) and the class of relative contribution rules (prescribing a contribution that is “fair” relative to the contributions of others; e.g., equality and equity rules). Reuben and Riedl’s results show that, in the absence of punishment, no positive contribution norm emerged and all groups converged toward free-riding. By contrast, with punishment, contributions were consistent with the prescriptions of the efficiency rule in a significant subset of groups (irrespective of the type of group heterogeneity); in other groups, contributions were consistent with relative contribution rules. These results suggest that even in heterogeneous groups individuals can successfully enforce a contribution norm. Most notably, survey data involving third parties confirmed well-defined yet conflicting normative views about the aforementioned contribution rules; in other words, both efficiency and relative contribution rules are normatively appealing, and are indeed potential candidates for emerging contribution norms in different groups.

Bicchieri and Chavez (2010) designed an experiment to investigate norm compliance in ultimatum games. Specifically, their experiment involved a variant of the ultimatum game whereby the proposer could choose one of the following three options: ($5, $5) , ($8, $2) , or Coin (in which case one of the other two allocations would be selected at random). This design allows for two plausible notions of fairness: as an equal outcome ($5, $5) or as a fair procedure (Coin). The experimenters elicited subjects’ normative expectations about the actions they thought would be considered fair by most participants: proposers and responders showed a remarkable degree of agreement in their notions of fairness, as most subjects believed that a majority of participants deemed both ($5, $5) and Coin to be appropriate. Further, the experimenters had subjects play three instances of the above ultimatum game under different information conditions. In the “full information” condition, all participants knew that the Coin option was available, and that responders would know if their respective proposer had chosen Coin. In the “private information” condition, responders did not know that Coin was available to proposers, and proposers were aware of responders’ ignorance. In the “limited information” condition, participants knew that the Coin option was available, but responders would not be able to distinguish whether their respective proposer had implemented one of the two allocations directly or had chosen Coin instead. The experimental results show that when normative expectations supporting the Coin option were either absent (in the private condition) or could be defied without consequence (in the limited condition), the frequency of choice of ($5, $5) and ($8, $2), respectively, were considerably higher than those of Coin. Moreover, the frequency of Coin choices was highest in the public information condition, where such option was common knowledge and its outcome transparent: this shows that there proposers followed the rule of behavior that favored them most, and that such a rule was effectively a social norm. On the other hand, substantial norm evasion characterized proposers’ behavior in the limited information condition, where ($8, $2) was the most frequent choice.

In a subsequent study, Chavez and Bicchieri (2013) measured empirical and normative expectations (as well as behavior) of third parties who were given the opportunity to add to or deduct from the payoffs of subjects who had participated in an ultimatum game. Third parties tended to reward subjects involved in equal allocations and to compensate victims of unfair allocations (rather than punish unfair behavior); on the other hand, third parties were willing to punish when compensation was not an available option. The experimental results further show that third parties shared a notion of fairness (as indicated by their normative expectations), and that such notion was sensitive to contextual differences.

Krupka and Weber (2013) introduced an interesting procedure for identifying social norms by means of pre-play coordination games. In brief, using alternative (between-subjects) variants of the dictator game, Krupka and Weber had participants assess the extent to which different actions were collectively perceived as socially appropriate: subjects providing these ratings effectively faced a coordination game, as they were incentivized to match the modal response given by others in the same situation (such a pre-play coordination game was intended to verify the presence of shared normative expectations). Krupka and Weber went on to use these elicited assessments to predict other subjects’ compliance with the relevant social norm in each dictator game variant (for another application of the same elicitation procedure, see Gächter et al. 2013).

Similarly, Schram and Charness’ (2015) proposed a procedure for inducing a shared understanding of the relevant rule of behavior, in the lab. In short, Schram and Charness had participants in dictator games receive advice from a group of third parties. The information received simply revealed what a group of uninvolved subjects thought dictators ought to do : as such, the information received generated an exogenous variation in the dictators’ normative expectations. Schram and Charness’ results show that choices are indeed affected by this information.

Bicchieri and Xiao (2009) designed an experiment to investigate what happens when empirical and normative expectations conflict. To that end, participants in a dictator game were exposed to different pieces of information. Specifically, two groups of dictators were given some “descriptive information”; that is, they were told what other subjects had done in another session (i.e., one group was told that previous participants had made for the most part a generous offer, while the other group was told that most participants had made a selfish offer). Further, another two groups of dictators were given some “normative information”; that is, they were told what previous subjects said ought to be done (i.e., one group was told that most previous participants thought that one should make a generous offer, while the other group was told that most participants thought that one should make a selfish offer). Other groups were given both descriptive and normative information. The experimental results show that—whenever such information did not conflict—both descriptive and normative messages had a significant influence on dictators’ own expectations and subsequent choices. When messages conflicted in that one indicated generosity and the other indicated selfishness, only the descriptive information affected dictators’ behavior. This suggests that if people recognize that others are breaching the norm, then they will no longer feel compelled to follow the relevant rule of behavior themselves.

To conclude, the studies surveyed here provide evidence of the role played by expectations in affecting behavior in a variety of social dilemmas. In this regard, we note that in contrast to the vast literature on empirical beliefs, the number of lab studies that directly measure normative expectations is relatively limited: more research is clearly needed to investigate the interplay of empirical and normative information about applicable rules of behavior.

Thus far we have examined accounts of social norms that take for granted that a particular norm exists in a population. However, for a full account of social norms, we must answer two questions related to the dynamics of norms. First, we must ask how a norm can emerge. Norms require a set of corresponding beliefs and expectations to support them, and so there must be an account of how these arise. Second, we must investigate the conditions under which a norm is stable under some competitive pressure from other norms. Sometimes, multiple candidate norms vie for dominance in a population. Even if one norm has come to dominate the population, new norms can try to “invade” the existing norm’s population of adherents.

Let us now turn to the question of norm emergence. Here we can see three classes of models: first, a purely biological approach, second, a more cognitive approach, and third, a structured interactions approach. The most famous of the biological approaches to norms seek to explain cooperative behavior. The simplest models are kin selection models (Hamilton 1964). These models seek to explain altruistic tendencies in animals by claiming that, as selection acts on genes, those genes have an incentive to promote the reproductive success of other identical sets of genes found in other animals. This mode of explanation can provide an account of why we see cooperative behaviors within families, but being gene-centered, cannot explain cooperative behavior toward strangers (as strangers should not be sufficiently genetically related to merit altruistic behavior).

Models of “reciprocal altruism” (Trivers 1971, 1985), on the other hand, tell us that cooperative behavior has no chance of evolving in random pairings, but will evolve in a social framework in which individuals can benefit from building reputations for being nice guys. Reciprocal altruism, however, does not require an evolutionary argument; a simple model of learning in ongoing close-knit groups will do, and has the further advantage of explaining why certain types of cooperative behavior are more likely to emerge than others. All that matters in these models is that agents can properly identify other agents, such that they can maintain a record of their past behavior. This allows for the possibility of reputations: people who have the reputation of being cooperative will be treated cooperatively, and those who have a reputation of being unfair will be treated unfairly.

A variation on the idea of reciprocal altruism can be seen in Axelrod (1986). Axelrod presents a “norms game” in which agents probabilistically choose to comply with the norm, or deviate from it, and then other agents can probabilistically choose to punish any deviations at some cost to them. Agents can choose over time to be more or less “bold”, which determines the rate at which they attempt defections, and they can likewise choose to be more or less “vengeful”, which determines how often they punish. Axelrod noted that if the game is left like this, we find that the stable state is constant defection and no punishment. However, if we introduce a meta-norm—one that punishes people who fail to punish defectors—then we arrive at a stable norm in which there is no boldness, but very high levels of vengefulness. It is under these conditions that we find a norm emerge and remain stable. Axelrod’s model aims to illustrate that norms require meta-norms. That is, failure to retaliate against a defection must be seen as equivalent to a defection itself. What Axelrod does not analyze is whether there is some cost to being vigilant. Namely, watching both defectors and non-punishers may have a cost that, though nominal, might encourage some to abandon vigilance once there has been no punishment for some time.

Bicchieri, Duffy and Tolle (2004) present an alternative model of norm emergence to explain how a norm of impersonal trust/reciprocity can emerge and survive in a heterogeneous population. This model does not rely on a meta-norm of punishment; instead, it is purely driven by repeated interactions of conditional strategies. In their model, agents play anywhere from 1 to 30 rounds of a trust game for 1,000 iterations, relying on the 4 unconditional strategies, and the 16 conditional strategies that are standard for the trust game. After each round, agents update their strategies based on the replicator dynamic. As the number of rounds grows, a norm of impersonal trust/reciprocity emerges in the population. Most interestingly, however, the norm is not associated with a single strategy, but it is supported by several strategies behaving in similar ways. This model suggests that Trivers’ basic model works well in normal social contexts, but we can further enrich the story by allowing a social norm to supervene on several behavioral strategies.

Muldoon et al. (2012) explore a simpler approach to norm emergence that relies on individual reasoners weighing their individual interests against their social sensitivity. This is done across a number of model variants based on a simple standing ovation. A striking finding of their “symmetric” model is that norm emergence is fairly rare, but can also be distinguished from merely common behaviors. A more cognitively demanding approach was taken by Muldoon, Lisciandra and Hartmann (2012), in which bayesian reasoners can learn to “discover” norms that were not present, and have no particular value. This can happen when agents think there might be a social rule, and then over-interpret social evidence. These models combine to suggest that we should expect many arbitrary norms, rather than a functionalist argument for the presence of norms.

The third prominent model of norm emergence comes from Brian Skyrms (1996, 2004) and Jason Alexander (2007). In this approach, two different features are emphasized: relatively simple cognitive processes and structured interactions. Both have explored a variety of games (such as the prisoner’s dilemma, the stag hunt, divide the dollar, and the ultimatum game) as exemplars of situations that offer the possibility of the emergence of a moral norm. Though Skyrms occasionally uses the replicator dynamic, both tend to emphasize simpler mechanisms in an agent-based learning context. In particular, learning rules like “imitate the best” or best response are used, as they are much less cognitively demanding. Alexander justifies the use of these simpler rules on the grounds that, rather than fully rational agents, we are cognitively limited beings who rely on fairly simple heuristics for our decision-making. Rules like imitation are extremely simple to follow. Best response requires a bit more cognitive sophistication, but is still simpler than a fully Bayesian model with unlimited memory and computational power. These simpler learning rules provide the same function as the replicator dynamic: in between rounds of play, agents rely on their learning rule to decide what strategy to employ. Note that both Skyrms and Alexander tend to treat norms as single strategies.

The largest contribution of this strain of modeling comes not from the assumption of boundedly rational agents, but rather the careful investigation of the effects of particular social structures on the equilibrium outcomes of various games. Much of the previous literature on evolutionary games has focused on the assumptions of infinite populations of agents playing games against randomly-assigned partners. Skyrms and Alexander both rightly emphasize the importance of structured interaction. As it is difficult to uncover and represent real-world network structures, both tend to rely on examining different classes of networks that have different properties, and from there investigate the robustness of particular norms against these alternative network structures. Alexander (2007) in particular has done a very careful study of the different classical network structures, where he examines lattices, small world networks, bounded degree networks, and dynamic networks for each game and learning rule he considers. A final feature of Skyrms and Alexander’s work is a refinement on this structural approach: they separate out two different kinds of networks. First, there is the interaction network, which represents the set of agents that any given agent can actively play a game with. Second is the update network , which is the set of agents that an agent can “see” when applying her learning rule. The interaction network is thus one’s immediate community, whereas the update network is all that the agent can see. To see why this is useful, we can imagine a case not too different from how we live, in which there is a fairly limited set of other people we may interact with, but thanks to a plethora of media options, we can see much more widely how others might act. This kind of situation can only be represented by clearly separating the two networks.

Thus, what makes the theory of norm emergence of Skyrms and Alexander so interesting is its enriching the set of idealizations that one must make in building a model. The addition of structured interaction and structured updates to a model of norm emergence can help make clear how certain kinds of norms tend to emerge in certain kinds of situation and not others, which is difficult or impossible to capture in random interaction models.

Now that we have examined norm emergence, we must examine what happens when a population is exposed to more than one social norm. In this instance, social norms must compete with each other for adherents. This lends itself to investigations about the competitive dynamics of norms over long time horizons. In particular, we can investigate the features of norms and of their environments, such as the populations themselves, which help facilitate one norm becoming dominant over others, or becoming prone to elimination by its competitors. An evolutionary model provides a description of the conditions under which social norms may spread. One may think of several environments to start with. A population can be represented as entirely homogeneous, in the sense that everybody is adopting the same type of behavior, or heterogeneous to various degrees. In the former case, it is important to know whether the commonly adopted behavior is stable against mutations. The relevant concept here is that of an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS; Maynard Smith & Price 1973; Taylor & Jonker 1978): when a population of individuals adopts such a strategy, it cannot be successfully invaded by isolated mutants, since the mutants will be at a disadvantage with respect to reproductive success. An evolutionarily stable strategy is a refinement of the Nash equilibrium in game theory. Unlike standard Nash equilibria, evolutionarily stable strategies must either be strict equilibria , or have an advantage when playing against mutant strategies. Since strict equilibria are always superior to any unilateral deviations, and the second condition requires that the ESS have an advantage in playing against mutants, the strategy will remain resistant to any mutant invasion. This is a difficult criterion to meet, however. For example, a classic Tit-For-Tat strategy in the prisoner’s dilemma is not an ESS. Many strategies perform equally well against it, including the very simple “Always Cooperate” strategy, let alone Tit-For-Two-Tats, and any number of variations. Tit-For-Tat is merely an evolutionarily neutral strategy relative to these others. If we only consider strategies that are defection-oriented, then Tit-For-Tat is an ESS, since it will do better against itself, and no worse than defection strategies when paired with them.

A more interesting case, and one relevant to a study of the reproduction of norms of cooperation, is that of a population in which several competing strategies are present at any given time. What we want to know is whether the strategy frequencies that exist at a time are stable, or if there is a tendency for one strategy to become dominant over time. If we continue to rely on the ESS solution concept, we see a classic example in the hawk-dove game. If we assume that there is no uncorrelated asymmetry between the players, then the mixed Nash equilibrium is the ESS. If we further assume that there is no structure to how agents interact with each other, this can be interpreted in two ways: either each player randomizes her strategy in each round of play, or we have a stable polymorphism in the population, in which the proportion of each strategy in the population corresponds to the frequency with which each strategy would be played in a randomizing approach. So, in those cases where we can assume that players randomly encounter each other, whenever there is a mixed solution ESS we can expect to find polymorphic populations.

If we wish to avoid the interpretive challenge of a mixed solution ESS, there is an alternative analytic solution concept that we can employ: the evolutionarily stable state. An evolutionarily stable state is a distribution of (one or more) strategies that is robust against perturbations, whether they are exogenous shocks or mutant invasions, provided the perturbations are not overly large. Evolutionarily stable states are solutions to a replicator dynamic. Since evolutionarily stable states are naturally able to describe polymorphic or monomorphic populations, there is no difficulty with introducing population-oriented interpretations of mixed strategies. This is particularly important when random matching does not occur, as under those conditions, the mixed strategy can no longer be thought of as a description of population polymorphism.

Now that we have seen the prominent approaches to both norm emergence and norm stability, we can turn to some general interpretive considerations of evolutionary models. An evolutionary approach is based on the principle that strategies with higher current payoffs will be retained, while strategies that lead to failure will be abandoned. The success of a strategy is measured by its relative frequency in the population at any given time. This is most easily seen in a game theoretic framework. A game is repeated a finite number of times with randomly selected opponents. After each round of the game, the actual payoffs and strategies of the players become public knowledge; on the basis of this information, each player adjusts her strategy for the next round. The payoff to an individual player depends on her choice as well as on the choices of the other players in the game, and players are rational in the sense that they are payoff-maximizers. In an evolutionary model, however, players learn and adapt in a non-Bayesian way, that is, they do not condition on past experience using Bayes’ Rule. In this sense, they are not typical rational learners (Nachbar 1990; Binmore & Samuelson 1992).

In an evolutionary approach behavior is adaptive, so that a strategy that did work well in the past is retained, and one that fared poorly will be changed. This can be interpreted in two ways: either the evolution of strategies is the consequence of adaptation by individual agents, or the evolution of strategies is understood as the differential reproduction of agents based on their success rates in their interactions. The former interpretation assumes short timescales for interactions: many iterations of the game over time thus represent no more than a few decades in time in total. The latter interpretation assumes rather longer timescales: each instance of strategy adjustment represents a new generation of agents coming into the population, with the old generation dying simultaneously. Let us consider the ramifications of each interpretation in turn.

In the first interpretation, we have agents who employ learning rules that are less than fully rational, as defined by what a Bayesian agent would have, both in terms of computational ability and memory. As such, these rules tend to be classified as adaptive strategies: they are reacting to a more limited set of data, with lower cognitive resources than what a fully rational learner would possess. However, there are many different adaptive mechanisms we may attribute to the players. One realistic adaptive mechanism is learning by trial and error; another plausible mechanism is imitation: those who do best are observed by others who subsequently emulate their behavior (Hardin 1982). Reinforcement learning is another class of adaptive behavior, in which agents tweak their probabilities of choosing one strategy over another based on the payoffs they just received.

In the second interpretation, agents themselves do not learn, but rather the strategies grow or shrink in the population according to the reproductive advantages that they bestow upon the agents that adhere to them. This interpretation requires very long timescales, as it requires many generations of agents before equilibrium is reached. The typical dynamics that are considered in such circumstances come from biology. A standard approach is something like the replicator dynamic. Norms grow or shrink in proportion to both how many agents adhere to them at a given time, and their relative payoffs. More successful strategies gain adherents at the expense of less-successful ones. This evolutionary process assumes a constant-sized (or infinite) population over time. This interpretation of an evolutionary dynamic, which requires long timescales, raises the question of whether norms themselves evolve slowly. Norms can rapidly collapse in a very short amount of time. This phenomenon could not be represented within a model whose interpretation is generational in nature. It remains an open question, however, as to whether such timescales can be appropriate for examining the emergence of certain kinds of norms. While it is known that many norms can quickly come into being, it is not clear if this is true of all norms.

