social norms thesis

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How we learn social norms: a three-stage model for social norm learning

1 CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

2 Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

3 School of Humanities and Social Science, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China

Yixuan Dong

4 Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

5 Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

Shiming Yao

6 Graziadio Business School of Business and Management, Pepperdine University, Los Angeles, CA, United States

As social animals, humans are unique to make the world function well by developing, maintaining, and enforcing social norms. As a prerequisite among these norm-related processes, learning social norms can act as a basis that helps us quickly coordinate with others, which is beneficial to social inclusion when people enter into a new environment or experience certain sociocultural changes. Given the positive effects of learning social norms on social order and sociocultural adaptability in daily life, there is an urgent need to understand the underlying mechanisms of social norm learning. In this article, we review a set of works regarding social norms and highlight the specificity of social norm learning. We then propose an integrated model of social norm learning containing three stages, i.e., pre-learning, reinforcement learning, and internalization, map a potential brain network in processing social norm learning, and further discuss the potential influencing factors that modulate social norm learning. Finally, we outline a couple of future directions along this line, including theoretical (i.e., societal and individual differences in social norm learning), methodological (i.e., longitudinal research, experimental methods, neuroimaging studies), and practical issues.

1. Introduction

In the preceding decades, human societies have experienced dramatic sociocultural changes influencing human culture and psychology with globalization ( Cai et al., 2019 ). Social norms are widely viewed as the common values, expectations, and beliefs shared by most members of the group and society ( Elster, 1989 ; Hechter and Opp, 2001 ). To maintain and organize a stable and sustainable society, humans have developed and enforced a wide range of social norms, which are of significance in guiding individual and group behaviors at the micro-level ( Smith and Louis, 2009 ; Liu et al., 2018 ; Gilliam et al., 2022 ) and promoting social order and large-scale cooperation at the macro-level ( Morris et al., 2015 ; Mu et al., 2015 ; Gelfand et al., 2017 ; Legros and Cislaghi, 2020 ). Generally, social norms are viewed as the unique glue of human societies, as humans conform to social norms to fulfill the mutual expectations within the social group ( Chudek and Henrich, 2011 ; Schmidt and Tomasello, 2012 ). However, when entering into a new situation or culture, people are usually exposed to a variety of unfamiliar, ambiguous, implicit rules and norms, most of which are unwritten and situation-dependent social norms. Thus, understanding the potential mechanisms of processing these new social norms provides an insight into how culture and its changes may influence people’s minds and behaviors ( Gelfand et al., 2011 ; Morris et al., 2015 ; Chua et al., 2019 ) and how people could better learn and adapt to a fresh cultural context.

Most of the time, people feel obligated to conform to a certain social norm (e.g., a group or the majority’s opinion) even when they know it is wrong ( Asch, 1951 ), which is related to the specific features of social norms. Different from other types of norms (i.e., personal norms, moral norms) based on internal values (e.g., morality, virtue), social norms contain stronger sociality and sustaining motivation because they can hardly be learned, maintained, and adapted without social contexts and feedback ( Bicchieri, 2006 ; Morris et al., 2015 ). As a basis of other norm-related processes, accumulating evidence has revealed the mechanisms of various norm-related processes, including norm conformity ( Hodges, 2014 ), norm enforcement ( Horne, 2007 ), and norm violation detection ( Mu et al., 2015 ; Van Kleef et al., 2015 ), yet limited attention has been paid to the possible mechanisms of individuals’ learning new social norms.

Previous studies have found that norm differences vary across even within the country ( Harrington and Gelfand, 2014 ; Chua et al., 2019 ), depending on sociocultural factors such as environmental threats, rice-farming, and urbanization ( Chua et al., 2019 ; Talhelm and English, 2020 ). For example, people who move to a larger and more developed city may need to sort and put garbage in a specific place to effectively improve the environment and promote resource recycling. Considering these cultural differences (e.g., urbanization) is inevitable, for an individual, a higher ability to learn social norms in a novel culture is an absolute and urgent necessity to respond to such urbanization-related norm changes and acculturation more quickly and adaptatively. Moreover, for society, learning social norms about devotion or diligence is advantageous for cooperation ( Schmidt and Tomasello, 2012 ; Anderson and Dunning, 2014 ; Dannals and Miller, 2017 ; Legros and Cislaghi, 2020 ). Although complying with social norms is not always beneficial for individuals, like youth smoking uptake ( East et al., 2021 ) and feuding behaviors ( Young, 2015 ), the ability to learn social norms is necessary and can serve as a requisite for other related processes, ensuring people follow the majority ( Anderson and Dunning, 2014 ; Olsson et al., 2020 ). Given the broad implications of social norms and their benefits in understanding individual adaptation and social coordination to cultural changes, especially when entering into a new environment or experiencing sociocultural changes, there is an urgent need to focus on the mechanisms underlying social norm learning.

