The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Psychology
Norms (Subject: Psychology) -- Donelson R. Forsyth
Consensual standards that describe what behaviors should and should not be performed in a given context are called social norms. They prescribe the socially appropriate way to respond in the situation тАУ the тАЬnormalтАЭ course of action тАУ as well as proscribing actions to avoid if at all possible. Social norms, in contrast to statistical norms or general expectations based on intuitive base rates for behavior, include an evaluative component. People who do not comply with the norms of a situation and cannot provide an acceptable explanation for their violation are evaluated negatively. This condemnation can include hostility, pressure to change, negative sanctions, and punishment, but the reaction depends on the magnitude of the discrepancy, the importance of the norm, and the characteristics of the person who violates the norm. Wearing too colorful a tie, not bowing properly when introduced, or talking about overly intimate matters with a new acquaintance may violate situational norms of propriety, but they will rarely earn public rejection. Small violations that reflect personal idiosyncrasies, if kept private, are often overlooked, as are violations committed by prestigious or powerful individuals. Violations of moral norms prohibiting theft or prescribing duties, in contrast, will be roundly condemned (Sabini & Silver, 1978). This evaluative reaction is, however, asymmetric. ...
The International Encyclopedia of Communication
Social Norms (Subject: Communication Studies ┬╗ Health Communication Communication Reception and Effects ┬╗ Public Opinion. Key-Topics: normativity) -- Rajiv N. Rimal and Maria Knight Lapinski
What people choose to do, the behaviors they enact or refrain from enacting, is guided by a number of factors, including their own dispositions, the situational context in which they find themselves, the social roles they take on, and their interpersonal relationships. The study of how people's behaviors are guided, in part, by social norms has been the focus of considerable research in recent years. Although the influence of norms on human behavior occurs across many domains, a great deal of research has focused on understanding normative influences in health-related behaviors, likely because of the inclusion of the subjective norm concept in the theory of reasoned action (TRA; Ajzen & Fishbein 1980); the TRA has been widely used to predict health behaviors (тЖТ Reasoned Action, Theory of). Norms have been conceptualized in several ways, but terms identified in the literature that deal implicitly or explicitly with the influence of referent othersтАЩ attitudes or behaviors on people's own behaviors include: subjective norms (Ajzen & Fishbein 1980), social norms (Perkins & Berkowitz 1986), normative influences (Cialdini et al. 1990), or simply norms (Bendor & Swistak 2001). Cialdini et al. (1990) make a conceptual distinction between two different types of norms: descriptive and injunctive. Descriptive norms are conceptualized as perceptions about the prevalence of ...
The International Encyclopedia of Communication
Behavioral Norms: Perception through the Media (Subject: Communication Reception and Effects ┬╗ Information Processing and Cognitions Psychology ┬╗ Cognitive Psychology. Key-Topics: normativity, social issues) -- Dhavan V. Shah and Hernando Rojas
Social norms entail learned expectations of behavior or categorization that are deemed desirable, or at least appear as unproblematic (Sherif 1936) for a specific social group in a given situation (тЖТ Social Norms). Mass media have been found to help shape тЖТ perceptions of behavioral norms (тЖТ Observational Learning; Media and Perceptions of Reality). These perceptions are consequential for health behaviors, social and sexual practices, democratic participation, and a range of other outcomes. Certain social norms that are considered of extreme importance are typically elevated to the category of legal norms and are enforced through institutional apparatuses. Other norms remain subject to less formalized modes of social control, including systems of rewards and punishments based precisely on sociability that include different combinations of isolation and recognition. Social scientists have long focused on certain key institutions of socialization in which those generalized expectations of behavior are learned by a new generation, namely the family, formal education institutes, and peer group interactions. Mass media are increasingly recognized as another important institution of socialization and cultivator of behavioral norms (тЖТ Socialization by the Media). Social scientists began to acknowledge media as an important socialization institution with the explosion of mass communication ...
The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought
Norms (Subject Sociology) -- Margaret Gilbert
At its most general the idea of a norm is the idea of a pattern. There are two main ways in which this idea has been developed in social theory, where social norms have been the focus of concern. First, there is the idea of a norm as an actual pattern of behaviour, as what is normal in the sense of being regularly or standardly done by members of a population. (The labels тАШsocial habitsтАЩ and тАШusageтАЩ are used of some such patterns.) Second, there is the idea of a norm as a prescribed pattern: as what is considered in a given population to be the thing to do. (The labels тАШconventionтАЩ, тАШsocial ruleтАЩ and Law are used of certain patterns in this category.) I shall refer to norms of this type as тАШprescriptive normsтАЩ. Social norms are often associated with expectations. Two different kinds of expectation need to be distinguished: predictive expectations about what will in fact be done by members of a population, and normative or deontic expectations. Normative expectations involve a belief that the тАШexpectedтАЩ behaviour ought to occur, in some more than merely predictive sense. Actual patterns are likely to be associated with predictive expectations, prescribed patterns with normative expectations. The term тАШnormтАЩ itself is relatively recent in standard social theory usage. The more established terms тАШcustomтАЩ, тАШtraditionтАЩ, тАШconventionтАЩ, тАШlawтАЩ and so on tend to be used for specific types ...