Another challenge in using evolutionary models to study social norms is that there is a potential problem of representation. In evolutionary models, there is no rigorous way to represent innovation or novelty. Whether we look at an agent-based simulation approach, or a straightforward game-theoretic approach, the strategy set open to the players, as well as their payoffs, must be defined in advance. But many social norms rely on innovations, whether they are technological or social. Wearing mini-skirts was not an option until they were invented. Marxist attitudes were largely not possible until Marx. The age at which one gets married and how many children one has are highly linked to availability of and education about birth control technologies. While much of the study of norms has focused on more generic concepts such as fairness, trust, or cooperation, the full breadth of social norms covers many of these more specific norms that require some account of social innovation.

This representational challenge has broad implications. Even when we can analytically identify evolutionarily stable states in a particular game, which is suggestive of norms that will be converged upon, we now have a problem of claiming that this norm has prospects for long-term stability. Events like the publication of the Kinsey report can dramatically shift seemingly stable norms quite rapidly. As the underlying game changes in the representation, our previous results no longer apply. In the face of this representational problem, we can either attempt to develop some metric of the robustness of a given norm in the space of similar games, or more carefully scope the claims that we can make about the social norms that we study with this methodology.

Although some questions of interpretation and challenges of representation exist, an important advantage of the evolutionary approach is that it does not require sophisticated strategic reasoning in circumstances, such as large-group interactions, in which it would be unrealistic to assume it. People are very unlikely to engage in full Bayesian calculations in making decisions about norm adherence. Agents often rely on cognitive shortcuts to determine when norms ought to be in effect given a certain context, and whether or not they should adhere to them. Evolutionary models that employ adaptive learning strategies capture these kinds of cognitive constraints, and allow the theorist to explore how these constraints influence the emergence and stability of norms.

The study of social norms can help us understand a wide variety of seemingly puzzling behaviors. According to some accounts, a social norm results from conditional preferences for conforming to a relevant behavioral rule. Such preferences are conditional on two different kinds of beliefs: empirical and normative expectations.

This and other accounts of social norms still leave much to be investigated. Explaining how normative expectations come to exist remains an open question. Another open question to consider is how one could intervene to change socially harmful norms. While there have been initial investigations into these questions (Bicchieri 2016, Muldoon 2018a, 2018b), there is much more work to be done. One frontier in this area is in deploying behavioral tools such as nudging for fostering norm changes (Bicchieri 2022, 2023).

Finally, we stress that different contextual factors (such as the framing and characteristics of the strategic problem, the role one is assigned, the social category with which one identifies, as well as historical and chance events) often come to be associated with different notions of “appropriate behavior”. Accounting for endogenous expectations is therefore key to a full understanding of norm-driven behavior. More research—both theoretical and experimental—is needed to further illuminate the impact of expectations on strategic decisions.

• Abbink, K., Gangadharan, L., Handfield, T., et al., 2017, Peer punishment promotes enforcement of bad social norms. Nat Commun 8(609). doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00731-0
• Akerlof, George A., 1976, “The Economics of Caste and of the Rat Race and Other Woeful Tales”, Quarterly Journal of Economics , 90(4): 599–617. doi:10.2307/1885324
• Alexander, Jason McKenzie, 2000, “Evolutionary Explanations of Distributive Justice”, Philosophy of Science , 67(3): 490–516. doi:10.1086/392792
• –––, 2005, “The Evolutionary Foundations of Human Altruism”, Analyse & Kritik , 27(1): 106–113. [ Alexander 2005 available online ]
• –––, 2007, The Structural Evolution of Morality , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511550997
• Andreoni, James and B. Douglas Bernheim, 2009, “Social Image and The 50–50 Norm: A Theoretical and Experimental Analysis of Audience Effects”, Econometrica , 77(5): 1607–1636. doi:10.3982/ECTA7384
• Arrow, Kenneth J., 1971, “A Utilitarian Approach to the Concept of Equality in Public Expenditure”, Quarterly Journal of Economics , 85(3): 409–15. doi:10.2307/1885930
• Axelrod, Robert, 1984, The Evolution of Cooperation , New York: Basic Books.
• –––, 1986, “An Evolutionary Approach to Norms”, American Political Science Review , 80(4): 1095–1111. doi:10.1017/S0003055400185016
• Battigalli, Pierpaolo & Dufwenberg, Martin, 2009, “Dynamic Psychological Games”, Journal of Economic Theory , 144(1): 1–35. doi:10.1016/j.jet.2008.01.004
• –––, 2022, “Belief-Dependent Motivations and Psychological Game Theory”, Journal of Economic Literature , 60(3): 833–882. doi:10.1257/jel.20201378
• Bénabou, Roland and Jean Tirole, 2006, “Incentives and Prosocial Behavior”, American Economic Review , 96(5): 1652–1678. doi:10.1257/aer.96.5.1652
• –––, 2011, “Identity, Morals, and Taboos: Beliefs as Assets”, Quarterly Journal of Economics , 126(2): 805–855. doi:10.1093/qje/qjr002
• Bicchieri, Cristina, 1990, “Norms of Cooperation”, Ethics , 100(4): 838–861. doi:10.1086/293237
• –––, 1993, Rationality and Coordination , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Second Edition, 1996.
• –––, 1997, “Learning to Cooperate”, in Cristina Bicchieri, Richard C. Jeffrey, and Brian Skyrms, The Dynamics of Norms , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2002, “Covenants Without Swords: Group Identity, Norms, and Communication in Social Dilemmas”, Rationality and Society , 14(2): 192–228. doi:10.1177/1043463102014002003
• –––, 2006, The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511616037
• –––, 2016, Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure, and Change Social Norms , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190622046.001.0001
• –––, 2022, “Norm Nudging: How to Measure What We Want to Implement” in Behavioral Science in the Wild (pp. 82–107). University of Toronto Press.
• –––, 2023, “Norm nudging and twisting preferences”, Behavioural Public Policy , 1–10.
• Bicchieri, Cristina and Alex Chavez, 2010, “Behaving as Expected: Public Information and Fairness Norms”, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making , 23(2): 161–178. doi:10.1002/bdm.648
• Bicchieri, Cristina, John Duffy, and Gil Tolle, 2004, “Trust Among Strangers”, Philosophy of Science , 71(3): 286–319. doi:10.1086/381411
• Bicchieri, Cristina and Yoshitaka Fukui, 1999, “The Great Illusion: Ignorance, Informational Cascades and the Persistence of Unpopular Norms”, Business Ethics Quarterly , 9(1): 127–155. doi:10.2307/3857639
• Bicchieri, Cristina and Azi Lev-On, 2007, “Computer-Mediated Communication and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas: An Experimental Analysis”, Politics, Philosophy and Economics , 6(2): 139–168. doi:10.1177/1470594X07077267
• Bicchieri, Cristina and Alessandro Sontuoso, 2015, “I Cannot Cheat on You After We Talk”, in The Prisoner’s Dilemma , Martin Peterson (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 101–114. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107360174.007
• –––, 2020, “Game-Theoretic Accounts of Social Norms”, in M. Capra, R. Croson, T. Rosenblatt, and M. Rigdon (eds.), The Handbook of Experimental Game Theory , Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. doi:10.4337/9781785363337.00017
• Bicchieri, Cristina and Erte Xiao, 2009, “Do the Right Thing: But Only If Others Do So”, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making , 22(2): 191–208. doi:10.1002/bdm.621
• Bicchieri, Cristina and Jiji Zhang, 2012, “An Embarrassment of Riches: Modeling Social Preferences in Ultimatum Games”, in Philosophy of Economics , ( Handbook of the Philosophy of Science , Volume 13), Uskali Mäki (ed.), Amsterdam: Elsevier.
• Binmore, Ken, 2010, “Social Norms or Social Preferences?”, Mind & Society , 9(2): 139–157. doi:10.1007/s11299-010-0073-2
• Binmore, Kenneth G. and Larry Samuelson, 1992, “Evolutionary Stability in Repeated Games Played by Finite Automata”, Journal of Economic Theory , 57(2): 278–305. doI:10.1016/0022-0531(92)90037-I
• Bolton, Gary E. and Axel Ockenfels, 2000, “ERC: A Theory of Equity, Reciprocity, and Competition”, American Economic Review , 90(1): 166–193. doi:10.1257/aer.90.1.166
• Bornstein, Gary and Meyrav Ben-Yossef, 1994, “Cooperation in Intergroup and Single-Group Social Dilemmas”, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 30(1): 52–67. doi:10.1006/jesp.1994.1003
• Bowles, Samuel, 1998, “Endogenous Preferences: The Cultural Consequences of Markets and Other Economic Institutions”, Journal of Economic Literature , 36(1): 75–111.
• Brennan, Geoffrey, Lina Eriksson, Robert E. Goodin, and Nicholas Southwood, 2013, Explaining Norms , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654680.001.0001
• Brewer, Marilynn B., 1979, “In-group Bias in the Minimal Intergroup Situation: A Cognitive-Motivational Analysis”, Psychological Bulletin , 86(2): 307–324. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.86.2.307
• –––, 1991, “The Social Self: On Being the Same and Different at the Same Time”, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , 17(5): 475–482. doi:10.1177/0146167291175001
• Brewer, Marilynn B. and Sherry K. Schneider, 1990, “Social Identity and Social Dilemmas: A Double-Edged Sword”, in Dominic Abrams and Michael A. Hogg (eds.), Social Identity Theory: Constructive and Critical Advances , Wheatsheaf, NY: Harvester.
• Camerer, Colin F., 2003, Behavioral Game Theory. Experiments in Strategic Interaction , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Cancian, Francesca M, 1975, What are Norms? A Study of Beliefs and Action in a Maya Community , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Cappelen, Alexander W., Astri Drange Hole, Erik Ø Sørensen and Bertil Tungodden, 2007, “The Pluralism of Fairness Ideals: An Experimental Approach”, American Economic Review , 97(3): 818–827. doi:10.1257/aer.97.3.818
• Charness, Gary and Matthew Rabin, 2002, “Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests”, Quarterly Journal of Economics , 117(3): 817–869. doi:10.1162/003355302760193904
• Chavez, Alex K. and Cristina Bicchieri, 2013, “Third-Party Sanctioning and Compensation Behavior: Findings from the Ultimatum Game”, Journal of Economic Psychology , 39: 268–277. doi:10.1016/j.joep.2013.09.004
• Cialdini, Robert B. and Noah J. Goldstein, 2004, “Social Influence: Compliance and Conformity”, Annual Review of Psychology , 55: 591–621. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.142015
• Cialdini, Robert B., Carl A. Kallgren, and Raymond R. Reno, 1991, “A Focus Theory of Normative Conduct”, in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology , volume 24, Mark P. Zanna (ed.), New York: Academic Press, pp. 201–234. doi:10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60330-5
• Coleman, James S., 1990, Foundations of Social Theory , Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
• Coleman, Jules L., 1989, “Afterword: Rational Choice Approach to Legal Rules”, Chicago-Kent Law Review , 65(1): 177–191. [ Jules Coleman 1989 available online ]
• Dawes, Robyn M., 1972, Fundamentals of Attitude Measurement , New York: Wiley.
• –––, 1980, “Social Dilemmas”, Annual Review of Psychology , 31: 169–193. doi:10.1146/annurev.ps.31.020180.001125
• –––, 1991, “Social Dilemmas, Economic Self-Interest, and Evolutionary Theory”, in Donald R. Brown and J.E. Keith Smith (eds.), Recent Research in Psychology: Frontiers of Mathematical Psychology: Essays in Honor of Clyde Coombs , New York: Springer-Verlag. doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-3088-5_2
• Deutscher, Irwin, 1973, “What”, in his What We Say/What We Do: Sentiments & Acts , Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman.
• Dhami, Sanjit S., 2016, The Foundations of Behavioral Economic Analysis , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Diamond, A.S., 1935, Primitive Law , London: Watts.
• Dufwenberg, Martin and Georg Kirchsteiger, 2004, “A Theory of Sequential Reciprocity”, Games and Economic Behavior , 47(2): 268–298. doi:10.1016/j.geb.2003.06.003
• Durkheim, Émile, 1895 [1982], Les Règles de la méthode sociologique , Paris. Translated as The Rules of Sociological Method , W. D. Hall (trans.), Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.
• –––, 1950 [1957], Leçons de Sociologie: Physique des Moeurs et du Droit , Istanbul: Cituri Biraderlet Basimevi. Translated as Professional Ethics and Civic Morals , Cornelia Brookfield (trans.), Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.
• Ellickson, Robert C., 1991, Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Ellingsen, Tore, Magnus Johannesson, Johanna Mollerstrom, and Sara Munkhammar, 2012, “Social Framing Effects: Preferences or Beliefs?”, Games and Economic Behavior , 76(1): 117–130. doi:10.1016/j.geb.2012.05.007
• Elster, Jon, 1989a, The Cement of Society: A Study of Social Order , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511624995
• –––, 1989b, “Social Norms and Economic Theory” Journal of Economic Perspectives , 3(4): 99–117. doi:10.1257/jep.3.4.99
• Falk, Armin and Urs Fischbacher, 2006, “A Theory of Reciprocity”, Games and Economic Behavior , 54(2): 293–315. doi:10.1016/j.geb.2005.03.001
• Fehr, Ernst and Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999, “A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation”, Quarterly Journal of Economics , 114(3): 817–868. doi:10.1162/003355399556151
• –––, 2006, “The Economics of Fairness, Reciprocity and Altruism—Experimental Evidence and New Theories”, in Serge-Christophe Kolm and Jean Mercier Ythier (eds.), Handbook of The Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity (Volume 1), Amsterdam: North-Holland/Elsevier, pp. 615–691. doi:10.1016/S1574-0714(06)01008-6
• Fishbein, Martin E., 1967, “A Consideration of Beliefs and Their Role in Attitude Measurement”, in Readings in Attitude Theory and Measurement , Martin E. Fishbein (ed.), New York: Wiley.
• Freeman, Linton C. and Türröz Ataöv, 1960, “Invalidity of Indirect and Direct Measures of Attitude Toward Cheating”, Journal of Personality , 28(4): 443–447. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.1960.tb01631.x
• Gächter, Simon, Daniele Nosenzo, and Martin Sefton, 2013, “Peer Effects in Pro-Social Behavior: Social Norms or Social Preferences?”, Journal of The European Economic Association , 11(3): 548–573. doi:10.1111/jeea.12015
• Gaertner, Samuel L. and John F. Dovidio, 1986, “The Aversive Form of Racism”, in John F. Dovidio and Samuel L. Gaertner (eds.), Prejudice, Discrimination, and Racism: Theory and Research , Orlando, FL: Academic Press, pp. 61–89.
• Geanakoplos, John, David Pearce, and Ennio Stacchetti, 1989, “Psychological Games and Sequential Rationality”, Games and Economic Behavior , 1(1): 60–79. doi:10.1016/0899-8256(89)90005-5
• Geertz, Clifford, 1973, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture”, in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays , New York: Basic Books, pp. 3–30.
• Gintis, Herbert, 2000, Game Theory Evolving , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Granovetter, Mark, 1985, “Economic Action and Social Structure: the Problem of Embeddedness”, American Journal of Sociology , 91(3): 481–510. doi:10.1086/228311
• Guala, Francesco, 2016, Understanding Institutions: The Science and Philosophy of Living Together , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Hamilton W.D., 1964, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour I and II”, Journal of Theoretical Biology , 7: 1–16 and 17–52. doi:10.1016/0022-5193(64)90038-4 and 10.1016/0022-5193(64)90039-6
• Handfield, T., & Thrasher, J., 2019, “Two of a kind: Are norms of honor a species of morality?” Biol Philos , 34, 39. doi.org/10.1007/s10539-019-9693-z
• Hardin, Russell, 1982, Collective Action , New York: Resources for the Future.
• Harding, John, Harold Proshansky, Bernard Kutner, and Isidor Chein, 1954 [1969], “Prejudice and Ethnic Relations”, in Gardner Lindzey (ed.), Handbook of Social Psychology , volume 2, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, pp. 1021–1061. Reprinted in Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson (eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology , second edition, volume 5, Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1969, pp. 1–76.
• Hausman, Daniel M., 2008, “Fairness and Social Norms” Philosophy of Science , 75(5): 850–860. doi:10.1086/594529
• Hechter, Michael and Karl-Dieter Opp, 2001, Social Norms , New York: Russel Sage Foundation.
• Henrich, Joseph and Robert Boyd, 2001, “Why People Punish Defectors: Weak Conformist Transmission Can Stabilize Costly Enforcement of Norms in Cooperative Dilemmas”, Journal of Theoretical Biology , 208(1): 79–89. doi:10.1006/jtbi.2000.2202
• Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis, and Richard McElreath, 2001, “In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies”, American Economic Review , 91(2): 73–78. doi:10.1257/aer.91.2.73
• Hirshmann, Albert O., 1982, Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Hoebel, Adamson E., 1954, The Law of Primitive Man , Cambridge, MA: Atheneum.
• Hogg, Michael A. and John C. Turner, 1987, “Social Identity and Conformity: A Theory of Referent Informational Influence”, in William Doise and Serge Moscovici (eds.), Current Issues in European Social Psychology , Volume 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 139–182.
• Homans, George Caspar, 1950, The Human Group , New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company.
• –––, 1961, Social Behavior , New York: Harcourt Brace and World.
• Insko, Chester A. and John Schopler, 1967, “Triadic Consistency: A Statement of Affective-Cognitive-Conative Consistency”, Psychological Review , 74(5): 361–376. doi:10.1037/h0020278
• Kagel, John H. and Alvin E. Roth, 2016, Handbook of Experimental Economics , Volume 2, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Klassen, Albert D., Colin J. Williams, and Eugene E. Levitt, 1989, Sex and Morality in the U.S.: An Empirical Enquiry Under the Auspices of the Kinsey Institute , Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
• Kramer, Roderick M. and Marilynn B. Brewer, 1984, “Effects of Group Identity on Resource Use in a Simulated Commons Dilemma”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 46(5): 1044–1057. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.46.5.1044
• Krupka, Erin L. and Roberto A. Weber, 2013, “Identifying Social Norms Using Coordination Games: Why Does Dictator Game Sharing Vary?”, Journal of The European Economic Association , 11(3): 495–524. doi:10.1111/jeea.12006
• LaPiere, Richard T., 1934, “Attitudes vs. Actions”, Social Forces , 13(2): 230–237. doi:10.2307/2570339
• Ledyard, John, 1995, “Public Goods Experiments”, in John H. Kagel and Alvin E. Roth (eds.), The Handbook of Experimental Economics , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Lewis, David, 1969, Convention: A Philosophical Study , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. doi:10.1002/9780470693711
• –––, 1975, “Languages and Language”, in Language, Mind, and Knowledge , ( Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science , 6), Keith Gunderson (ed.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 3–35. [ Lewis 1975 available online ]
• López-Pérez, Raúl, 2008, “Aversion to Norm-Breaking: A Model”, Games and Economic Behavior , 64(1): 237–267. doi:10.1016/j.geb.2007.10.009
• Mackay, Charles, 1841, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds , N. Stone (ed.), Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 1995.
• Mackie, G., 1996, “Ending Footbinding and Infibulation: A Convention Account”, American Sociological Review , 61(6): 999–1017. doi:10.2307/2096305
• Matza, David, 1964, Delinquency and Drift , New York: Wiley.
• Maynard Smith, J. and G. R. Price, 1973, “The Logic of Animal Conflict”, Nature , 246(5427): 15–18. doi:10.1038/246015a0
• Miller, Dale T. and Rebecca K. Ratner, 1996, “The Power of the Myth of Self-Interest”, in Leo Montada and Melvin J. Lerner (eds.), Current Societal Concerns About Justice , New York: Plenum Press. doi:10.1007/978-1-4757-9927-9_3
• Muldoon, Ryan, 2017, “Perspectives, Norms and Agency”, Social Philosophy and Policy, 34(1): 260–276. doi:10.1017/S0265052517000127
• –––, 2018a, “Understanding Norms and Changing Them”, Social Philosophy and Policy, 35(1): 128–148. doi:10.1017/S0265052518000092
• –––, 2018b, “Norms, Nudges, and Autonomy”, In: Boonin, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-93907-0_18
• –––, 2020, “Social Norms and Social Order”, in: Chartier and Van Schoelandt (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Anarchy and Anarchist Thought . Routledge.
• Muldoon, R., Lisciandra, C., Bicchieri, C., Hartmann, S., & Sprenger, J., 2014, “On the emergence of descriptive norms”, Politics, Philosophy & Economics , 13(1): 3–22. doi:10.1177/1470594X12447791
• Muldoon, R., Lisciandra, C. & Hartmann, S., 2014, “Why are there descriptive norms? Because we looked for them”, Synthese 191, 4409–4429. doi:10.1007/s11229-014-0534-y
• Nachbar, J.H., 1990, “‘Evolutionary’ Selection Dynamics in Games: Convergence and Limit Properties”, International Journal of Game Theory , 19(1): 59–89. doi:10.1007/BF01753708
• North, Douglass C., 1990, “A Transaction Cost Theory of Politics” Journal of Theoretical Politics , 2(4): 355–367. doi:10.1177/0951692890002004001
• O’Gorman, Hubert J., 1975, “Pluralistic Ignorance and White Estimates of White Support for Racial Segregation”, Public Opinion Quarterly , 39(3): 313–330. doi:10.1086/268231
• Olson, Mancur, 1965 [1971], The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups , revised edition, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Ostrom, Elinor, 2000, “Collective Action and The Evolution of Social Norms”, Journal of Economic Perspectives , 14(3): 137–158. doi:10.1257/jep.14.3.137
• Pagel, Elaine, 2003, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas , New York: Vintage Books.
• Parsons, Talcott, 1951, The Social System , New York: Routledge.
• –––, 1937 [1968], The Structure of Social Action. A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers , New York, London: Free Press.
• Parsons, Talcott and Edward A. Shils, 1951, Towards a General Theory of Action , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Posner, Eric A., 2000, Law and Social Norms , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Prentice, Deborah A. and Dale T. Miller, 1993, “Pluralistic Ignorance and Alcohol Use on Campus: Some Consequences of Misperceiving the Social Norm”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 64(2): 243–56. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.64.2.243
• Rabin, Matthew, 1993, “Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics”, American Economic Review , 83(5): 1281–1302.
• Reuben, Ernesto and Arno Riedl, 2013, “Enforcement of Contribution Norms in Public Good Games with Heterogeneous Populations”, Games and Economic Behavior , 77(1): 122–137. doi:10.1016/j.geb.2012.10.001
• Robinson, Claude E., 1932, Straw Votes: A Study of Political Prediction , New York: Columbia University Press.
• Rommetveit, Ragnar, 1955, Social Norms and Roles: Explorations in the Psychology of Enduring Social Pressures with Empirical Contributions from Inquiries into Religious Attitudes and Sex Roles of Adolescents from Some Districts in Western Norway , Oslo: Akedemisk Forlag.
• Schelling, Thomas C., 1960, The Strategy of Conflict , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• –––, 1978, Micromotives and Macrobehavior , New York: Norton.
• Schram, Arthur and Gary Charness, 2015, “Inducing Social Norms in Laboratory Allocation Choices”, Management Science , 61(7): 1531–1546. doi:10.1287/mnsc.2014.2073
• Scott, John Finley, 1971, Internalization of Norms: A Sociological Theory of Moral Commitment , Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Sherif, Muzafer, 1936, The Psychology of Social Norms , New York: Harper.
• Skyrms, Brian, 1996, Evolution of the Social Contract , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511806308
• –––, 2004, The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139165228
• Stigler, George J. and Gary S. Becker, 1977, “De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum”, American Economic Review , 67(2): 76–90.
• Sugden, Robert, 1986 [2004], The Economics of Rights, Co-operation and Welfare , second edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
• –––, 2000, “The Motivating Power of Expectations”, in Julian Nida-Rümelin and Wolfgang Spohn (eds.), Practical Rationality, Rules, and Structure , Dordrecht: Kluwer. doi:10.1007/978-94-015-9616-9_7
• Tajfel, Henri, 1973, “The Roots of Prejudice: Cognitive Aspects”, in Psychology and Race , Peter Watson (ed.), Chicago: Aldine.
• –––, 1981, Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Taylor, Peter D. and Leo B. Jonker, 1978, “Evolutionary Stable Strategies and Game Dynamics”, Mathematical Biosciences , 40(1–2): 145–156. doi:10.1016/0025-5564(78)90077-9
• Thibaut, John W. and Harold H. Kelley, 1959, The Social Psychology of Groups , New York: Wiley.
• Thrasher, John, 2018, “Evaluating bad norms” Social Philosophy and Policy, 35(1): 196–216. doi:10.1017/S0265052518000055
• Thrasher, J., & Handfield, T., 2018, “Honor and Violence”, Hum Nat 29, 371–389. doi:10.1007/s12110-018-9324-4
• Trivers, Robert L., 1971, “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism”, Quarterly Review of Biology , 46(1): 35–57. doi:10.1086/406755
• –––, 1985, Social Evolution , Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin/Cummings.
• Turnbull, C. M., 1972, The Mountain People , New York: Touchstone.
• Turner, John C., Michael A. Hogg, Penelope J. Oakes, Stephen D. Reicher, and Margaret S. Wetherell, 1987, Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-Categorization Theory , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Ullmann-Margalit, Edna, 1977, The Emergence of Norms , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Vanderschraaf, Peter, 1995, “Convention as Correlated Equilibrium”, Erkenntnis , 42(1): 65–87. doi:10.1007/BF01666812
• Warner, Lyle G. and Melvin L. DeFleur, 1969, “Attitude as An Interactional Concept: Social Constraint and Social Distance as Intervening Variables Between Attitudes and Action”, American Sociological Review , 34(2): 153–169. doi:10.2307/2092174
• Wicker, Allan W., 1969, “Attitude versus Actions: The Relationship of Verbal and Overt Behavioral Responses to Attitude Objects”, A Journal of Social Issues , 25(4): 41–78. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.1969.tb00619.x
• Wrong, Dennis H., 1961, “The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology”, American Sociological Review , 26(2): 183–193. doi:10.2307/2089854
• Wuthnow, Robert, 1991, Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Xiao, Erte and Cristina Bicchieri, 2010, “When Equality Trumps Reciprocity”, Journal of Economic Psychology , 31(3): 456–470. doi:10.1016/j.joep.2010.02.001
• Young, H. Peyton, 1993, “The Evolution of Conventions”, Econometrica , 61(1): 57–84. doi:10.2307/2951778
• –––, 1998a, “Social Norms and Economic Welfare”, European Economic Review , 42(3–5): 821–830. doi:10.1016/S0014-2921(97)00138-4
• –––, 1998b, Individual Strategy and Social Structure: An Evolutionary Theory of Institutions , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Arló-Costa, Horacio and Arthur Paul Pedersen, “ Social Norms, Rational Choice and Belief Change ”, manuscript, Carnegie Mellon Research Showcase.
• Axelrod, Robert, 1992, “ How to Promote Cooperation ”, Current Contents—Social and Behavioral Sciences , 44: 10 (November 2, 1992); this is a scan of the version that appeared in Current Contents—Arts and Humanities , 23: 16 (November 9, 1992).
• Selected Papers on Social Norms at EconPapers .
• Social Norm , entry in Wikipedia .