Considering the significance of learning new social norms on sociocultural adaption to a changeable environment and a fresh cultural context, we review previous literature on social norms and different types of learning to provide a potential theoretic framework for social norm learning. We first start with distinguishing the unique features and the significance of social norms from other types of norms. Second, for each of the specific stages, we propose an integrated model of social norm learning, which lay the foundation for further research on social norm learning at the individual level. Third, we additionally highlight the potential brain regions that may involve in support for social norm learning at the neural level and further discuss individual and social moderating factors that may influence social norm learning. To spur future research on the process of social norm learning, we conclude with a discussion of exciting frontiers that we envision.

2. The features of social norm

When people come into a fresh situation or culture, social norms are usually unwritten and implicitly reflect how people should behave in the group or society of a certain situation and culture. Although different types of norms share the same core—behavioral patterns in groups or “group-level evaluations of behavior” ( Horne and Mollborn, 2020 ), unwritten social norms in a new situation or culture are unique in multiple aspects.

One of the key features making social norms different from other types of norms (e.g., conventions, personal norms, moral norms, and legal norms) is sociality. Mackie et al. (2015) , by comparing social norms with several types of norms, viewed social norms as “strongly social,” which reflects one’s perception of others’ expectations about what should be done in a certain situation. Thus, compared to following conventions which is usually driven by self-interest and sustained by empirical expectations, people comply with social norms to even be at odds with their personal goals and maintain them by normative expectations ( Bicchieri and Muldoon, 2014 ; Gross and Vostroknutov, 2022 ). On the contrary, personal norms are internalized values that are classified as “not social” and call for less social pressure to maintain ( Bicchieri, 2006 ). Further, although moral norms can be shaped by societal factors, social norms are primarily driven by social motivations, necessitate conditional preferences for compliance, and reflect social pressure acknowledged through social feedback in specific situations (e.g., rebuke, gossip, stopping one’s behavior, approval, or compliment; Bicchieri, 2006 ; Morris et al., 2015 ). However, the sources of social feedback are diverse. Different from the feedback of legal norms which are more formal and commanded by institutions and special groups (e.g., the police; Mackie et al., 2015 ), the reference group of social norms changes with different contexts and social interactions, including all relevant others whose behaviors and opinions matter, such as peers, friends, and family ( Legros and Cislaghi, 2020 ). That is, learning social norms relies on social interactions with different groups, which underscores the sociality of social norms.

The second prominent feature of social norms is situation-dependent or situation-sensitive. Unlike moral norms, social norms are not fundamentally right or wrong and are more dependent on situations. Thus, the new social norm we learn in a particular situation may not apply to another case. Take playing music as an example, you will not be accused of doing so at the city square where people regard it as the appropriate behavior, while this may not apply to a back road where people are expected to be quiet. On the contrary, personal and moral norms, guided by beliefs from long-term experience, are less influenced by the situation ( Anderson and Dunning, 2014 ). For instance, a person who has the moral belief of “not to lie” will not lie even in a situation where lying is common and never be punished. Compared to legal norms reflecting the internalization of institutions, the most fundamental criterion of social norms determining what people should do remains situation-dependent ( Morris et al., 2015 ): the norm of “no jaywalking” does not exist in a chaotic street where everyone does so.

3. Social norm learning and its unique “social” features

When coming into a new situation or culture, learners need to interact with others to be ready for learning new social norms in this circumstance, where social interaction are of importance in newcomer learning ( Korte, 2009 ). In comparison to other learning processes (e.g., general reinforcement learning, learning of moral norms), social norm learning may have its uniqueness inherited from the key features of the social norms concerned, which embodies three “social” characteristics from individual to group level: social cognition, social feedback, and social context.

First, social norm learning requires social cognition, such as sharing and understanding others’ mental states and behaviors ( Legros and Cislaghi, 2020 ), reflecting learners’ ability to interact with others. Regarding social norm learning, less is achieved strictly from personal experience, whereas more is acquired from relevant others ( Bossan et al., 2015 ). These processes are often considered to include social learning (i.e., learning from others). Thus, the mechanism of social norm learning resembles two social learning strategies. One is called the frequency-dependent strategy by which people will adopt the action that is the most common in a reference group, and the other is defined as the pay-off-based strategy, which highlights that the selection of a certain behavior depends on the feedback from the observed others ( Morgan et al., 2012 ). That is, learners acquire information about social norms from social interactions with others as well as the preliminary knowledge of social norms that people pass on ( Mackie et al., 2015 ). Although perceived behaviors and beliefs of the majority are the two main sources of social norm predictions ( Cialdini et al., 1991 ), not all evidence is treated equally during the process of evaluation, which may make different learners host different sensitivity to others’ behaviors and cause them to assume that some people are more reliable than others in turn. In other words, social norm learning relies heavily on social cognition, i.e., judgments about the reliability of others’ behavior ( Muldoon et al., 2014 ).