The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Management
Norms (Subject: Business and Management ┬╗ Human Resource Management, International Management) -- Linda S. Gottfredson
A score on a standardized test is interpreted by comparing it to some external standard. When scores are compared to those of some reference population, they are called normтАРreferenced; when compared to some absolute performance standard, they are criterionтАРreferenced. Norms are the distributions of scores (means, standard deviations, etc.) for a test's various reference groups. Normed test scores are most commonly reported as percentile ranks or standard scores, such as z, T, or IQ scores. AgeтАР and gradeтАРequivalents are sometimes reported, especially for achievement tests in elementary school, but they have more technical disadvantages and are prone to misinterpretation. Latent trait or тАЬscaledтАЭ scores provide a new form of developmental norms that solve some but not all the interpretive problems of ageтАР and gradeтАРequivalents. Norm groups (also called reference groups, normative samples, or standardization samples) may be national or local, and represent different age, grade, or social groups. Broad or narrow, however, they must be representative of the populations in question, clearly defined and described, and appropriate for their intended purposes. Intelligence testing compares scores of children of the same age (see intelligence tests). Academic achievement tests typically compare the scores of children in the same grade and often from the same school or geographic area.
Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology
Norms (Subject: Social Psychology ┬╗ Socialization) -- Steven P. Dandaneau
Norms are informal rules that guide social interaction. They are, as Cristina Bicchieri (2006) calls them, тАЬthe rules we live by.тАЭ As such, norms constitute a critical component in the makeup of human cultures and therefore play a highly significant role in determining what it means to be human. When codified, norms are rendered laws or other types of institutionalized regulatory strictures. When conceived without moral consequence, the term can also refer to mere behavioral regularities, even though adherence or lack thereof to these can and often does result in significant consequences (e.g., it would be highly unusual as well as probably harmful to name an American child Adolf Osama or, depending on one's constructed gender, Sue). Variously defined even by sociologists themselves, there is perhaps no other sociological concept more regularly and widely deployed in everyday talk, nor one about which more has been written and discussed. It is therefore not surprising that a concept as equally vague as it is elemental to the sociological enterprise is also one that is the subject of continuous theoretical debate. Typically considered the founder of modern sociology, ├Йmile Durkheim famously theorized society as both a system of integration involving social bonds and institutions and, even more importantly, as a normative order sui generis. While the former manifestation of ...
The International Encyclopedia of Communication
Intercultural Norms (Subject Communication Studies ┬╗ Intercultural Communication. Key-Topics: cross-cultural research, normativity) -- Min-Sun Kim
Normative conduct is a major component of systems of culture. Each culture has its specific norms for everyday social interaction. Differences in norms and cultural expectations often become grounds for intercultural miscommunication and misunderstanding (тЖТ Cultural Patterns and Communication; Nonverbal Communication and Culture). There are innumerable definitions of norms in the social science literature. For example, norms are defined as тАЬrules of conduct,тАЭ тАЬblueprints for behavior,тАЭ and тАЬcultural expectations.тАЭ Comparing existing definitions, Gibbs (1965) finds three attributes of a norm: тАЬ(1) a collective evaluation of behavior in terms of what ought to be; (2) a collective expectation as to what behavior will be; and (3) particular reactions to behavior including attempts to apply sanctions or otherwise induce a particular kind of behaviorтАЭ (тЖТ Intercultural Norms; Social Norms). Sumner (1906) divides norms into three categories: folkways, mores, and laws. Folkways are those pervasive everyday activities widely accepted by the people of a culture. Folkways include such actions as the way we greet others, the way we eat, and other such actions. Mores are those norms placing strong moral demands on an individual's behavior. Examples of mores include commandments derived from religious doctrine, incest taboos, and rules about what is acceptable to eat (e.g., in the United States ...
The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy
Normative (Subject: Philosophy)
Ethics, philosophy of social science From norm, which means standard or rule, and it is associated with evaluation. A theory is normative if it involves norm-prescription and is descriptive if it simply describes the facts but does not prescribe what one ought to do. Normative ethics is the subject of inquiring about the principles or rules of correct moral behavior and is contrasted to meta-ethics, which analyzes the meaning and logical relations of evaluative terms. To define a normative term in terms of non-moral properties is called by Moore the definist fallacy. Sociologists as well as moral philosophers have pictured our lives as governed by complex hierarchies of norms. тАЬTheories that prescribe standards are normative.тАЭ Glymour, Thinking Things Through ...