altruism | belief | common knowledge | convention | evolution | game theory | game theory: evolutionary | morality: and evolutionary biology | normative cognition, psychology of | social institutions

Acknowledgments

A portion of section 6 of this entry has been adapted from “Game-Theoretic Accounts of Social Norms”, by Cristina Bicchieri and Alessandro Sontuoso, in The Handbook of Experimental Game Theory , Mónica Capra, Rachel Croson, Tanya Rosenblatt, and Mary Rigdon (eds.), Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020.

Copyright © 2023 by Cristina Bicchieri < cb36 @ sas . upenn . edu > Ryan Muldoon < ryan . muldoon @ gmail . com > Alessandro Sontuoso < sontuoso @ sas . upenn . edu >

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2023 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Norms and Values In Sociology: Definition & Examples

Charlotte Nickerson

Research Assistant at Harvard University

Undergraduate at Harvard University

Charlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Saul McLeod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

Societies work or function because each individual member of that society plays particular roles and each role carries a status and norms which are informed by the values and beliefs of the culture of that society. The process of learning these roles and the norms and values appropriate to them from those around us is called socialisation .

How Are Norms and Values Different?

Values are the basic beliefs that guide the actions of individuals, while norms are the expectations that society has for people’s behavior. In other words, values tell individuals what is right or wrong, while norms tell individuals what is acceptable or not.

Values are more abstract and universal than norms, meaning they exist independently of any specific culture or society. Norms, on the other hand, are specific to a particular culture or society, and are essentially action-guiding rules, specifying concretely the things that must be done or omitted.

Additionally, values tend to be passed down from generation to generation, while norms can change relatively quickly.

In short, the values we hold are general behavioral guidelines. They tell us what we believe is right or wrong, for example, but that does not tell us how we should behave appropriately in any given social situation. This is the part played by norms in the overall structure of our social behavior.

However, there is often a lot of overlap between norms and values. For example, one of most of society’s norms is that one should not kill other people.

This norm is also a value, it is something that societies believe is morally wrong (McAdams, 2001).

What Are Norms?

Social norms are specific rules dictating how people should act in a particular situation, values are general ideas that support the norm”. There are four types of norm we can distinguish:

1. Folkways

Folkways are norms related to everyday social behavior that are followed out of custom, tradition, or routine. They are less strictly enforced than mores or laws, and violations are typically met with mild social disapproval rather than serious punishment.

Examples of folkways include etiquette and manners, such as holding a door open for someone, saying “please” and “thank you,” or not talking loudly in a library.

They contribute to the social order by facilitating smooth, predictable social interactions.

Folkways are fairly weak kinds of norm. For example, when you meet someone you know on the street, you probably say ”hello” and expect them to respond in a kind way.

If they ignore you, they have broken a friendship norm, which might lead you to reassess your relationship with them.

Mores are much stronger norms, and a failure to conform to them will result in a much stronger social response from the person or people who resent your failure to behave appropriately.

Mores refer to the norms that are widely observed and have great moral significance in a society. These norms are often seen as critical for the proper functioning of a group or society, and violations are typically met with serious societal disapproval or sanctions.

Mores often dictate ethical and moral standards in social behavior, such as honesty, respect for human life, and laws against theft or murder.

Taboos refer to those behaviors, practices, or topics considered profoundly offensive, repugnant, and unacceptable by a society or cultural group.

Societal sanctions, penalties, or ostracism often back these prohibitions.

The origin of taboos can be traced to religious beliefs, societal customs, or moral codes, and they usually touch on areas such as sex, death, dietary habits, and social relations.

The violation of these taboos can lead to severe consequences, which might include social exclusion, legal repercussions, or even physical harm in extreme cases.

4. Laws (legal norms)

A law is an expression of a very strong moral norm that exists to control people’s behavior explicitly.

Punishment for the infraction of legal norms will depend on the norm that has been broken and the culture in which the legal norm develops.

Norms shape attitudes, afford guidelines for actions and establish boundaries for behavior. Moreover, norms regulate character, engender societal cohesion, and aid individuals in striving toward cultural goals.

Conversely, the violation of norms may elicit disapprobation, ridicule, or even ostracization. For instance, while the Klu Klux Klan is legally permitted in the United States, norms pervading many academic, cultural, and religious institutions barely countenance any association with it or any espousal of its racist and antisemitic propaganda.

Consequently, we see the potency of a norm condemning certain viewpoints being promoted through informal means even in the absence of any equivalent formal counterparts.

What Are Values?

Values are beliefs that we have about what is important, both to us and to society as a whole. A value, therefore, is a belief (right or wrong) about the way something should be.

Values are essential in validating norms; normative rules without reference to underlying values lack motivation and justification. Meanwhile, without corresponding norms, values lack concrete direction and execution (McAdams, 2001).

While the common values of societies can change overtime, this process is usually slow. This means these values tend to be appropriate for their historical period (Merton, 1994).

There are still commonly shared values within societies, but they become generalized, a more general underpinning for social practices.

Durkheim notes that value consensus continues to exist in modern societies but in a weaker form because industrialization has resulted in people having greater access to a greater variety of knowledge and ideas, e.g., through the mass media and science.

Barnard, A., & Burgess, T. (1996).  Sociology explained . Cambridge University Press.

Berkowitz, A. D. (2005). An overview of the social norms approach. Changing the culture of college drinking: A socially situated health communication campaign, 1, 193-214.

Bicchieri, C. (2011). Social Norms . Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Boudon, R. (2017). The origin of values: Sociology and philosophy of beliefs. Routledge.

Carter, P. M., Bingham, C. R., Zakrajsek, J. S., Shope, J. T., & Sayer, T. B. (2014). Social norms and risk perception: Predictors of distracted driving behavior among novice adolescent drivers. Journal of Adolescent Health, 54 (5), S32-S41.

Chung, A., & Rimal, R. N. (2016). Social norms : A review.  Review of Communication Research, 4, 1-28.

Frese, M. (2015). Cultural practices, norms, and values .  Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 46 (10), 1327-1330.

Hechter, M., & Opp, K. D. (Eds.). (2001). Social norms .

Lapinski, M. K., & Rimal, R. N. (2005). An explication of social norms .  Communication theory, 15 (2), 127-147.

Merton, R. K. (1994, March). Durkheim”s division of labor in society. In Sociological Forum (Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 17-25). Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers.

Moi, T. (2001). What is a woman?: and other essays. Oxford University Press on Demand.

Reno, R. R., Cialdini, R. B., & Kallgren, C. A. (1993). The transsituational influence of social norms. Journal of personality and social psychology, 64 (1), 104.

Sunstein, C. R. (1996). Social norms and social roles . Colum. L. Rev., 96, 903.

Young, H. P. (2007). Social Norms .

102 Examples of Social Norms (List)

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

Learn about our Editorial Process

Social norms are the unspoken rules that govern how people interact with each other. They can vary from culture to culture, and even from group to group within a culture.

Some social norms are so ingrained in our psyches that we don’t even think about them; we just automatically do what is expected of us. Social norms examples include covering your mouth when you cough, waiting your turn, and speaking softly in a library.

Breaking societal norms can sometimes lead to awkward or uncomfortable situations. For example, if you’re in a library where it’s considered rude to talk on your cell phone, and you answer a call, you’ll likely get some disapproving looks from the people around you.

Understanding the social norms of the place you’re visiting is an important part of cultural etiquette to show respect for the people around you.

Examples of Social Norms

• Greeting people when you see them.
• Saying “thank you” for favors.
• Holding the door open for others.
• Standing up when someone else enters the room.
• Offering to help someone carrying something heavy.
• Speaking quietly in public places.
• Waiting in line politely.
• Respecting other people’s personal space.
• Disposing of trash properly.
• Refraining from eating smelly foods in public.
• Paying for goods or services with a smile.
• Complimenting others on their appearance or achievements.
• Asking others about their day or interests.
• Avoiding gossip and rumors.
• Volunteering to help others in need.
• Saying “I’m sorry” when you’ve made a mistake.
• Supporting others in their time of need.
• Participating in group activities.
• Respecting authority figures.
• Being on time for important engagements.
• Avoiding interrupting others when they are speaking.
• Showing interest in other people’s lives and experiences.
• Refraining from using offensive language or gestures.
• Being honest and truthful with others at all times.
• Treating others with kindness and respect, regardless of their social status or background.
• Putting the needs of others before your own.
• Participating in charitable works and activities.
• Helping others whenever possible.
• Welcoming guests into your home or place of business.
• Nodding, smiling, and looking people in the eyes to show you are listening to them.
• Following the laws and regulations of your country.
• Respecting the rights and beliefs of others.
• Cooperating with others in order to achieve common goals.
• Being tolerant and understanding of different viewpoints.
• Displaying good manners and etiquette in social interactions.
• Waiting in line for your turn.
• Taking your shoes off before walking into someone’s house.
• Putting your dog on a leash in parks and other public spaces.
• Letting the elderly or pregnant people take your seat on a bus.

Social Norms for Students

• Arrive to class on time and prepared.
• Pay attention and take notes.
• Stay quiet when other students are working.
• Raise your hand if you have a question.
• Do your homework and turn it in on time.
• Participate in class discussions.
• Respect your teachers and classmates.
• Follow the school’s rules and regulations.
• Use appropriate language and behavior.
• Ask permission to be excused if you need to go to the bathroom.
• Go to the bathroom before class begins.
• Keep your workspace clean.
• Do not plagiarize or cheat.
• Wait your turn to speak.
• Ask permission to use other people’s supplies.
• Include all your peers in your group when doing group work.

