Cultural norms

1. What is a social / cultural norm? a. "The rules of behavior that are considered acceptable in a group or society. People who do not follow these norms may be shunned or suffer some kind of consequence. Norms change according to the environment or situation and may change or be modified over time.” (Your Dictionary, 2016) b. Examples: i. Not making eye contact during conversation – Cultural norm ii. Invading someone’s personal space – Social norm 2. What social / cultural norm did you select for your breeching experiment? Why and how is this behavior a social norm? Why did you select this norm to violate? a. The norm I chose to breech is chewing with my mouth open and talking with my mouth full. I completed my experiment in a mostly middle…

OPTION #2: Violate a Norm. Break a cultural norm and observe what happens. Your paper should describe what you did, what you felt before, during, and after you did it, and how other people reacted to you. “Members of a culture must conform to its norms for the culture to exist and function.” - George D Zgourides. As stated in our book, Social Psychology and Human Nature—Brief Version (4th edition), cultural standards are what each society or group of people decide is natural or normal…

Norms Norms are an element of rules of a culture that people follow without even thinking about it. Around the world there are different societies with particular norms that make people to act in certain ways. Norms provides justifications for sanctions. However different societies have different norms that may appear rare to other culture. For example in our society it is expected that we have the freedom to talk with whoever we want, while in other cultures a woman trying to talk with a man…

The Big Picture: Deviance Deviance is any behavior that violates cultural norms. What are norms you ask? Norms are guidelines or expectations for how we should behave in our day to day lives. Most members of society will accept social norms and expect others to do the same. Being expected to do something can put a lot of pressure on an individual. Our perception of behavior reflects a process of socialization that occurs over the course of our lives. We are expected to obey the laws so most…

The location I choose to perform my violation of a culture norm was at the cafeteria. I used the cafeteria that is in the Gordon student center. After trying to decide which cultural norm to experiment with, I choose to invade someone else's personal space. The plan I created was going up to someone in the cafeteria, and intentional sitting close to the person to invasion his personal space. Have no communication between us so the interaction would be silence. The social situation interaction…

Scandinavians, as with many societies, lead lives that are culturally constructed. These cultural norms are learned through the generations, but in the industrial west our culture is increasingly learned through media and arts. People of every culture take these learned norms as a grain of salt, accepting them as natural and inevitable while never questioning them. However, in challenging and analyzing these very cultural constructions, one soon realizes that some of these views are just mere…

The readings, “Understanding Other Cultures” and “Anthropology and Intercultural Relations” are based around understanding other cultures and how we can benefit from studying outside of our “norm.” By learning what shapes human behavior in different cultures, we can increase our cultural understanding. Our willingness to cross cultural thresholds can give us the opportunity to view a variety ways and styles of living. Understanding what sets each culture apart from each other can help government…

Cultural or moral relativism cannot be correct as all humans share and follow universal norms as they live their everyday lives. Each individual is faced with decisions at time to time, and they make their decision based on what they believe is correct. Most of the things that humans believe in, which are correct, relate back to universal norms. If groups or majorities believe something is right and they teach or praise this belief around the world it can be known as a universal norm (Demuijnck,…

The readings for week 14 have provided me with a better understanding of caregiving-related foundational information within current literature. Much of the information that was mentioned was new to me, however there were also key concepts that made sense. The findings for the article by Birditt, Fingerman, and Zarit (2010) especially captured my attention. It is apparent that parents’ feelings about their children is complex and must take multiple factors into consideration. I never thought to…

Tony from the U.S., Maki from Japan, and me from China. We are assigned for a group project for a new TV show proposal in a global company and we have never met each other before. In some areas, we could share common ground and make agreement. But in most of time, we would face conflicts and misunderstanding caused by different cultural norms. In that case, we would try to find out efficient solutions in order to keep our team works. As we are coming from different countries with different…