A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind
Normative (Mind and Cognitive Science ┬╗ Philosophy of Mind) -- Samuel Guttenplan
As a rule, satellites follow elliptical orbits, and, also as a rule, drivers in the UK keep to the left side of the road. But there is a big difference between these two sorts of rule-guided behaviours: satellites are governed by the rules or laws of motion; whereas drivers choose to follow the rules of the road. In this second case, one speaks of the rules as norms. Moreover, though this is more controversial, it has been maintained that one can speak of normativity even when there is no exercise of explicit choice in the relevant behaviour. Thus, many linguists, following CHOMSKY, think of our use of language as a case of rule-following even though speakers are not usually aware of the relevant norms. The notion of normativity, in a slightly different guise, figures in other areas of the philosophy of mind. Firstly, it is often said that the attribution of propositional attitudes is normative, though it may not be immediately apparent what rules or norms are at issue in this case. What is meant is roughly this: there are standards of RATIONALITY that govern our attribution of attitudes to each other even though it may well be impossible to spell these standards out in terms of specific rules or norms. For example, it seems plausible that we cannot attribute beliefs about atoms and electrons to a child of three. The тАШcannotтАЩ here marks the fact that it would not be rationally ...
The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Management
Group Norms (Business and Management ┬╗ International Management, Organizational Behavior) -- Sarah Ronson and Randall S. Peterson
Norms are the unwritten rules that provide guidelines for acceptable behaviors by members of a group. Certain behaviors develop into norms or expectations for all group members over time for a number of reasons, including an influential group member or leader expressing them, group members imitating the actions of others, socially rewarding certain behaviors, group members developing a shared script for events, etc. (Feldman, 1984; Bettenhausen and Murnighan, 1991). Norms can affect not only behavior within a group, but can also influence an individual member's behavior or attitude outside of the group (Sherif, 1966). Norms tend to develop informally and gradually, and to be stable. Situations that are uncertain or unstable are particularly likely to lead to the development of group norms because group members use the group as a reference point for making subjective judgments (Sherif, 1966). Thus, norms tend to serve some function for group members, such as providing information about subjective reality and about how to behave. Norms also benefit the group as a whole. They can (1) define and help enforce behavior that will enable the group to survive (Feldman, 1984); (2) improve group efficiency and effectiveness by making group member behavior predictable (Feldman, 1984); (3) improve member satisfaction by helping members avoid behaviors that the group would not approve of (Feldman, ...
The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Management
Cultural Norms (Subject: Business and Management ┬╗ International Management) -- John O'Connell
Cultural norms are standards of conduct or acceptable behavior in any given culture. The way people communicate (adding gestures vs. just speaking), the way they eat (fork in right hand if from United States and left hand if from Europe), how close one stands when communicating to another (distant in the United States, close in Latin America), equality of men and women (strive for equality in many countries; not an issue in other countries), the work ethic (commitment to employer vs. individual creativity), and many other situations are influenced by the norms of a society or culture. An expatriate or other person living overseas should be aware of the normative behaviors of the host country prior to taking up residence. See also cultural variables; expatriate training; value dimensions (Hofstede's) (1982). How best to integrate expatriate managers into the domestic organization. Personnel Administrator, July, 27 33. ...
The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Psychology
Norm Theory (Subject: Psychology) -- Dale T. Miller
Postulates that every experience brings its own frame of reference or norm into being either by guiding memory retrieval or by constraining mental simulation (see Kahneman & Tversky, 1982; Miller, Turnbull, & McFarland, 1991). The assumption that the norms used in making inferences, predictions, and comparative judgments are evoked by the event itself, and hence are most appropriately viewed as тАЬpostcomputedтАЭ representations, contrasts with the more traditional assumption that norms consist of тАЬprecomputedтАЭ structures (e.g., schemas and expectancies) that the perceiver brings to the experience. According to the precomputed view, each member of a category (e.g., dogs) is evaluated with reference to the same norm (e.g., a schema for dogs); according to the postcomputed view no two members of the category will evoke exactly the same norm. The sight of a dog will bring to mind schematic information about dogs, but it will also bring to mind exemplars of specific other dogs, such as ones that the perceiver has seen recently. One of the most important determinants of norm formation is similarity. The counterfactual images that an event retrieves from memory or generates in imagination will tend to resemble closely the actual event (see counterfactual thinking). But the evoked norms will never match the observed event in all respects: If they did there would never be any surprise ...
The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy
Pure Theory of Law (Subject: Philosophy)
Philosophy of law. A theory developed by the Austrian legal philosopher Hans Kelsen and philosophically based on neo-Kantianism. The theory is pure in the sense that the law should be a universally valid system that is free of all that is changeable and yet able to give ideals that guide lawyers in the search for justice. All moral, political, and sociological contents must be purged from the science of law. According to Kelsen, law is a system of norms, a hierarchy of normative relations that measures human conduct by the use of sanction. The legal norms constitute a relation of condition and sequence rather than a command: тАЬIf A is done, B ought to happen.тАЭ The validity of legal norms is not based on conflicting authorities, but is ultimately derived from a basic norm (Grundnorm) that is postulated in the historically first constitution. The validity of the basic norm is not derived, but must be assumed as an initial hypothesis. Legal theory is concerned with the conceptual tools for analyzing the relations between the fundamental norms and all lower norms within a legal system. It is not concerned with its moral content, which should be the subject-matter of politics or moral theory. On this basis, Kelsen attacked natural law theory, which insists on a necessary connection between law and morality. He drew a sharp distinction between тАЬisтАЭ and тАЬought,тАЭ and denied the possibility ...
Originally Posted by Gone Fishing
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