Related: Classroom Rules for Middle School

Social Norms while Dining Out

• Wait to be seated.
• Remain seated until everyone is served.
• Don’t reach across the table.
• Use your napkin.
• Don’t chew with your mouth open.
• Don’t talk with your mouth full.
• Keep elbows off the table.
• Use a fork and knife when eating.
• Drink from a glass, not from the bottle or carton.
• Request more bread or butter only if you’re going to eat it all.
• Don’t criticize the food or service.
• Thank your server when you’re finished.
• Leave a tip if you’re satisfied with the service.

Social Norms while using your Phone

• Keep your phone on silent or vibrate mode while in meetings.
• Don’t answer your phone in a public place unless it’s an emergency.
• Don’t talk on the phone while driving.
• Don’t text while driving.
• Don’t take or make calls during class.
• Don’t use your phone in a movie theater.
• Turn off your phone when you’re with someone else.
• Place your phone on airplane mode while flying.
• Do not look at someone else’s phone.
• Ensure your ringtone is inoffensive when in public or around children.

Social Norms in Libraries

• Be quiet and respect the other patrons.
• Don’t talk on your phone.
• Don’t bring food or drinks into the library.
• Don’t sleep in the library.
• Don’t bring pets into the library.
• Return all books to the correct location.
• Don’t mark or damage library books.
• Make sure your cell phone is turned off.
• Return your books on time.

Social Norms in Other Countries

• In France, it is considered polite to kiss acquaintances on both cheeks when meeting them.
• In Japan, it is customary to take your shoes off when entering someone’s home.
• In India, it is considered rude to show the soles of your feet or to point your feet at someone else.
• In Italy, it is common for people to give each other a light kiss on the cheek as a gesture of hello or goodbye.
• In China, it is customary to leave some food on your plate after eating, as a sign of respect for the cook.
• In Spain, it is customary to call elders “Don” or “Doña.”
• In Iceland, it is considered polite to say “thank you” (Takk) after every meal.
• In Thailand, it is customary to remove your shoes before entering a home or temple.
• In Germany, it is customary to shake hands with everyone you meet, both men and women.
• In Argentina, it is customary for people to hug and kiss cheeks as a gesture of hello or goodbye.

Social Norms that Should be Broken

• “ Women should be polite” – Stand up for what you believe in, even if it makes you look bossy.
• “Don’t draw attention to yourself” – Embrace your uniqueness and difference so long as you’re respectful of others.
• “Don’t question your parents or your boss” – Protest bad behavior from people in authority if you know you’re morally right.
• “Mistakes are embarrassing” – It’s okay to make mistakes and be seen to fail. It means you’re making an effort and pushing your boundaries.
• “Respect your elders” – If your elders are engaging in bad behavior, stand up to them and let them know you’re taking note of what they’re doing.

Cultural vs Social Norms

Cultural norms are the customs and traditions that are passed down from one generation to the next. They’re connected to the traditions, values, and practices of a particular culture.

Societal norms, on the other hand, reflect the current social standard for appropriate behavior within a society. In modern multicultural societies, there are different groups with different cultural norms, but they must all agree on a common set of social norms for public spaces.

We also have a concept called group norms , which define how smaller groups – like workplace teams or sports teams – will operate. These might differ from group to group, and are highly dependant on the expectations and standards of the group/team leader.

Norms Change Depending on the Context

Norms are different depending on different contexts, including in different eras, and in different societies. What might be considered polite in one context could be considered rude in another.

For example, norms in the 1950s were much more gendered. Negative gender stereotypes restricted women because it was normative for women to be quiet, polite, and submissive in public. Today, women have much more equality.

Similarly, the norms and taboos in the United States will be very different from those in China. For example, Chinese businessmen are often expected to share expensive gifts during negotiations. In the United States, this could be considered bordering on bribery.

What are the Four Types of Norms?

There are four types of norms : folkways, mores, taboos, and laws.

• Folkways are social conventions that are not strictly enforced, but are generally considered to be polite or appropriate. An example of a folkway is covering your mouth when you sneeze.
• Mores are social conventions that are considered to have a moral dimension. Due to their moral dimension, they’re generally considered to be more important than folkways. Violation of mores can result in social sanctions so they often overlap with laws (mentioned below). An example of a more is not drinking and driving.
• Taboos are considered ‘negative norms’, or things that you should avoid doing. If you do them, you’ll be seen as rude. An example of a taboo is using your phone in a movie theater or spitting indoors.
• Laws are the most formal and serious type of norm. They are usually enforced by the government and can result in criminal penalties if violated. Examples of laws include not stealing from others and not assaulting others.

Conclusion: What are Social Norms?

Social norms are defined as the unspoken rules that help us to get along with others in a polite and respectful manner. It’s important to follow them so that we can maintain a positive social environment for everyone involved. Social norms examples include not spitting indoors, covering your mouth when you sneeze, and shaking hands with everyone you meet.

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 21 Montessori Homeschool Setups
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 101 Hidden Talents Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 15 Green Flags in a Relationship
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 15 Signs you're Burnt Out, Not Lazy

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Essay on Social Norms

Students are often asked to write an essay on Social Norms in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Social Norms

What are social norms.

Social norms are unwritten rules that guide how we act in society. They help people understand what behaviors are acceptable and which ones are not. For example, saying “thank you” when someone helps you is a social norm.

Why Are They Important?

Social norms are crucial because they help societies function smoothly. They make sure people can live together without too much conflict. When everyone follows these norms, it creates a sense of order and predictability.

Different Types

There are many types of social norms, including manners, which are small actions like covering your mouth when you cough. Other norms can be about how to dress for different occasions or how to behave in public places.

Changing Norms

Over time, social norms can change. What was once considered rude may become acceptable, and vice versa. Changes in norms often reflect broader shifts in society’s values and beliefs. For example, using phones at the dinner table might have been rude in the past, but now it’s more accepted.

250 Words Essay on Social Norms

What are social norms, where do social norms come from.

Social norms are learned from our parents, our peers, and the media. We also learn about social norms through our experiences. For example, if we see someone being rude to a waiter, we may learn that it’s not okay to be rude to service workers.

Why Do We Conform to Social Norms?

We conform to social norms because we want to fit in and be accepted by others. We also conform to social norms because we believe that they are the right thing to do.

When Can Social Norms Be Harmful?

Social norms can be harmful when they prevent us from being ourselves or when they lead to discrimination. For example, the social norm of “masculinity” can lead to men feeling pressured to be tough and aggressive, even when they don’t want to be.

How Can We Change Social Norms?

We can change social norms by talking about them, by modeling the behavior we want to see, and by supporting organizations that are working to change social norms.

500 Words Essay on Social Norms

Definition of social norms.

Social norms are the unwritten rules that govern how people behave in a society. They are the expectations that we have for each other, and they help to create a sense of order and predictability in our social interactions. Social norms can vary from culture to culture, and they can change over time.

Examples of Social Norms

Some common examples of social norms include:

Importance of Social Norms

Social norms are important because they help us to interact with each other in a civil and orderly manner. They also help to create a sense of community and belonging. When we follow social norms, we are showing that we are respectful of others and that we value their opinion.

Social Norms and Individual Behavior

Our behavior is often influenced by social norms. For example, if we see others wearing face masks in public, we are more likely to wear one ourselves. This is because we want to conform to the expectations of our society. However, sometimes social norms can conflict with our individual values or beliefs. In these cases, we may need to decide whether to follow the social norm or to act in accordance with our own convictions.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

• DSpace@MIT Home
• MIT Libraries
• Doctoral Theses

Essays on social norms

Other Contributors

Terms of use, description, date issued, collections.

Show Statistical Information

Theory & Science (2007)

Issn: 1527-5558, social norms & law: an introduction.

Patrick S. O�Donnell

I - Social Norms

With sufficient reason it has been said, ‘like cows, social norms are easier to recognize than to define’ (Basu 1998). Social norms are the motley of informal, often unspoken rules, guides and standards of behavior the authority for which is vague if not diffuse, and the communal sanction for which can be swift and cutting. These nonlegal rules and obligations are followed and fulfilled in part because failure to do so brings upon the transgressor such social sanctions as induced feelings of guilt or shame, gossip, shunning, ostracism, and not infrequently, violence. In one sense, to be sure, their authority and power is that of ‘the group,’ i.e., relations between individuals, multiplicity of relations, and relations among those relations (cf. Caws 1984). And that group is phenomenologically captured with ‘the Look’ of ‘the Other,’ the Look symbolizing those sanctions for norm violation that entail a disparaging glance or expression of disapproval or disgust, often as a prelude to shunning, ostracism or violence. This is one reason effective norms typically have strong roots in the soil of small groups and communities, as sanctions are ready at hand and swiftly applied. And yet, as Philip Pettit argues, sanctions or rewards for norm noncompliance or compliance need not involve intentional expression through word or deed: ‘…[P]eople are rewarded by being thought well of, and punished by being thought badly of, whether or not those attitudes are intentionally expressed. And I can know that I am rewarded or punished in such a manner by others—I can bask in their good opinion or smart under their bad opinion—without their actually doing anything’ (Pettit 2002, pp. 280-81). The feeling of guilt or shame may make the external enforcement of internalized norms unnecessary. Among the tangible and intangible rewards attached to the compliance with social norms one finds increased esteem, trust and, most importantly, cooperation.

From table manners to rites of passage (from birth to death) marked by routine, solemnity or celebration, conformity to social norms can bring in their wake social order and successful collective action, while creating and maintaining cultural meaning(s). Similar to the Sartrian notion of the practico-inert (Caws 1984, pp. 155-88), social norms can appear inscribed with the necessities of nature, their exigencies unavoidable and ubiquitous, emblematic of both obstacle and opportunity. Historically, and at least up until the modern period, norms have changed rather slowly; yet our own time retains something of the stability and persistence of norms: ‘Where faddism is the norm, the rapid succession of fads indicates norm stability not instability’ (Posner and Rasmusen 1999, p. 379). Still, norms can and often do rapidly change, a comforting thought when considering norms of a perverse or pernicious variety (e.g. the duel or vendetta). Norm entrepreneurs responsible for initiating bandwagon effects and norm cascades (Sunstein 1997, p. 38), for example, can change norms for better and worse.

Some social norms are universal (e.g., the prohibition of incest), while others are more localized, what Elster (1989) calls ‘group specific:’ owning a Volvo station wagon among middle class ‘soccer moms’ in Santa Barbara, California (at any rate, before the advent of the luxury SUV), or workers and managers with differing views on what constitutes ‘fair distribution’ (p. 99). Social norms, as such, are neither good nor bad, but rather become benefit or burden insofar as they facilitate or constrain behavior guided by moral values, practical reasons or instrumental ends: ‘Social norms do coordinate expectations. They may or may not help people to achieve cooperation’ (p. 97). The behavior guided by these norms may be strongly reinforced by self-interest, as is the case with group norms of ‘exclusion’ and ‘difference’ (Hardin 1995). Russell Hardin argues that self-interest is in fact paramount in those self-enforcing universalistic norms sustained by dyadic and small number interactions, like promise-keeping and truth-telling, wherein one will have a long-term interest in maintaining the relationship served by the norm. Moreover, universalistic norms without dyadic sanctions or enforcement are often comparatively weak, as would be a norm of trustworthiness in a large society.

One is hard-pressed to argue with C. Fred Alford’s (1994) contention that ‘to exclude, ridicule, ignore, belittle, or criticize an outsider is a time-honored way of creating cohesion within a group’ (p. 29). And questions of the dynamics of group relations, toward enhancing cohesion or otherwise, might interest us if only because

impressive clinical evidence indicates that regardless of the individual’s maturity and psychological integration, certain group conditions tend to bring on regression and activate primitive psychological levels. Small, closed, and unstructured groups—as well as groups that are large, minimally structured, and lacking clearly defined tasks to relate them to their environment—tend to bring about immediate regression in the individual, a regression that consists in the activation of defensive operations and interpersonal processes that reflect primitive object relations (Kernberg 1998, p. 7).

The role of social norms vis-à-vis such fine-grained group-psychological dynamics is largely terra incognita in the legal literature .

The operation of social norms often takes place, as it were, behind our backs, with some degree of self-consciousness regarding norms surfacing in cases of egregious or frequent norm violation or, for instance, when a subcultural group, such as a gang, draws attention to itself through its regular and flagrant (or flamboyant) violation of popular or culturally predominant norms, thereby remaining true to the dominant norm within their group. As Cass Sunstein (1997) notes, in their own way, individual members of such groups ‘may be the most committed of conformists.’ Collective awareness or reflexivity regarding many social norms thus appears, in the first instance, dependent upon norm violation. Brennan and Pettit (2004) accordingly speak of

norms that most of us are barely conscious of taking our guidance from, since they are not often supported in a surrounding discourse of general commendation and critique and are not reflected in levels of common or mutual awareness. They may include the norms that govern turn taking in conversation, the use of eyes in relation to others, the distance at which one stands in speaking to another, and a host of such unnoticed but not merely mechanical regularities (p. 282).

And while the internalization of social norms may take place below the surface of consciousness, what bears repeating is the proposition suggested at the outset by Pettit and reiterated here by the economist Kaushik Basu (1998): ‘It is worth adding that at times social norms can get internalized to the extent that they do not need social enforcement, and are adhered to by individuals of their own accord’ (p. 2). The absence of social enforcement is a form of direct motivation, whereas the use of sanctions is a form of indirect motivation for norm compliance. We have sufficient warrant at this juncture to draw a tentative conclusion to the effect that (in some sense) social norms are capable of choreographing much of our lives in the daily round: the intriguing question revolving around the identification of who or what, in the end, is the choreographer? Who is authorized or qualified to change the choreography? Are all choreographies of equal significance or worth? What are the relevant criteria for assessing various choreographies?

Social norms are in fact omnipresent: from the bedroom to the boardroom, and often obdurate and opaque: after all, traditions might be thought of as those social norms that have the ‘sanction of time.’ But accounting for the tenacity and opacity of traditions has proven conspicuously elusive to social scientists and professional philosophers. While it serves some purposes to distinguish social norms from tradition (Elster 1989), it’s often quite difficult to make hard and fast categorical distinctions between traditions and customs on one hand, and social norms on the other, as there’s clearly a strong (Wittgensteinian) family resemblance if not genetic relation between all three phenomena.

II – Legal Theory and Social Norms

Heretofore, and perhaps by default, the study of social norms has largely been the prerogative of anthropologists and sociologists. Today, however, legal theorists, including law-and-economics devotees, have engaged in trans-disciplinary cognitive border raids and trades, one consequence of which is that by ‘the mid-1990s, norms became one of the hottest topics in the legal academy’ (Ellickson 1998). Legal scholars in the areas of constitutional law, tort law, contract law, and criminal law have all looked to social norms as a possible means to address significant or recalcitrant problems in their respective areas specialization (see Massaro in Bandes 1999). In part this interest in social norms was a direct consequence of learning the range of utility for rational choice models in the law-and-economics genre. In little over a decade’s time, the interest in social norms has noticeably cooled, conspicuously in criminal law, the one legal domain where the descriptive findings of social norm models may have had the least presumptive relevance for proposals designed to change targeted behaviors. In this instance, programmatic engineering or tinkering with social norms has proven in effective if only because ‘criminal law typically enters where social norms’ hold is strongest among nonoffenders but is, for complex reasons, not powerful enough to deter offenders’ (Massaro in Bandes 1999, p. 91). Robert Weisburg (2003) makes the selfsame point in an especially pellucid article: ‘in its loose eclecticism, norms analysis is peculiarly incongruent with the realm of criminal law, because the criminals society most and most rightly fears, exhibit both a pathological indifference to, and a compulsive inability to obey, the social norms that supposedly guide good behavior’ (p. 470).

Legal minds still infatuated with social norms that rely on a relatively weak grasp of the mechanisms of complex emotions, would do well to heed an argument from Martha Nussbaum in Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame and the Law (2004). Nussbaum finds that one of the emotions criminal law theorists have given inordinate attention to, namely shame, ‘is likely to be normatively unreliable in public life, despite its potential for good’ (p. 15). Indeed, those who have predicated their proposed criminal law reforms upon putative shaming mechanisms have conspicuously failed to realize ‘how labile, complex, and ill understood this basic emotion is’ (Massaro in Bandes 1999, pp. 91-92). Even John Braithwaite’s (1989) fairly nuanced criminological theory of ‘reintegrative shaming,’ which Nussbaum is otherwise sympathetic to, is criticized for failing to sufficiently distinguish guilt from shame. She would in fact simply re-classify his proposal within the (Kantian) ‘universe of guilt punishments’ (pp. 240-41). In short, although some forms of shame undoubtedly have positive ethical value, cognizance of the various pathologies that may be prompted by social shaming should preclude facile reliance on this emotion in the propagation of social norms designed to be conducive to individual flourishing and the common good (cf. Markel, 2001 and 2007).