The second key feature of social norm learning is social feedback, which supplies learners’ prediction of appropriate behaviors when interacting with others. Paying attention to what most people do (i.e., descriptive norms) could help collect the initial information and further prompt subjective expectations of social norms ( Morris et al., 2015 ). On the one hand, the learning mechanism could function via social reference, that is, people learn to behave appropriately in a certain situation based on the observation of others’ behaviors and the feedback received. More importantly, the social feedback an individual received from others plays a direct role in strengthening or weakening one’s estimation of the appropriateness of behavior in a certain situation, which includes various types of social feedback, such as physical actions, emotional reactions, and marking schemes (expressed by adding or deducting points; Fix et al., 2006 ; Morris et al., 2019 ). For instance, one can learn not to make noise in the library by having been reprimanded or learn to offer seats to the elderly by having been praised. Thus, not only can individuals behave as the norm asked by observing others’ shared experiences, but they also can experience the social feedback on their own more directly.

Finally, given that social norms are sensitive to sociocultural contexts, the third key characteristic of social norm learning is context-based processing, which makes learning social norms different from other learning processes, such as reinforcement learning depending on the feedback valence and strength ( Klucharev et al., 2009 ). Additionally, unlike moral beliefs requiring less strengthening and would hardly fade out in changeable situations due to internalization ( FeldmanHall and Dunsmoor, 2019 ), social norms can be learned through personal experiences/attitudes and be acquired from the surrounding environment and the potential reference groups ( Muldoon et al., 2014 ). Therefore, the learning process of social norms is highly relevant to the ongoing circumstance and context, which helps learners to detect the new social norms when interacting with others.

4. The three-stage model of social norm learning

Imagine when you leave your hometown for a new city to work and live in, and you would notice various new social norms to learn and adapt to, such as no littering and garbage classification. To timely and adaptively respond to this circumstance, you may first observe and collect some social and environmental cues about the new social norm in this situation. Then, you may generate a prediction about how to behave appropriately in this case, and the social feedback you received (e.g., others’ smiling in approval or shaking heads in disapproval) may help to adjust your prediction. By continuously adjusting your prediction based on the feedback, you will learn this new social norm and behave appropriately next time in this café.

After the in-depth view of the key features of social norm learning, we propose that learning a new social norm embodies three stages in this section: (1) collecting information or cues embedded in the interactional situation ( the pre-learning stage ); (2) dynamically learning how to behave correctly by receiving social feedback and adjusting prediction error ( the reinforcement learning stage ); and (3) internalizing the new social norm into the norm system ( the internalization stage ; see Figure 1 ).

The three-stage model of social norm learning, as a step-by-step, dynamic, and cyclic process of learning a new social norm in a certain situation or new cultural context, includes three stages: (1) Pre-learning stage is referred to the process that individuals perceive the social norms through the collection of various social information in certain situations from situational sources (e.g., the place where a social norm happens, the present group which learner belongs to) and social sources (e.g., differences between the new norm in in-group and for outgroup, social deviants), which is useful to make people realize that there may be the new social norm in such situation and form the initial social norm prediction of this new social norm; (2) Reinforcement learning stage is a dynamic process of forming various predictions of this new social norm, receiving social feedbacks from others (e.g., social emotion, reward and punishment, social inclusion, and exclusion), adjusting the prediction error and forming a new prediction, and finally form the concise and appropriate prediction of this new social norm to adapt to others’ behaviors; (3) Internalization stage aims to integrate into new social norms and extend the former norm system, which is involved in three ways for those who regard this new social norm as personal and moral values, a majority norm, and a default option.

4.1. Stage 1: pre-learning

The initial period of learning new social norms, namely the pre-learning stage, is mainly activated to help people collect social information and get ready to form an initial prediction. Due to the desire for norm conformity to generate positive emotions (i.e., feeling good and energetic) and social identification ( Christensen et al., 2004 ), learners will try to accumulate various sources of social information. When interacting with others in a new cultural context or a temporary situation where they need to detect whether there is a certain normative behavior to follow, learners will pay attention to others’ reactions and monitor themselves to behave as appropriately as possible ( Muldoon et al., 2014 ).

Therefore, in this stage, one of the most significant processes is norm detection , which refers to a dynamic norm-learning process of discovering the potential norms in a certain situation by paying attention to and collecting information and cues from situational and social sources when learners observe and interact with others ( Mahmoud et al., 2014 ; Legros and Cislaghi, 2020 ). The situational sources mainly include place (where a social norm takes place), event (which devotes to a social norm), group (to which learners belong), and culture (which reflects macro-level contextual factors). As for the social sources, several cues in guiding social interaction should be emphasized, including direct instruction (e.g., education, signs and texts in the public area, and straightforward verbal norms), others’ emotional reactions and behaviors, in-group and out-group differences (i.e., differentiating the norms suitable for in-group from those for out-group), social deviants, etc.