And while Nussbaum does explore some cross-cultural issues in the study of such emotions as disgust and shame, much of the literature on social norms has a rather parochial and provincial quality to it. This of course need not be a liability insofar as the legal order is likewise parochial or provincial, but in an era of globalization, with transnational (e.g. the European Union) and international legal orders, arbitrary or ill-considered national and cultural circumscription of the social scientific and scholarly work in this regard may render this literature irrelevant to many of our more salient or urgent economic, political, and environmental issues and problems. Moreover, beginning with the seminal studies of Solomon and de Sousa, and most recently evidenced, for example, in works by Ben-Ze’ev, Elster, Goldie, and Nussbaum, there is a growing body of excellent philosophical and psychological studies of the emotions. Unfortunately this literature has yet to systematically treat the relation between the emotions and social norms in a manner both befitting the concerns of legal practitioners and reflective of the clarity indispensable for any legal theory with philosophical integrity. No doubt the disciplinary division of labor and the trends toward increased cognitive specialization can be invoked as prominent explanatory variables. In this respect, Nussbaum’s Hiding from Humanity, alongside the work of Robert Solomon (below), is uncommon and timely, perhaps portending more studies along these lines capable of meeting such desiderata

A rather succinct description of the generation of social norms is found in Brennan and Pettit’s The Economy of Esteem: An Essay on Civil and Political Society (2004): “Norms materialize as regularities in social life, because there is general approval for the pattern of behavior involved, disapproval for the failure to elicit that behavior, or the expectation of such general approval or disapproval” (p. 267). In this account, social norms are created and persist with the ‘intangible hand’ of an ‘economy of esteem,’ a hand whose prints are distinct from both the ‘invisible hand of the marketplace’ and the ‘iron hand of the state.’ That said, we are reminded that ‘both the institutions of the market and the law themselves presuppose and depend upon a regime of robust supportive norms’ (p. 265). While Brennan and Pettit present us with a more than plausible picture of the generation (the how and why) of social norms, they don’t really endeavor to explain the processes by which these norms are internalized. This explanatory lacuna has, however, been courageously addressed in an article by Robert Cooter (1996), well and succinctly summarized here by his sometime collaborator, Melvin Eisenberg (1999):

[Cooter] focuses on three processes by which social norms are internalized: a Freudian process, in which the repressed memory of parental sanctions for childhood transgressions becomes transmuted into an adult superego; a Piagetian process, in which children perfect their ability to internalize norms as they acquire the capacity for general reasoning; and a Weberian process in which actors internalize the norms of social roles (pp. 15-16).

I leave it to others to assess the cogency of Cooter’s explanatory account of the internalization of social norms, an account of merit owing to its recognition of the need for some sort of social-psychological explanation in the process of norm internalization, consolidation, and persistence.

As much of human behavior is subject to norm constraints and the penalties attached to their violation (be it shame, guilt, shunning, exclusion, ostracism, or emotional and physical violence), or the rewards attached to their compliance (increased esteem, trust, cooperative behavior), it helps to distinguish between moral, social and legal norms. For our purposes, we’ll elide the differences between the first two (i.e., ignoring moral norms as such), assuming that some social norms are at the same time moral norms or contain moral principles, and focus instead on the distinction between social norms in general and legal norms in particular, highlighting the contrast between social norms and those legal norms directly or indirectly associated with the institutions or prerogatives of the State.

Whilst the distinction between social and legal norms may be transparent with respect to the functions and responsibilities of the State, it is the interaction or precise relation between these two kinds of norms that are the particular foci of legal theorists. The precise locus of theoretical concern is analogous to the differences in contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy between the Rawls of a Theory of Justice (1971) and the Nozick of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). Thus libertarians (Nozick) by temperament are inclined to appreciate that set of collective action problems seemingly solved by social norms apart from or irrespective of the State, while contemporary liberals (Rawls) call upon the State and its legal norms to—so to speak—fill in the gaps left by insufficient or inefficient norm compliance (yet both Rawls and Nozick draw upon this or that feature of Kantian ethics, and both are Liberals in the philosophical and historical sense).

However, economists of a libertarian bent, like neoclassical economists in general, rely on a rational choice methodology (on which, see Amadeae 2003, Cox 2004, Hausman 2003, Sen 2002, Green and Shapiro 2005, and Udehn 2003) that privileges preferences produced by ‘rational self-interest’ and thus is not, in general, well-suited to an appreciation of social norms (yet see Eric Posner below). There is increasing recognition of this fact from within economics:

Although sociologists and anthropologists have long understood the central role played by norms, economists have traditionally viewed them as peripheral to economic decisions (notable exceptions are Thomas Schelling, George Akerlof, and Robert Sugden). The fact is, however, the norms influence terms of employment, the amount that people save and consume, attitudes toward debt, decisions about when to retire, and a host of other economic variables. Even property rights are governed to a considerable extent by social expectations about who is entitled to what [references omitted] (Young 2005).

Whatever the limitations of rational choice methodology—and those are perhaps more apparent in political science and sociology than in economics—it is hard to quibble with Elster’s conclusion that ‘the continued dominance of neoclassical theory is ensured by the fact that one can’t beat something with nothing’ (Elster 1986, p. 27).

The theoretical debate here is chock full of practical implications and consequences for public policy, as all sides well realize. The fundamental point from a public policy perspective is that any theory of institutional design or regulation must minimally consider two questions: 1) what existing social norms work with or against our regulatory (legal) purposes, and 2) the likelihood that a regulatory regime will give rise to yet new norms or increase the salience of otherwise weak or dormant norms (Pettit 2002). Needless to say, these are not tasks for the sociologically timid or politically faint of heart, but remain the sorts of questions legal theorists are constitutionally equipped—with the requisite transdisciplinary sophistication—to consider.

A social norm may arise or persist because of its contribution to solving a co-ordination problem, for instance when it supports or facilitates a ‘convention’ (Lewis 1969) wherein members of a group realize a benefit by conforming to a behavioral regularity (thereby achieving the equilibrium so enchanting to neo-classical economists). Norms that reinforce self-interest (e.g., everyone driving on the right side of the road, or the left as the case may be), while assisting in the formation of equilibrium, are what Basu terms, appropriately enough, ‘equilibrium-selection norm[s].’ Such norms are the bailiwick of economists, given their behavioral affinity with the exiting topical foci of neo-classical economics. It is sometimes difficult to ascertain exactly which norms support or go against self-interest, for what at first may appear to be an instance of the latter, may turn out on closer inspection to be yet another example of the former:

a person in need can expect help from other members of the tribe or the village, the explicit understanding being that the help will be reciprocated at other times when fortunes are reversed. This norm can be thought of as a rationality-limiting norm [Basu using ‘rationality’ here in the constricted sense of the economist] since the person who helps out the destitute seems to do so against his self -interest. But we can take a long-term perspective on this and argue that if an individual refuses to help when it is his turn, the whole system can collapse. And so, in a manner akin to the repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma, the norm of reciprocity may be an equilibrium-selection norm (Basu 1998, p.5).

Insofar as social norms have permeated virtually every nook and cranny of collective behavior, their significance for solving collective action problems is not surprising. It is the precise delineation of that role and its mechanisms vis-à-vis the law, however, that causes all the trouble, as a comparison between the work of Cass Sunstein and Eric Posner will make clear below. Stefan Sciaraffa (2005) here explains how social norms are germane to application of the negligence standard in tort law:

Most cases in tort law are governed by the negligence standard. Under this standard, a defendant is liable for injury to another only if the injury resulted from her ignorance. Negligence is a failure to meet a standard of reasonable care. In some contexts, courts have held that actions in conformity with a prevailing social norm meet, as a matter of law, the standard of reasonable care (the per se rule). In other contexts, the courts have held that the fact that the defendant has followed the prevailing social norms is evidence for the jury to consider in determining whether the defendant has met the standard of reasonable care (the evidentiary rule). In yet other contexts, courts have held that the defendant’s following the prevailing social norms has no evidentiary value whatsoever (the no-evidence rule). The modern rule of custom rejects the per se rule in favor of the evidentiary rule save for one major exception—cases of medical malpractice (and perhaps other cases of professional malpractice). A medical professional’s conformity to or failure to follow the norms of the medical community constitutes per se reasonable care or negligence, respectively.

And in addition to the fact that it is not easy to draw a sharp distinction between social norms and law, the relation between them is not simply or only a matter of preferring one over the other (non-coercion v. coercion), as roles (father, merchant, citizen, etc.) and their attendant norms can be (and frequently are) fortified by legal requirements: indeed, some roles ‘may even owe their existence to law’ (Sunstein 1997, p. 43). So law may, indirectly or circuitously, contribute to the creation and maintenance of social norms, not simply replace them, as was the case historically with some norms of retribution, such as the blood feud.

In addition to the creation, maintenance or elimination of social norms, and the direct invocation of social norms (as in the example above from tort law), the law may also serve as a medium of sublimation: ‘often violent demands for vengeance may be sublimated and satisfied by law’ (Solomon in Bandes 1999, p. 124). This is a provocative thesis, distinguishable from the aforementioned concerns of Massaro and Weisburg. Robert Solomon, prominent among a select group of philosophers responsible for making the study of the emotions respectable in contemporary analytic philosophy (beyond its prior obsession with epistemology and philosophy of language) persuasively argues that ‘vengeance is not just the desire to harm but the desire to punish for good reason and to the right measure’ (p. 142). Solomon elaborates:

In many cultures (let us not leap to label them ‘primitive’), vengeance and avenging wrongs are a matter of personal and family honor. In civil society, vengeance and avenging wrongs are a matter of personal and family honor. In civil society, vengeance and avenging wrongs become matters of common justice and law, but they are not thereby rendered irrelevant to the proceedings (p. 129).

And why are they not irrelevant? ‘It is the heart of vengeance as well as the basis for criminal law, the idea that the punishment should “fit” the crime’ (p. 137). Solomon concludes that while vengeance admittedly is a ‘powerful and therefore dangerous passion,’ its sublimation in both civil and criminal law helps us to appreciate its ‘capacity for rationality, prudence, and cultural shaping’ as well (p. 144).

III – Social Norms and Public Policy

Cass Sunstein believes government should have a more explicit or avowed—more deliberate (read ‘deliberative,’ although Sunstein is not always clear as to what is uniquely deliberative about the democratic mechanisms and processes assumed or cited)—role in norm management or governance. To cite just one of many possible examples, a change in the norms that surround the consumption of alcohol has the potential to dramatically reduce the risk of illness and death associated with that consumption. Like Ronald Dworkin, Sunstein is sensitive to what he calls the law’s ‘expressive function,’ that is, law’s capacity to embody or express our deepest (or highest) social values and commitments, for instance, autonomy or self-determination, liberty and equality, human rights and social welfare or well-being. In sum, these democratic values and principles, like the ideal (collective self-rule) of democracy itself, should be reflected or realized in, exemplified or approached by, the methods, practices and processes of democratic legal regulation and governance. A liberal democratic regime, argues Sunstein, should work (perhaps as part of a paternalistic obligation) to eliminate or transform those social norms that are clear impediments to a fuller instantiation or realization of liberal and democratic values and commitments or, more specifically if not controversially, those norms that manifestly inhibit the creation or maintenance of the requisite conditions for and propitious to human flourishing ( eudaimonia ), or to the ideal of moral and political autonomy (conceived in terms of self-direction or self-governance, and best construed as a developmental achievement or outcome) (cf.: Wall 2003, and Norton 1991).

To the extent that putatively private preferences or choices are determined by (anti-democratic) social norms—that is, norms that interfere with the rational pursuit of our freely (i.e., autonomously) expressed rational choices and preferences—the government finds (sufficient, legitimate, justifiable) reason for (paternalistic) intervention. One way to conceptualize such intervention comes courtesy of the title of a recent paper by Sunstein and Thaler (2003): ‘Libertarian Paternalism is not an Oxymoron.’ Individual and collective preferences, as captured by rational choice models of behavior, may accord unwarranted weight to perverse preferences (‘adaptive preferences’ in the literature: see Elster 1983, and Nussbaum 2000, pp. 111-166), that is, preferences shaped by existing anti-democratic or anti-eudaimonistic social norms:

For example, women who are systematically denied roles in public life or equal shares of consumption goods may learn not to want these things. Their level of preference satisfaction may then be much higher than their level of well-being. It seems that those who are benevolent need to consider not just preferences, but the origins of preferences or the justifiability of preferences. Women who have been systematically oppressed may not have strong preferences for individual liberties, the same wages that men earn, or even for protection from domestic violence. But liberties, high wages, and protection from domestic violence may make them better off than giving them what they prefer. Satisfying preferences that result from coercion, manipulation, or ‘perverse’ preference formation mechanisms may not make people better off (Hausman and McPherson 1996, p. 79).

Thus one might see how particular social norms could be held liable for manipulable or perverse preference formation, what Basu (2000) has labeled ‘preference-changing norms’ (p. 73). Robert Goodin (1995, pp. 132-148) argues that richer ‘utility’ information may suffice for ‘laundering’ such ‘dirty’ preferences, such information to include knowledge of the causal origin and mechanisms of entrenchment of the implicated social norms.

In other words, the government might find any number of legitimate or justifiable reasons to intervene on behalf of our deepest (liberally) democratic social values and commitments, recalling that the primary justification for government flows from its capacity to solve collective action problems, whether or not those problems are caused or exacerbated by any social norm: ‘where there is a collective responsibility to coordinate individual behavior in pursuit of some morally important goal, it is legitimate for the collectivity to impose sanctions upon individuals in pursuit of that goal’ (Goodin 1995, p. 40). Were it not for the entrenchment of social norms of reciprocity, work and consumption, or norms of fairness and ‘everyday Kantianism’ (Elster 1989), it appears we would often require recourse to differing degrees of legal coercion or state regulated economic incentives to coordinate our behavior and accomplish many of our collective ends.

The latest and most analytically consistent attempt to understand social norms from within legal theory (of the law-and-economics variety or genre) is proffered by Eric Posner (2000), and is grounded in economics and game theory (loosely, ‘behavioral economics’), the latter a rational choice methodology. We cannot here do justice to the analytical merits of Posner’s ‘signaling game,’ in which people engage in behavioral regularities in order to communicate to others their willingness, fitness or desirability as potential partners in co-operative endeavors. Suffice it to say, a social norm describes behavior that spontaneously emerges in ‘signaling equilibriums’ or behavioral regularities in social interaction. It is in one’s self-interest to earn a ‘reputation’ as a co-operative player (the ‘good’ or cooperative type, as opposed to the ‘bad’ or opportunistic type), and there are many ways to solidify or enhance—signal—one’s reputation (e.g. gift giving).

The simplicity and clarity of Posner’s model for explaining widespread compliance with many social norms suggests that any legal theory worthy of the appellation will be compelled to cite Posner’s model, if only by way of an evaluative or comparative baseline. Posner’s study provides ample reason for proceeding with due care and caution when it comes to government initiated norm change, given the current state of our knowledge about the operation of social norms in post-industrialized affluent societies, and the strong probability that unintended consequences and perverse effects might very well reverse the causal direction of Mandeville’s perverse arrow: from public benefits to private vices.

Ann Carlson (2003) is, like Sunstein, a bit more confident about working with social norms as a tool of public policy, particularly with regard to environmental regulation. Carlson suggests we scrupulously observe the following innocuous if not meager methodological prescriptions: ‘in evaluating the efficacy of social norms as a regulatory tool we should pay close attention to the nature of the social problem at issue, the context in which it arises, and the availability of other regulatory options’ (p. 24). Empirical studies suggest, not surprisingly, that group size and individual payoff are variables that affect the likelihood norms will solve or manage social problems: the smaller the size of the group affected by a social problem, the more likely norms will be an effective antidote; and the larger the economic incentive for group members to address a problem, the more likely social norms will prove a successful policy prescription: ‘Thus norms should work best in small-number, large-payoff groups’ (p. 4, cf. Ellickson 1991). This might be seen as illustrating the proposition that signaling mechanisms intrinsic to Posner’s model are subject to something like economies of scale, although the locus of precise tipping points, that is, the point at which it is difficult if not impossible for signaling mechanisms to have rippling or reverberative effects is not easy to determine.

IV - Concluding Reflections

Brian Tamanaha (2001) has rightly cautioned legal theorists against confusing (or conflating) the legal system with the creation and maintenance of social order simpliciter (‘law and order’ ideology), otherwise termed the ‘Hobbesian presumption.’ Of course such a warning would be unnecessary in anthropological and sociological circles wherein it has long been recognized (e.g., Durkheim and Parsons) that there are sources of order in tandem with, apart from, or prior to the State (e.g., in that social space designated as ‘civil society’) responsible for the ‘substantial coordination of behaviour’ (Tamanaha 2001, p. 211). Tamanaha offers a typology of sources for social order that will not detain us here except to mention his reiteration of the fact that social norms and related roles ‘make a major contribution to the coordination of behaviour’ (p. 216). Belated recognition of this fact is news of a sort only within legal theory! Indeed, I suspect several of Tamanaha’s sources of social order (e.g., what he calls the ‘unarticulated substrate’—a source/type inspired by a (later) Wittgensteinian understanding of language as well as Habermas’s notion of the ‘lifeworld’) could and should be subsumed within the category of social norms.

Tamanaha’s main point is that ‘the traditionally assumed relationship’ between state law and social order crystallized in the Hobbesian presumption among legal theorists,‘ gets things backwards or upside down. It is state law that is dependent on these other sources of social order if it is to have a chance of exerting an influence (p. 224). In going beyond the Hobbesian presumption wherein social order is a direct result of a contractual agreement, or in supplementing rational choice models (including game theory) in which social orders (e.g., markets) are the unintended yet fortuitous outcome of actions ruled by rational calculations, the belated recognition of the salience of social norms in legal theory is a welcome development. Perhaps now legal theorists (in addition to those who, like Dennis Patterson, are already ‘Wittgensteinian’) will take greater notice of the ‘practice turn’ in contemporary theorizing about the constitution of social order (see Schatzki 1996 and 2002, Schatzki, Knorr Cetina and Savigny 2001, Patterson 2004).

In conclusion, the current literature connecting social norms to legal theory suggests a philosophically prudent public policy should probably fall out somewhere betwixt and between Sunstein’s enthusiasm and Posner’s modesty. At the very least, policy prescriptions and changes in the law based upon—at this point in time—our comparatively weak understanding of social norms, and the emotions that fortify them (or simply the pertinent social psychological mechanisms), suggest we proceed with due caution and reticence. All the same, it behooves legal practitioners and students of the law in general to maintain an abiding and deep interest in the role of social norms in the coordination of behavior, if only by way of understanding social phenomena that eludes (or supplements) the explanatory scope of rational choice theories. In the same vein, legal theorists interested in social norms (their different philosophical assumptions and perspectives notwithstanding) should overcome their exclusive enchantment with neo-classical economics, engaging their colleagues in the social sciences more generally. Of course this may be asking too much, given the existing disciplinary division of labor and the impetus in social epistemology toward cognitive specialization and fragmentation. And an intimate acquaintance with the relevant literature in psychology and philosophy, in this case work on the emotions, can only further and fulfill the ends of any legal theory that endeavors to understand social phenomena as ubiquitous, opaque and often obdurate as social norms.

References and Further Reading:

Alford, C. Fred. (1994). Group Psychology and Political Theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Amadae, S.M. (2003). Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Axelrod, Robert. (1986). �An Evolutionary Approach to Norms.� American Political Science Review, 8, 1097.

Baker, Katherine K. (1999). �Sex, Rape, and Shame,� 79. Boston University Law Review, 663.

Bandes, Susan A., ed. (1999). The Passions of Law. New York: New York University Press.

Basu, Kaushik. (2000). Prelude to Political Economy: A Study of the Social and Political Foundations of Economics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Basu, Kaushik. (1998). �Social Norms and the Law,� available: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=42840 also published in Peter

Newman, ed., The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and Law. London: Macmillan.

Ben-Ze�ev, Aaron. (2000). The Subtlety of Emotions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Bicchieri, Cristina. The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Braithwaite, John. (1989). Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Brennan, Geoffrey and Philip Pettit. (2004). The Economy of Esteem: An Essay on Civil and Political Society. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Carlson, Ann E. (2003). �Classifying Social Norms,� University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, Research Paper Series, No. 03-21.

Caws, Peter. (1984). Sartre. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Cooter, Robert D. (1996). �Decentralized Law in a Complex Economy: The Structural Approach to Adjudicating the New Law Merchant,� University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 144, 1643.

Cooter, Robert D. (2000). �Three Effects of Social Norms on Law: Expression, Deterrence, and Internalization,� 79 Oregon Law Review, 1.

Cox, Gary W. (2004). �Lies, damned lies, and rational choice analyses,� in Ian Shapiro, Rogers M. Smith, and Tarek E. Masoud, eds. Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

de Sousa, Ronald. (1987). The Rationality of Emotion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Eisenberg, Melvin. (1999). �Corporate Law, Social Norms and Belief Systems,� Berkeley Olin Program & Economics, Working Paper Series, 30.

Ellickson, Robert C. (1998). �Law and Economics Discovers Social Norms,� Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. XXVII, pp. 537-552.

Ellickson, Robert C. (1991). Order without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Elster, Jon. (1999). Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Elster, Jon. (1989). The Cement of Society: A Study of Social Order. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Elster, Jon, ed. (1996). Rational Choice. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Elster, Jon. (1983). Sour Grapes: studies in the subversion of rationality . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Etzioni, Amitai. (2000). �Social Norms: Internalization, Persuasion, and History,� 34 Law and Society Review, 157.

Goldie, Peter. (2000). The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Goodin, Robert E. (1995). Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Green, Donald and Ian Shapiro. (2005). �Revisiting the Pathologies of Rational Choice,� in

Ian Shapiro, The Flight from Reality in the Human Sciences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hardin, Russell. (1995). One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hausman, Daniel M. (2003). �Philosophy of Economics,� The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2003 Edition) , Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL= http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2003/entries/economics/ .

Hausman, Daniel M. and Michael S. McPherson. (1996). Economic Analysis and Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Kernberg, Otto F. (1998). Conflict and Leadership in Groups and Organizations. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Markel, Dan. (2001). �Are Shaming Punishments Beautifully Retributive? Retributivism and the Implications for the Alternative Sanctions Debate,� Vanderbilt Law Review, Vol. 54, p. 2157. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=410922 or DOI:  10.2139/ssrn.410922

Markel, Dan. (2007). �Still Wrong? Professor Kahan on the Fall of Shaming and the Rise of Restorative Justice,� Texas Law Review, Vol. 85. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=938796

McAdams, Richard. (1997). �The Origin, Development, and Regulation of Norms,� 96 Michigan Law Review 338.

Norton, David L. (1991). Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Nussbaum, Martha C. (2000). Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Nussbaum, Martha C. (2004). Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Nussbaum, Martha. (2001). Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Ostrom, Elinor. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Patterson, Dennis, ed. (2004). Wittgenstein and Law . Aldershot: Ashgate.

Pettit, Philip. (2002). Rules, Reasons, and Norms. New York: Oxford University Press.

Posner, Eric A. (2000). Law and Social Norms. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Posner, Richard A. (2001). Frontiers of Legal Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Posner, Richard A. (1998). �Social Norms, Social Meaning, and Economic Analysis of Law: A Comment,� Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. XXVII, pp. 553-565.

Posner, Richard A. and Eric B. Rasmusen. (1999). �Creating and Enforcing Norms, with Special Reference to Sanctions,� International Review of Law and Economics 19: 369-382.

Raz, Joseph. (1980, 2 nd ed.). The Concept of a Legal System: An Introduction to the Theory of Legal System. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Raz, Joseph. (1990). Practical Reason and Norms. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Schatzki, Theodore R. (1996). Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Schattzki, Theodore R. (2002). The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Schatzki, Theodore R., Karin Knorr Cetina and Eike von Savigny, eds. (2001). The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. London: Routledge.

Sciaraffa, Stefan. (2005). Review of Norms in a Wired World by Steven Hetcher. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Available at http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=4281

Sen, Amartya K. (2002). Rationality and Freedom. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Sunstein, Cass R. (1997). Free Markets and Social Justice . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Sunstein, Cass R. and Richard H. Thaler. (2003). �Libertarian Paternalism is not an Oxymoron,� The University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 70, No. 4, (Fall 2003), pp. 1159-1202.

Tamanaha, Brian Z. (2001). A General Jurisprudence of Law and Society. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Taylor, Michael. (1976). Anarchy and Cooperation . London: Wiley.

Taylor, Michael. (1987). The Possibility of Cooperation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Udehn, Lars. (2003). �The Methodology of Rational Choice,� in Stephen P. Turner and Paul A. Roth, eds., The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Ullmann-Margalit, Edna. (1977). The Emergence of Norms . Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Wall, Steven. (2003). �Freedom as a Political Ideal,� in Paul, Ellen Frankel, Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey Paul, eds., Autonomy . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Weisburg, Robert. (2003). �Norms and Criminal Law, and the Norms of Criminal Law Scholarship,� Stanford Public Law and Legal Theory Working Paper Series, No. 60. Or, see the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 93, Nos. 2-3.

Young, H. Peyton. (2005). �The Power of Norms,� from a presentation to the Yale Law School�s Legal Theory Workshop, available at http://www.law.yale.edu/ltw/ The paper is a chapter from Peter Hammerstein, ed., Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation, Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2003.

How Teachers Can Build Civility as a Classroom Norm

• Share article

At their best, classroom conversations can engage students, build communication and critical-thinking skills, and help students connect learning to their lives.

But so-called “outrage culture"—in which students react collectively in disproportionate and intensely negative ways during disagreements—can derail attempts to have substantive conversations about divisive or challenging topics.

Michael McQueen, a psychologist and the author of Mindstuck: Mastering the Art of Changing Minds, spoke with Education Week about ways educators can help defuse overreactions and outrage culture among students.

About This Project

This project is part of a special report called Big Ideas in which EdWeek reporters, the EdWeek Research Center, and contributing researchers ask hard questions about K-12 education’s biggest challenges and offer insights based on their extensive coverage and expertise.

Why do we react so negatively when someone disagrees or we are told we are wrong?

The challenge is that our instinctive minds respond to psychological threats the same way they do physical threats. This [response to physical threats] has kept us alive for millennia: A tiger jumps out; you jump to a conclusion; you run, you defend yourself, you stay alive. That’s been great for us as a species. The challenge is that when our instinctive minds are confronted with ideas, information, perspectives, data that are confronting, uncomfortable, or unfamiliar, we respond in the same way. But we don’t go into fight and flight. We go into denial or defensiveness.

These dynamics so often play out for all of us as humans, but particularly with young people who still don’t have [complete development of] that frontal part of their brain, which is where the more reasoned, measured, linear part of our thinking apparatus lives.

How can we help students develop a better approach to situations in which there will be disagreement and they might be wrong?

There’s such a readiness to label with clinical terms issues that are not—particularly the readiness for us to label students as having “anxiety” far too quickly where actually these conversations are just uncomfortable. We strengthen our cognitive muscles, we become well-rounded, thoughtful humans by being exposed to ideas and information that challenge us and even sometimes threaten us, make us feel uncomfortable. And so the bigger picture now—and this is where schools and parents need to be on the same page—is actually creating environments where it’s OK for people to feel uncomfortable and out of their comfort zone. 

For students in particular, this idea of the goal being safety above all else is fundamentally ill-conceived. It’s leading to a lack of robustness and resilience in young people. The dark side is just reality; protecting people from that doesn’t make them stronger but actually makes them fundamentally less able to deal with the realities of life. … [But there are] teachers who are afraid to have these divisive conversations now, even though it’s the stuff that matters most for young people. 

How can teachers establish structures for more difficult conversations with their students?

Life is complex and nuanced. And I think for teachers, one of the most important things they can do is to build the skill of intellectual curiosity and humility in young people.

One of the precursors is that sense of psychological safety—that if I acknowledge that I don’t know the answer, that I hadn’t thought this through, that there are things I doubt—that I’m safe enough to do that. I think teachers modeling this stuff is incredibly helpful. So a teacher may say, “You know what, this text we’re going to study—personally, I find this a really confronting text, but we’ll stick with that, and that will be OK.”

A lot of schools are trying to add specific instruction in social-emotional skills to their curriculum. Do you think that’s the best approach?

The tricky thing is often those lessons become principles in a vacuum. And so there’s not that connection between what I’m learning in math class and English and geography and the politics embedded in geography and history and how that plays into ideology. 

Ideally, you want to arm [students] with not just a set of skills but a lens through which they see the world. And I think the best way to do that is to give them that lens to hold up every time they’re looking at any number of different topics or subject areas, rather than just describing a set of principles or ideas. Each time you [teach subject-matter content], there are micro-moments where you get the chance to model some of these principles and ideas [of civil disagreements and intellectual curiosity] and ask the questions that allow young people to think differently, to see those nuanced perspectives. If you separate it out as a class in its own right, it can all very quickly become ideas that make sense but don’t apply to something the students are living and seeing every day.

How can a teacher de-escalate a challenging conversation that has spiraled out of control?

We often assume that when someone doesn’t agree with us that there’s a knowledge gap; if we can just educate them better or give them more information or better data, they’ll see the light and they’ll change their perspective. That’s so often not the reality. And in fact the challenging thing is, [coming to agreement] is often about how do we address the things that are causing the other person to be stubborn, rather than trying to pile on more information or logic in a way that leaves them no option but to change their perspective.

There’re practical things you can do in that moment. First is not respond in kind from an emotional standpoint. Sometimes, we assume that we need to match someone’s emotional intensity if we’re going to have a robust conversation. But actually the best thing that a teacher can do is stay incredibly calm and … actually try to listen through , not listen to , what they’re saying, to find what’s going on that’s triggered this incredibly strong response, this defensiveness, or this defiance. People who are listened to are more likely to listen. 

Sign Up for EdWeek Update

Edweek top school jobs.

Sign Up & Sign In

The False Narrative of Settler Colonialism

The rise of an academic theory and its obsession with Israel

O n October 7 , Hamas killed four times as many Israelis in a single day as had been killed in the previous 15 years of conflict. In the months since, protesters have rallied against Israel’s retaliatory invasion of Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. But a new tone of excitement and enthusiasm could be heard among pro-Palestinian activists from the moment that news of the attacks arrived, well before the Israeli response began. Celebrations of Hamas’s exploits are familiar sights in Gaza and the West Bank, Cairo and Damascus; this time, they spread to elite college campuses, where Gaza-solidarity encampments became ubiquitous this past spring. Why?

The answer is that, long before October 7, the Palestinian struggle against Israel had become widely understood by academic and progressive activists as the vanguard of a global battle against settler colonialism, a struggle also waged in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries created by European settlement. In these circles, Palestine was transformed into a standard reference point for every kind of social wrong, even those that seem to have no connection to the Middle East.

One of the most striking things about the ideology of settler colonialism is the central role played by Israel, which is often paired with the U.S. as the most important example of settler colonialism’s evils. Many Palestinian writers and activists have adopted this terminology. In his 2020 book, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine , the historian Rashid Khalidi writes that the goal of Zionism was to create a “white European settler colony.” For the Palestinian intellectual Joseph Massad, Israel is a product of “European Jewish Settler-Colonialism,” and the “liberation” referred to in the name of the Palestine Liberation Organization is “liberation from Settler-Colonialism.”

Western activists and academics have leaned heavily on the idea. Opposition to building an oil pipeline under a Sioux reservation was like the Palestinian cause in that it “makes visible the continuum of systems of subjugation and expropriation across liberal democracies and settler-­colonial regimes.” When the city of Toronto evicted a homeless encampment from a park, it was like Palestine because both are examples of “ethnic cleansing” and “colonial ‘domicide,’ making Indigenous people homeless on their homelands.” Health problems among Native Americans can be understood in terms of Palestine, because the “hyper-­visible Palestine case …  provides a unique temporal lens for understanding settler colonial health determinants more broadly.” Pollution, too, can be understood through a Palestinian lens, according to the British organization Friends of the Earth, because Palestine demonstrates that “the world is an unequal place” where “marginalised and vulnerable people bear the brunt of injustice.”

Although Israel fails in obvious ways to fit the model of settler colonialism, it has become the standard reference point because it offers theorists and activists something that the United States does not: a plausible target. It is hard to imagine America or Canada being truly decolonized, with the descendants of the original settlers returning to the countries from which they came and Native peoples reclaiming the land. But armed struggle against Israel has been ongoing since it was founded, and Hamas and its allies still hope to abolish the Jewish state “between the river and the sea.” In the contemporary world, only in Israel can the fight against settler colonialism move from theory to practice.

T he concept of settler colonialism was developed in the 1990s by theorists in Australia, Canada, and the U.S., as a way of linking social evils in these countries today—such as climate change, patriarchy, and economic inequality—to their origin in colonial settlement. In the past decade, settler colonialism has become one of the most important concepts in the academic humanities, the subject of hundreds of books and thousands of papers, as well as college courses on topics such as U.S. history, public health, and gender studies.

Read: The curious rise of settler colonialism and Turtle Island

For the academic field of settler-colonial studies, the settlement process is characterized by European settlers discovering a land that they consider “terra nullius,” the legal property of no one; their insatiable hunger for expansion that fills an entire continent; and the destruction of Indigenous peoples and cultures. This model, drawn from the history of Anglophone colonies such as the U.S. and Australia, is regularly applied to the history of Israel even though it does not include any of these hallmarks.

When modern Zionist settlement in what is now Israel began in the 1880s, Palestine was a province of the Ottoman empire, and after World War I, it was ruled by the British under a mandate from the League of Nations. Far from being “no one’s land,” Jews could settle there only with the permission of an imperial government, and when that permission was withdrawn—­as it fatefully was in 1939, when the British sharply limited Jewish immigration on the eve of the Holocaust—they had no recourse. Far from expanding to fill a continent, as in North America and Australia, the state of Israel today is about the size of New Jersey. The language, culture, and religion of the Arab peoples remain overwhelmingly dominant: 76 years after Israel was founded, it is still the only Jewish country in the region, among 22 Arab countries, from Morocco to Iraq.

Most important, the Jewish state did not erase or replace the people already living in Palestine, though it did displace many of them. Here the comparison between European settlement in North America and Jewish settlement in Israel is especially inapt. In the decades after Europeans arrived in Massachusetts, the Native American population of New England declined from about 140,000 to 10,000, by one estimate . In the decades after 1948, the Arab population of historic Palestine more than quintupled, from about 1.4 million to about 7.4 million. The persistence of the conflict in Israel-Palestine is due precisely to the coexistence of two peoples in the same land—­as opposed to the classic sites of settler colonialism, where European settlers decimated Native peoples.

In the 21st century, the clearest examples of ongoing settler colonialism can probably be found in China. In 2023, the United Nations Human Rights office reported that the Chinese government had compelled nearly 1 million Tibetan children to attend residential schools “aimed at assimilating Tibetan people culturally, religiously and linguistically.” Forcing the next generation of Tibetans to speak Mandarin is part of a long-­term effort to Sinicize the region, which also includes encouraging Han Chinese to settle there and prohibiting public displays of traditional Buddhist faith.

China has mounted a similar campaign against the Uyghur people in the northwestern province of Xinjiang. Since 2017, more than 1 million Uyghur Muslims have been detained in what the Chinese government calls vocational training centers, which other countries describe as detention or reeducation camps. The government is also seeking to bring down Uyghur birth rates through mass sterilization and involuntary birth control.

These campaigns include every element of settler colonialism as defined by academic theorists. They aim to replace an existing people and culture with a new one imported from the imperial metropole, using techniques frequently described as genocidal in the context of North American history. Tibet’s residential schools are a tool of forced assimilation, like the ones established for Native American children in Canada and the United States in the 19th century. And some scholars of settler colonialism have drawn these parallels, acknowledging, in the words of the anthropologist Carole McGranahan, “that an imperial formation is as likely to be Chinese, communist, and of the twentieth or twenty-­first centuries as it is to be English, capitalist, and of the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.”

Yet Tibet and Xinjiang—­like India’s rule in Kashmir, and the Indonesian occupation of East Timor from 1975 to 1999—­occupy a tiny fraction of the space devoted to Israel-­Palestine on the mental map of settler-colonial studies. Some of the reasons for this are practical. The academic discipline mainly flourishes in English-­speaking countries, and its practitioners usually seem to be monolingual, making it necessary to focus on countries where sources are either written in English or easily available in translation. This rules out any place where a language barrier is heightened by strict government censorship, like China. Just as important, settler-colonial theorists tend to come from the fields of anthropology and sociology rather than history, area studies, and international relations, where they would be exposed to a wider range of examples of past and present conflict.

But the focus on Israel-­Palestine isn’t only a product of the discipline’s limitations. It is doctrinal. Academics and activists find adding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to other causes powerfully energizing, a way to give a local address to a struggle that can otherwise feel all too abstract. The price of collapsing together such different causes, however, is that it inhibits understanding of each individual cause. Any conflict that fails to fit the settler-colonial model must be made to fit.

I srael also fails to fit the model of settler colonialism in another key way: It defies the usual division between foreign colonizers and Indigenous people. In the discourse of settler colonialism, Indigenous peoples aren’t simply those who happen to occupy a territory before Europeans discovered it. Rather, indigeneity is a moral and spiritual status, associated with qualities such as authenticity, selflessness, and wisdom. These values stand as a reproof to settler ways of being, which are insatiably destructive. And the moral contrast between settler and indigene comes to overlap with other binaries—­white and nonwhite, exploiter and exploited, victor and victim.

Until recently, Palestinian leaders preferred to avoid the language of indigeneity, seeing the implicit comparison between themselves and Native Americans as defeatist. In an interview near the end of his life, in 2004, PLO Chair Yasser Arafat declared, “We are not Red Indians.” But today’s activists are more eager to embrace the Indigenous label and the moral valences that go with it, and some theorists have begun to recast Palestinian identity in ecological, spiritual, and aesthetic terms long associated with Native American identity. The American academic Steven Salaita has written that “Palestinian claims to life” are based in having “a culture indivisible from their surroundings, a language of freedom concordant to the beauty of the land.” Jamal Nabulsi of the University of Queensland writes that “Palestinian Indigenous sovereignty is in and of the land. It is grounded in an embodied connection to Palestine and articulated in Palestinian ways of being, knowing, and resisting on and for this land.”

This kind of language points to an aspect of the concept of indigeneity that is often tacitly overlooked in the Native American context: its irrationalism. The idea that different peoples have incommensurable ways of being and knowing, rooted in their relationship to a particular landscape, comes out of German Romantic nationalism. Originating in the early 19th century in the work of philosophers such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Johann Gottfried Herder, it eventually degenerated into the blood-­and-­soil nationalism of Nazi ideologues such as Richard Walther Darré, who in 1930 hymned what might be called an embodied connection to Germany: “The German soul, with all its warmness, is rooted in its native landscape and has, in a sense, always grown out of it … Whoever takes the natural landscape away from the German soul, kills it.”

For Darré, this rootedness in the land meant that Germans could never thrive in cities, among the “rootless ways of thinking of the urbanite.” The rootless urbanite par excellence, for Nazi ideology, was of course the Jew. For Salaita, the exaltation of Palestinian indigeneity leads to the very same conclusion about “Zionists,” who usurp the land but can never be vitally rooted in it: “In their ruthless schema, land is neither pleasure nor sustenance. It is a commodity … Having been anointed Jewish, the land ceases to be dynamic. It is an ideological fabrication with fixed characteristics.”

In this way, anti-Zionism converges with older patterns of anti­-Semitic and anti­-Jewish thinking. It is true, of course, that criticism of Israel is not inherently anti-­Semitic. Virtually anything that an Israeli government does is likely to be harshly criticized by many Israeli Jews themselves. But it is also true that anti-­Semitism is not simply a matter of personal prejudice against Jews, existing on an entirely different plane from politics. The term anti­-Semitism was coined in Germany in the late 19th century because the old term, Jew hatred , sounded too instinctive and brutal to describe what was, in fact, a political ideology—­an account of the way the world works and how it should be changed.

Wilhelm Marr, the German writer who popularized the word, complained in his 1879 book, The Victory of Judaism Over Germanism , that “the Jewish spirit and Jewish consciousness have overpowered the world.” That spirit, for Marr, was materialism and selfishness, “profiteering and usury.” Anti-­Semitic political parties in Europe attacked “Semitism” in the same way that socialists attacked capitalism. The saying “Anti-­Semitism is the socialism of fools,” used by the German left at this time, recognized the structural similarity between these rival worldviews.

The identification of Jews with soulless materialism made sense to 19th-century Europeans because it translated one of the oldest doctrines of Christianity into the language of modern politics. The apostle Paul, a Jew who became a follower of Jesus, explained the difference between his old faith and his new one by identifying Judaism with material things (­the circumcision of the flesh, the letter of the law) and Christianity with spiritual things—­the circumcision of the heart, a new law “written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

Simon Sebag Montefiore: The decolonization narrative is dangerous and false

Today this characterization of Jews as stubborn, heartless, and materialistic is seldom publicly expressed in the language of Christianity, as in the Middle Ages, or in the language of race, as in the late 19th century. But it is quite respectable to say exactly the same thing in the language of settler colonialism. As the historian David Nirenberg has written, “We live in an age in which millions of people are exposed daily to some variant of the argument that the challenges of the world they live in are best explained in terms of ‘Israel,’” except that today, Israel refers not to the Jewish people but to the Jewish state.

When those embracing the ideology of settler colonialism think about political evil, Israel is the example that comes instinctively to hand, just as Jews were for anti-Semitism and Judaism was for Christianity. Perhaps the most troubling reactions to the October 7 attacks were those of college students convinced that the liberation of Palestine is the key to banishing injustice from the world. In November 2023, for instance, Northwestern University’s student newspaper published a letter signed by 65 student organizations—­including the Rainbow Alliance, Ballet Folklórico Northwestern, and All Paws In, which sends volunteers to animal shelters—­defending the use of the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” This phrase looks forward to the disappearance of any form of Jewish state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, but the student groups denied that this entails “murder and genocide.” Rather, they wrote, “When we say from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, we imagine a world free of Islamophobia, antisemitism, anti-­Blackness, militarism, occupation and apartheid.”

As a political program, this is nonsensical. How could dismantling Israel bring about the end of militarism in China, Russia, or Iran? How could it lead to the end of anti-Black racism in America, or anti-Muslim prejudice in India? But for the ideology of settler colonialism, actual political conflicts become symbolic battles between light and darkness, and anyone found on the wrong side is a fair target. Young Americans today who celebrate the massacre of Israelis and harass their Jewish peers on college campuses are not ashamed of themselves for the same reason that earlier generations were not ashamed to persecute and kill Jews—because they have been taught that it is an expression of virtue.

This essay is adapted from Adam Kirsch’s new book, On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice .

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

About the Author

More Stories

When Poetry Could Define a Life

The Smartest Man Who Ever Lived

The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.

Child and Teen Firearm Mortality in the U.S. and Peer Countries

Matt McGough , Krutika Amin, Nirmita Panchal , and Cynthia Cox Published: Jul 18, 2023

Editor’s Note: This brief was updated on July 18, 2023, with newer data.

In 2020 and 2021, firearms contributed to the deaths of more children ages 1-17 years in the U.S. than any other type of injury or illness. The child firearm mortality rate has doubled in the U.S. from a recent low of 1.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2013 to 3.7 in 2021.

The United States has by far the highest rate of child and teen firearm mortality among peer nations. In no other similarly large, wealthy country are firearms in the top four causes of death for children and teens, let alone the number one cause. U.S. states with the most gun laws have lower rates of child and teen firearm deaths than states with few gun laws. But, even states with the lowest child and teen firearm deaths have rates much higher than what peer countries experience.

In 2020 and 2021, firearms were involved in the deaths of more children ages 1-17 than any other type of injury or illness, surpassing deaths due to motor vehicles, which had long been the number one factor in child deaths. In 2021, there were 2,571 child deaths due to firearms—a rate of 3.7 deaths per 100,000 children, which is an increase of 68% in the number of deaths since 2000 and 107% since a recent low of 2013.

While the rate of firearm deaths among children has increased since 2000, the rate of motor vehicle deaths is now significantly lower than it had been. The number of motor vehicle deaths among children in 2021 was 49% lower than in 2000, though it did grow during the pandemic by 22% from 2019. Though fewer in number than firearm deaths among children, deaths due to poisonings, which include drug overdoses, have also grown, increasing 186% since 2000 and 103% since 2019.

Provisional CDC data from 2022 indicate that firearms continued to be the number one factor in child deaths for the third year in a row.

Because peer countries’ mortality data are not available for children ages 1-17 years old alone, we group firearm mortality data for teens ages 18 and 19 years old with data for children ages 1-17 years old in all countries for a direct comparison.

On a per capita basis, the firearm death rate among children and teens (ages 1-19) in the U.S. is over 9.5 times the firearm death rate of Canadian children and teens (ages 1-19). Canada is the country with the second-highest child and teen firearm death rate among similarly large and wealthy nations.

As might be expected, teenagers have higher firearm mortality rates than children. In the U.S., teens ages 18 and 19 have a firearm mortality rate of 25.2 per 100,000, compared to a rate of 3.7 per 100,000 for children ages 1-17 in the U.S. Even so, the child firearm mortality rate in the U.S. (3.7 per 100,000 people ages 1-17) is 5.5 times the child and teen mortality rate in Canada (0.6 per 100,000 people ages 1-19).

If the child and teen firearm mortality rate in the U.S. had been brought down to rates seen in Canada, we estimate that approximately 30,000 children’s and teenagers’ lives in the U.S. would have been saved since 2010 (an average of about 2,500 lives per year). This would have reduced the total number of child and teenage deaths from all causes in the U.S. by 13%.

The child and teen (ages 1-19 years) firearm mortality rate varies by state in the U.S. from 2.1 deaths per 100,000 in New York and New Jersey to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 in Louisiana. Even in New York and New Jersey, which have the lowest child and teen firearm mortality rates among those with available data, the rate is still over three times that in Canada.

Because there is no comprehensive national firearm registry, it is difficult to track gun ownership in the U.S. Instead, we look at the correlation between the number of child and teen firearm deaths and the number of gun laws in U.S. states (based on the State Firearm Law Database , which is a catalog of the presence or absence of 134 firearm law provisions across all 50 states).

States with more restrictive firearm laws in the U.S. generally have fewer child and teen firearm deaths than states with fewer firearm law provisions. Even so, these states on average have a much higher rate of child and teen firearm deaths than that of Canada and other countries. Among comparably large and wealthy countries, Canada has the second highest child and teen firearm death rate to the U.S. However, Canada generally has more restrictive firearm laws and regulates access to guns at the federal level. In the U.S., guns may be brought to states with strict laws from out-of-state or unregistered sources .

In 2020 and 2021, firearms were involved in more deaths for children and teens (ages 1-19 years) in the United States than any other type of injury or illness. In 2021, firearms were involved in 4,733 child and teen deaths.

With the exception of Canada, in no other peer country were firearms among the top five causes of childhood and teenage death. Motor vehicle accidents and cancer are the two most common causes of death for this age group in all other comparable countries.

The categories in the chart above are more specific than CDC’s rankable causes of death. We use CDC’s data grouped by injury mechanism and illness. However, given differences in how deaths are grouped by CDC and IHME, we adapt CDC data to be comparable to IHME data. For example, pedestrian deaths are included with motor vehicle and pedestrian deaths in the chart above. See Methods for more details.

Combining all child and teen firearm deaths in the U.S. with those in other OECD countries with above median GDP and GDP per capita, the U.S. accounts for 97% of gun-related child and teen deaths, despite representing 46% of the total population in these countries. Combined, the eleven other similarly large and wealthy countries account for only 153 of the total 4,886 firearm deaths for children and teens ages 1-19 years in these nations, and the U.S. accounts for the remainder.

Firearms account for 20% of all child and teen deaths in the U.S., compared to an average of less than 2% of child and teen deaths in similarly large and wealthy nations.

The U.S. also has the highest rate of each type of child and teen firearm death—suicides, assaults, and unintentional or undetermined intent—among similarly large and wealthy countries.

In 2021 in the U.S., the overall child and teen firearm assault rate was 3.9 per 100,000 children and teens. In the U.S., the overall suicide rate among children and teens was 3.8 per 100,000; and 1.8 per 100,000 child and teen suicide deaths were by firearms. In comparable countries, on average, the overall suicide rate is 2.8 per 100,000 children and teens, and 0.2 per 100,000 children and teens suicide deaths were by firearms.

If the U.S. child and teen suicide by firearm rate was brought down to the same level as in Canada, the peer country with the next highest rate, over 1,000 fewer children and teens would have died in 2021 alone.

The spike in 2020 and 2021 in child and teen firearm deaths in the U.S. was primarily driven by an increase in violent assault deaths. The child and teen firearm assault mortality rate reached a high in 2021 with a rate of 3.9 per 100,000, a 7% increase from the year before and a 50% increase from 2019. The firearm suicide mortality rate among children and teenagers in the U.S. increased 21% from 2019 to 2021.

Exposure and use of firearms also have implications for mental health.  Research suggests that youth may experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety in response to gun violence. Specifically, survivors of firearm-related injuries, including youth survivors, may be at increased risk of mental health conditions and substance use disorders. Furthermore, gun violence disproportionately affects many children of color , particularly Black children, and children living in areas with a high concentration of poverty .

• Mental Health
• Global Health Policy
• Gun Violence
• International Comparisons

news release

• U.S. Has the Highest Rate of Gun Deaths for Children and Teens Among Peer Countries

Also of Interest

• Americans’ Experiences With Gun-Related Violence, Injuries, And Deaths
• The Impact of Gun Violence on Children and Adolescents
• States with Firearm Laws Designed to Protect Children
• Deaths Due to Firearms per 100,000 Population by Age
• What is Driving Widening Racial Disparities in Life Expectancy?
• KFF Health News Coverage on Guns

How a Now-Forgotten Assassination Almost Toppled Jordan’s Monarchy

The 1960 bombing that killed prime minister hazzaa al-majali and 10 others heralded a broader turn across the arab world toward deadlier political norms.

The morning of Aug. 29, 1960, began as every Monday did for Jordanian Prime Minister Hazzaa al-Majali. In his second-floor office in downtown Amman, the 42-year-old former lawyer held an open court, where anyone from senior officials to ordinary members of the public could show up for an audience, at which he would hear their petitions and try to resolve their problems.

Shortly before noon, he asked a young aide named Zaid al-Rifai — who would be prime minister himself in years to come — to fetch a file from elsewhere in the building. Rifai asked if he could have a cup of coffee first. To his mild annoyance, the premier insisted he leave the coffee till after he brought the file. As fate would have it, his demand spared the young man’s life.

Moments after Rifai departed, Majali opened a drawer under his desk, triggering a concealed explosive device that detonated, killing him instantly. Seconds later, another bomb went off on the other side of the room, killing all but one of those present. The lone survivor, Abd al-Hamid al-Majali, had been standing at the moment of the first blast by a window, through which he was thrown by the force. By the time the second bomb blew, he was already outside the building, hurtling toward the ground below.

The twin blasts ripped out the walls of the office, caving in the roof. It would take three hours for the prime minister’s body to be dug out of the rubble.

Yet the carnage wasn’t over. On hearing the news, Jordan’s 24-year-old King Hussein raced to the scene, where he was prevented from approaching the building by the army’s commander in chief, who insisted the risk to his security was too great. The monarch retorted that no one had the authority to stop him. As the pair were arguing, a third explosion detonated at the building’s entrance, killing yet more victims. In all, 11 lives were taken by the three blasts, and 85 more people were injured. Aside from the premier, the dead ranged from an undersecretary for foreign affairs to a Palestinian refugee child. The sovereign himself had very nearly been among them.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was no stranger to assassinations. No less a figure than its first king, Abdallah I, had been shot dead in the head at point-blank range in 1951, at the entrance to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, with his 15-year-old grandson and future successor Hussein standing beside him.

Yet the killing of Majali was unprecedented in style and scale. It was the first time Jordan had witnessed a mass-casualty bombing that took the lives of innocent civilians along with senior statesmen. King Hussein called it “the worst outrage in the history of Jordan.” So appalled was he by the murder of “one of Jordan’s greatest patriots and one of my firmest friends” that he ordered three army brigades to mobilize on his northern border, in preparation for an attack on the prime suspects: his neighbors in Syria. It took the combined efforts of both Britain and the United States to persuade the enraged monarch to reconsider.

Rash the young Hussein may have been, but he was not wrong about the identity of the culprits. The blasts were the work of the United Arab Republic (UAR), a new state formed in 1958 by the union of Egypt with Syria and led by the iconic Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. The creation of this state precipitated — among many other things — a vicious downward spiral in relations between Nasser and Hussein. Jordan’s monarch saw the UAR as an aggressive and expansionist bully, bent on undermining his rule and, ultimately, toppling his throne so as to annex Jordan as another “province” of the unified superstate. He grew further convinced of this throughout the course of 1958 when, after watching the UAR sponsor an armed rebellion against the government in Lebanon, it then celebrated a gory military coup in Baghdad in July, during which the Iraqi royal family — headed by Hussein’s cousin and childhood friend, King Faysal II — were gunned down in cold blood, their corpses paraded and mutilated in the streets. That a similar scene would soon play out in Jordan’s own capital was not just Hussein’s fear; it was considered almost inevitable by most observers from Beirut to Foggy Bottom.

“However much one may admire the courage of this lonely young king,” said the British diplomat Anthony Nutting that month, “it is difficult to avoid the conclusion his days are numbered.”

For his part, Nasser did little to dispel these concerns. In a speech on July 18, 1958, just four days after the Iraqi coup, he vowed that the “banner of freedom” that had been raised in Baghdad would soon be hoisted above Amman too. In another speech four days later, he attacked Hussein by name, blasting him for soliciting British military support in the wake of the Baghdad coup, drawing a pointed comparison with the king’s assassinated grandfather, who had long been a British ally:

The king of Jordan [has] sided with imperialism. … What is Hussein doing today, my brothers? What is he doing in his fortress in Amman? He says he is “continuing the mission”; what mission is Hussein continuing today? The mission of King Abdallah, who betrayed us in 1948. Today, Hussein — my brothers — continues the mission of his grandfather King Abdallah in 1948, who deceived us, and deceived the Arabs everywhere. …

Today — my brothers — there is treason and occupation in Jordan, [but] the treason shall end, and the occupation shall end, and the people of Jordan shall be victorious.

By the time Majali was appointed prime minister in May 1959, the hostility between Cairo and Amman was at its peak. Two months earlier, King Hussein had charged that his army chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Sadiq al-Sharaa, was plotting a military coup against him, backed by the UAR. Shortly before that, the king alleged that UAR fighter pilots had tried to kill him by diving at his plane in the skies above Damascus while he was en route to Cyprus. Further attempts on his life around this time, according to his memoir, included acid in his nasal drops and a failed effort to poison his food.

“So cunning and varied and constant have been the plots against my person that sometimes I feel like the central character in a detective novel,” he wrote.

It was, indeed, precisely because the times were so fraught that Hussein felt the need to call on Majali — the son of a leading tribe in Karak in the monarchist hinterland east of the Dead Sea — whose loyalty to the Hashemite crown was beyond question. (Another prominent Majali was the premier’s brother-in-law, Field Marshal Habis al-Majali, chief commander of the armed forces and a pillar of the military since the kingdom’s establishment in 1946.) In Hussein’s words, Majali was “a man of courage, not afraid to shoulder responsibility.”

He could certainly have held few illusions about the dangers of the job. In March 1960, Jordan’s security forces arrested two people on charges of entering the country from Syria with the intention of assassinating Majali. Further plots of this kind would follow. Meanwhile, Nasser was stepping up his rhetorical attacks on Hussein, returning to the theme of his grandfather in a speech in June 1960, implying none too subtly that the king would meet the same “certain fate”:

The servants of imperialism may be able to go on a little longer, but where is their escape from their certain fate? The fate of … King Abdallah; where is the escape from that fate? The people — my brother citizens — shall be victorious, and shall eliminate the servants of imperialism, just as they eliminated their grandfathers before them.

When another attempt on Majali’s life was foiled in July 1960, he was advised to take greater security precautions and limit the number of visitors to his office. According to Hussein, he paid no heed.

One month later, he was dead.

On the last night of Majali’s life — Aug. 28, 1960 — two men named Shaker al-Dabbas and Kamal Shamut sneaked into his office and planted the explosives that would detonate the following morning. They then raced to Jordan’s northern border and crossed it. By the time the bombs went off, they were already on UAR soil.

The men had not acted alone. They had been tasked with their mission by a notorious military intelligence bureau in Damascus headed by Nasser’s Syrian security tsar, Col. Abd al-Hamid al-Sarraj. Having built a reputation since the mid-1950s for ruthless efficiency — as well as extraordinary violence — Sarraj was appointed interior minister of the Syrian “province” upon the creation of the UAR in 1958. In this capacity, he directed many of the union’s bloodiest interventions around the region, from the insurrection and bombing campaign in Lebanon to a deadly coup attempt in Mosul, Iraq, in 1959. That he was also behind the Majali assassination was confirmed by his colleague, Sami Jumaa, who boasted in his memoir that the operation demonstrated the “long arms” of the bureau. According to Salah Nasr, then chief of intelligence in Cairo, Nasser was at his beach house outside Alexandria meeting with Sarraj when news arrived of Majali’s killing. Nasser’s response was to reward Sarraj with a promotion that made him the most powerful man in Syria after Nasser himself.

In December 1960, Jordan’s State Security Court sentenced 11 men to death for the crime, among them (in absentia) the bombers al-Dabbas and Shamut and another of Sarraj’s colleagues in Damascus, Col. Burhan Adham. In Amman in 2021, while researching for a book on the Nasser era, I met Majali’s son, Gen. Hussein al-Majali — a senior official in his own right, who has served variously as Jordan’s interior minister, director of public security, commander of the royal guard, head of King Hussein’s personal security detail and ambassador to Bahrain. I asked him whether it was possible to see any documents from the official investigation into his father’s assassination, to shed light on how the court had arrived at its guilty verdict against the 11 accused. He replied that even he was not privy to that information. There are, he said, two highly classified folders held by the Criminal Information Department of Jordan’s Public Security Directorate, which he himself headed from 2010 to 2013. One of these folders concerns the assassination of King Abdallah I (great-grandfather of the present king); the second, that of Hazzaa al-Majali.

“They’re two huge files,” he said over coffee in his modest and tidy office, where a portrait of the late King Hussein still hung on the wall next to contemporary artworks depicting downtown Amman. “State secrets … I saw the two files, but I never dared to open them.”

Of the 11 sentenced to death, only four were in custody. They were promptly and publicly hanged in the courtyard of the Grand Husseini Mosque in the center of the capital. The other seven remained at large, some — including the bombers — offered asylum in Egypt for the rest of their lives. Al-Dabbas reportedly died in Cairo in 2021, at the age of 84.

Sarraj, too, went on to live for decades in Cairo as a fugitive from justice. When the UAR collapsed in 1961 and Syria became an independent republic once more, the new authorities in Damascus threw him in prison. He was smuggled out of his cell the following year, however, in an audacious breakout assisted by powerful friends of Nasser’s in Lebanon, including President Fouad Chehab and the warlord Kamal Jumblatt. After crossing the rugged Syrian-Lebanese border zone on camelback and spending a night as Jumblatt’s guest in his mountain palace, Sarraj was driven from Beirut in a Lebanese army jeep by the Lebanese military intelligence officer (and later interior minister) Sami al-Khatib to the airport, where he boarded a waiting plane to Cairo.

Arriving in the Egyptian capital, Sarraj was publicly received by a beaming Nasser, who employed him as an “adviser” for years thereafter — years that were not devoid of further killings bearing Sarraj’s fingerprints, like that of the Lebanese journalist Kamel Mrowa in 1966. Sarraj eventually died in Cairo in 2013, having given almost no press interviews in his 51 years of exile, loyally consigning most of his — and Nasser’s — secrets to the silence of the grave.

What is the historical significance of the Majali assassination? If it was intended to strengthen the UAR at the expense of Jordan’s monarchy, it clearly failed: The union disintegrated the following year, while today, six decades on, the Hashemite kingdom remains. Hussein himself stayed on the throne for 46 years until dying of natural causes in 1999, leaving the crown to his son.

Beyond Jordan, Majali’s killing may be seen as part of a series of related events that heralded darker days ahead for the region as a whole.

From the 1956 invasion of Egypt by Britain, France and Israel to the multiple coups in Iraq and Syria to Egypt’s own war in Yemen from 1962 to ’67 and more, this was a time of steadily mounting violence in Arab politics, as prior norms of comparative comity were cast aside and each new milestone of brutality spurred others to exceed it. The 1958 bloodshed in Lebanon, for instance, marked “the first major breakdown in political order after nearly a century of relative stability,” in the words of the Lebanese sociologist Samir Khalaf.

The Majali killing was neither the first nor the bloodiest of these events, but it was an important — and often overlooked — link in the same chain of violent episodes, all connected to one extent or another, as ideologies competed and countries were remade. The heavy legacy of these deeds is felt to this day.

The same torture methods developed in Sarraj’s dungeons in the 1950s continue to be used on political prisoners in Syria today. Many more prime ministers and other politicians have since been assassinated by bombs, as the Lebanese know better than most. Military officers continue to inflict horrors on vast numbers of Egyptians, Sudanese and Libyans, while murderous militias are the bane of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and beyond.

Millions of Arabs still live now in the world created by those responsible for the upheavals of the 1950s and ‘60s — some of whom were the very men who killed Majali.

Parts of this essay were adapted from the author’s recent book, “We Are Your Soldiers: How Gamal Abdel Nasser Remade the Arab World,” published in the U.S. and Canada by W. W. Norton and elsewhere by Simon & Schuster.

Become a member today to receive access to all our paywalled essays and the best of New Lines delivered to your inbox through our newsletters.

Turkey’s Winemakers Are Resurrecting the Wines of Millennia Past

Listen again: toxic masculinity online in kenya and south africa — with caroline kimeu and rosie motene, ‘why haven’t you liberated palestine yet’: hamas leader yahya sinwar’s relentless race to achieve his goals, hamas attacks on israel from lebanon stoke fears of a repeat of history, hoping to channel nasser, egypt’s sisi provokes a backlash, a talk with the dean of arab liberalism, sign up to our newsletter.

Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy

Like it or not — more of us are bagging our own groceries

Shoppers say cashiers at many grocery stores no longer automatically bag their goods.

Social Sharing

Lawrence Barker says he's frustrated that cashiers at major grocery stores he shops at no longer voluntarily bag his goods.

Barker finds bagging a hassle, as he feels pressured to quickly pack items into his reusable bags before the next customer's goods slide down the conveyor belt. 

So he opts for self-checkout, where he can bag at a leisurely pace. 

"I am not rushed and haggard and I'm not having all my groceries all piled up like a traffic jam," said Barker, who lives just outside Fenelon Falls, Ont., a rural community near Peterborough. "I go to self checkout just to avoid the stress."

Barker recalls a bygone era when grocery stores often employed baggers at the cashier.

"And then suddenly, even the cashier bagging stopped and you were on your own." 

Dozens of Canadians have posted similar complaints on social media, questioning why major grocery stores like Loblaws, Sobeys and Walmart seem to have reduced or eliminated cashier bagging services.

I guess we bag our own groceries at <a href="https://twitter.com/sobeys?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@sobeys</a> now? I just got looked at by the cashier as if I had 3 heads when my groceries were piling up while I was chatting with my 5 year old… time to start using the self checkouts I guess &mdash; @aarsenault1984

<a href="https://twitter.com/loblawco?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@loblawco</a> why don’t the cashiers assist with bagging anymore ? &mdash; @kateyyz1

CBC News investigated and, it turns out, there are no simple answers — including from Canada's major grocers. 

However, it's apparent that the rise of reusable bags, fuelled by the federal government's plastic bag ban in late 2022 , has led to a general expectation in many stores that customers self-bag at the cashier.  

"Once we have our own bags, I think we just — the idea is just to pack it ourselves," said Shawna Squire, carrying a bag of groceries she packed herself at the cashier at a Loblaws in Toronto.

"It's become the norm."

But why? Food economist Mike von Massow suggests that, aided by the reusable bag trend, grocers encourage self-bagging to cut labour costs. 

"I think if you ask, you'll get the help, but I think the real incentive is to get you through as quickly as possible so that [they] can serve the next customer," said von Massow, an associate professor at the University of Guelph.

"I think we're being trained not to expect bagging… and we've sort of fallen into that trap."

Why bagging your own groceries may be the new normal

'we're getting less'.

CBC News observed busy cashiers at a Loblaws, Sobeys and Walmart in downtown Toronto. At each store, most customers did the bagging on their own initiative.

But typically, cashiers automatically did the job if shoppers bought new, reusable bags at checkout.

Sophia Berdousis of Toronto, who worked as a Loblaws cashier during the plastic bag era, says that she automatically bagged all customers' goods.

"It used to be part of the grocery experience and now I feel like there is just one more thing that they're taking away," she said. "They're raising prices, we're getting less," she added, referring to the 23 per cent rise in food costs since 2020. 

Berdousis says she has noticed that Loblaws cashiers bag her groceries when requested, but she feels customers shouldn't have to ask. 

She also says that on two recent trips to Walmart, she was told it was store policy not to do the bagging. 

"You can go to Walmart and have $400 worth of groceries, they won't bag for you," said Berdousis. 

Grocers respond

Walmart Canada spokesperson Stephanie Fusco told CBC News in an email that cashiers are happy to help customers who need or want bagging assistance.

In response to several customer complaints on social media over the past several years, Walmart provided more details. It stated that because customers are bringing their own bags, the retailer "introduced self-bagging" in most stores, and that cashiers help when required.

Fusco did not respond to questions about why the bring-your-own-bag trend inspired a self-bagging policy.

Hi, we're sorry for the experience. Please be informed, as customers are bringing their own bags to the store, we've introduced self-bagging in most of our stores. Associates are trained to offer assistance to customers who require it. &mdash; @WalmartCanada

Loblaw Companies Ltd., which owns Loblaws and other chains including the discount No Frills, said in an email that its "policy and expectation [is] that customers have help with bagging" in non-discount stores. 

However, in 2021, the grocer stated on social media that it had introduced a "Bag-Your-Own program," allowing it "to offer lower pricing due to labour savings." Loblaw did not respond to questions about that program. 

The company's statement on social media backs up von Massow's theory that grocers encourage self-bagging to save money. He says when customers do the the job, the cashier line moves faster, so grocers can open fewer cashier lanes. 

"I think grocers are always looking for ways to cut costs," he said. 

Hello, In an effort to provide our customers with a more efficient checkout experience, we introduced the Bag-Your-Own program. This process allows us to offer lower pricing due to labour savings, as our cashiers are able to process a greater number of customer orders. &mdash; @loblawco

Dirty reusable bags?

Roy Graham of Shrewsbury, Ont., near Windsor, reports a mixed experience with bagging at his local Sobeys. He says cashiers occasionally bag his groceries, but often he's on his own.

He suspects it's because customers' used bags could be contaminated. "I think they don't want to touch reusable bags," he said. "I don't blame them."

However, none of the major grocers mentioned in this story indicated customers' unwashed bags are an issue. 

Sobeys spokesperson Tshani Jaja said its bagging services depend on the store, region and staffing. 

And at Ontario's Farm Boy, owned by Empire, the same company that owns Sobeys, non-express lane cashiers offer bagging to all customers .

"Every time that I have gone, they've bagged without question," said Berdousis, the former cashier, adding that Farm Boy cashiers ask her to hand over her reusable bags at checkout. 

CBC News observed at a Toronto Farm Boy that the cashiers handing customers' bags wore gloves. The grocery chain did not respond to requests for comment. 

• Walmart's plastic bag ban leaves some customers saddled with mounds of reusable bags
• Ottawa says industry's challenge of single-use plastics ban will have no 'practical effect'
• Shoppers upset over lack of cashiers as self-checkout use soars

At Food Fare, a small grocery chain in Winnipeg, cashiers also offer to bag everyone's groceries — no matter the state of their reusable bags. 

"I've had some cashiers give some comments of, 'The bags are dirty,'" said Foodfare's owner, Munther Zeid. In response, he provided them with gloves and sanitizer.

"We've built our business around service," he said. "We will maintain bagging and carrying groceries out to the car."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Business Reporter

Based in Toronto, Sophia Harris covers consumer and business for CBC News web, radio and TV. She previously worked as a CBC videojournalist in the Maritimes, where she won an Atlantic Journalism Award for her work. Got a story idea? Contact: [email protected]

• @sophiaharrisCBC

Related Stories

• Self-checkout theft causing problems for retailers — and shoppers who despise receipt checks

Add some “good” to your morning and evening.

Your weekly look at what’s happening in the worlds of economics, business and finance. Senior business correspondent Peter Armstrong untangles what it means for you, in your inbox Monday mornings.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Google Terms of Service apply.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

Europe’s Crackdown on Environmental Dissent Is Silencing Voices the World Needs to Hear

By Christopher Ketcham

Mr. Ketcham is writing a book about direct climate action and citizen rebellion in defense of nature. He is the author of “This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West.”

A British court last month issued extraordinarily harsh prison sentences to five climate activists convicted of helping to plan a series of road blockades in London. One of the activists, Roger Hallam, 58, a co-founder of the direct action groups Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, got five years. The others were each sentenced to four years.

Mr. Hallam’s crime wasn’t that he participated in the protest, which snarled London’s major beltway, the M25, during four days in November 2022. He merely gave a 20-minute talk on Zoom, a few days before the event, to explain the tactics of civil disobedience and emphasize its value as society’s failure to curb carbon emissions is increasing the chance of catastrophe within our lifetimes. He also stated during the Zoom call that he thought the action should go forward.

This is only the latest example of a wave of repressive government measures against climate protesters across Europe. The crackdown has come in response to a rise in demonstrations and disruptive tactics such as blocking roads and access to airports, defacing art in museums and interrupting sporting events.

Reflecting growing public frustration with such tactics, Rishi Sunak, the former British prime minister, endorsed this tough approach last year after two climate protesters were sentenced to prison terms of three years and two years and seven months for creating a public nuisance by climbing Queen Elizabeth II bridge in Kent. Forty hours of traffic gridlock followed after authorities closed the crossing.

“Those who break the law should feel the full force of it,” Mr. Sunak asserted , writing on X. “It’s entirely right that selfish protesters intent on causing misery to the hard-working majority face tough sentences. It’s what the public expects and it’s what we’ve delivered.”

But Michel Forst, the United Nations special rapporteur on environmental defenders, sees this crackdown as “a major threat to democracy and human rights,” as he put it in a report in February.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Social Norms — Norm Violation in Sociology

Norm Violation in Sociology

• Categories: Deviance Social Norms

About this sample

Words: 1203 |

Published: Feb 12, 2024

Words: 1203 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Table of contents

Social norms essay: research methodology, breaking a social norm essay: research results, discussion: the consequences of social norm violation, norm violation faq.

• What is norm violation in sociology? Norm violation in sociology refers to the intentional or unintentional breaking of social rules and norms that govern society.
• How do social norms shape society? Social norms play a significant role in shaping society by determining acceptable behavior. They provide guidelines for how individuals should act and interact with others in their community.
• Can social norms change over time? Yes, social norms are not fixed and can change over time. What was once considered typical or acceptable may now be deemed unacceptable or outdated.
• What was the focus of the norm violation experiment described in the essay? The norm violation experiment aimed to observe and analyze how individuals would respond to the violation of the social norm of using gender-segregated public restrooms. The experiment sought to determine whether people would attempt to correct the behavior or ignore it, highlighting their readiness to address norm violations.
• What were the results of the norm violation experiment? The most common reaction observed was subtle confusion without any subsequent comments. Men recognized that the woman had entered the wrong restroom but chose to either leave hurriedly or avoid entering after seeing her inside. This indicated a preference to either escape or ignore norm violations rather than confront them. Only a few individuals attempted to point out the mistake, while others simply asked her to leave. There were no signs of disrespect or physical contact, with only one instance of rude behavior.
• What were the consequences of the norm violation for the experimenter? The experimenter initially felt uncertainty and shame regarding her behavior, but as the experiment progressed, she became more accustomed to the situation. This suggests that hedonic adaptation may occur in similar circumstances, leading to a normalization of the behavior.
• What does the norm violation experiment suggest about society? The norm violation experiment suggests that people prioritize their personal space and time over addressing others' social behavior directly. This may reflect an increasing trend towards individualism and selfishness in society. However, it is important to recognize the importance of cooperation and adherence to social norms for the functioning and survival of society.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Sociology

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 1005 words

3 pages / 1340 words

4 pages / 1907 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Social Norms

Norms and social norms are powerful forces that shape our behavior and guide our social interactions. They provide a sense of order, cohesion, and predictability in society. Norms act as social guidelines, ensuring that [...]

Implicit bias, an intrinsic component of human cognition, holds a significant role in shaping our attitudes, beliefs, and actions without conscious awareness. This essay delves deeply into the definition of implicit bias, [...]

Social norms are the unwritten rules that govern acceptable behavior in a society. Violating these norms can lead to social disapproval or even punishment. However, there are times when breaking social norms can be a powerful [...]

The term "broken system" is often invoked to describe failing institutions, malfunctioning processes, and societal structures that no longer serve their intended purposes. This phrase encapsulates a range of issues, from [...]

Social norms are the unwritten rules that govern behavior within a society. They are deeply ingrained in a culture and are passed down from generation to generation. These norms serve as a guide for acceptable behavior and help [...]

While many of us may like to believe that our society today as we know it has advanced in many ways beyond the thoughts and beliefs of the colonial era and the time of slavery, this is unfortunately not the case. In many ways, [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free