As people need to collect social information and cues in the pre-learning stage, monitoring others and themselves is thought to be another important process. Learners could observe others’ actions to figure out the appropriate behavior in this social context, which means successfully monitoring others’ behaviors could help learners better acquire the knowledge of others, especially the prototypes which are regarded as the most typical examples ( Snyder and Cantor, 1979 ). Meanwhile, monitoring one’s own behavior is the key ability to ensure one behaves appropriately and avoid norm violation ( Snyder and Cantor, 1979 ). Active self-monitoring helps individuals form an appearance that caters to the current situation and obtain more positive rewards from others. An EEG study investigated the neural activation of action monitoring in psychopathy individuals and found that psychopathic relative to healthy people (the control group) elicited decreased error-related negativity (ERN, a neural marker of others’ incorrect behaviors) during the observation of others’ actions, which might hinder psychopathic participants’ social norm learning via observation ( Brazil et al., 2011 ). Compared to the long process of collecting social information and monitoring others, there might be a fast process to help learners adapt to the new situation in the pre-learning stage. Specifically, the former knowledge of acquired social norms in a similar situation is beneficial to facilitate such fast processing of social norm learning. Sensitization of fast learning process may include but are not limited to transfer learning, school studying, and verbal injunctive norms. To sum up, the pre-learning stage is mainly devoted to generating the initial prediction of a new social norm by monitoring others and themselves to detect the behavioral pattern with the majority and then recognize it as the “norm.”

4.2. Stage 2: reinforcement learning

After information collection and norm detection in the pre-learning stage, learners have formed the initial prediction of the new social norm and then enter the next stage during which they interact with others in the given situation and receive social feedback, in turn, leading them to adjust and update their predictions of the new social norm. The second stage of social norm learning is a dynamic process of reinforcement learning. In previous literature, reinforcement learning is usually operationally defined as a trial-by-trial learning process in response to feedback to adjust the prediction for the correct behavior ( Garrison et al., 2013 ; Cheong et al., 2017 ). Based on the process of reinforcement learning, we propose that the dynamic learning process contains three interacting components: social norm prediction, social feedback, and prediction error adjustment.

4.2.1. Social norm prediction

Forming the primary and initial representation of a new social norm requires social information and sources in the pre-learning stage—what most people would do or may approve of in this certain situation or new cultural context. When there are enough demonstrations, learners can observe how others behave, receive relevant feedback, and combine them with endogenous signals (e.g., evaluation of the demonstrators’ behaviors) to adaptively imitate ( Najar et al., 2020 ). If the information is insufficient, learners need to act by trial and error, which may rely on individual learning strategies ( Bossan et al., 2015 ), including inferring the purpose, evaluating the reliability of the information based on previous observation, deducting different consequences, and behaving to best fulfill the purpose.

4.2.2. Social feedback

Once learners behave according to their social norm prediction and act by trial and error to form the appropriate social norm, the adjustment of social norm predictions can hardly achieve without social feedback, which has long been viewed as a pivotal driving force that leads to behavior change. Therefore, the generation and dissemination of social feedback by other people (i.e., an ingroup member) are an important basis for reinforcing and consolidating social norms. Learners can obtain social feedback not only on their own behaviors but also on that of others so that they can reason what most group members approve or disapprove of and pave the way for adjusting the social norm prediction. At the same time, learners’ behaviors may become observers’ social feedback from others. As a result, the shared behavioral pattern of most members of a group or society generates and ripples through within the group. This mechanism would even work without specific guidance or written rules because people treat each other as their reference points. The network trains itself via the distributed but shared psychological processes of the group or society members.

Except for different sources of social feedback, there are many forms of social feedback, whether it is social identity, reward value, approval of others, punishment for violating norms, or psychologically painful experiences like social exclusion (e.g., Klucharev et al., 2009 ; Rudert and Greifeneder, 2016 ; Halmesvaara et al., 2020 ; Molho et al., 2020 ). Emotion is one of the most powerful social feedback when it comes to helping people quickly adapt to the situation. For instance, emotional signals (i.e., sadness, anger, and shame) help people effectively detect a norm transgression behavior ( Hareli et al., 2013 ), an attitude change during social interaction ( Morris and Keltner, 2000 ), and the recognition and prevention for a norm violating behavior ( Halmesvaara et al., 2020 ). In addition, norm-related emotions like shame or guilt of the reference group could trigger painful experiences of norm transgression, which prevents people from behaving inappropriately ( Rudert and Greifeneder, 2016 ). In other words, influential and proper social feedback will accelerate the adjustment for prediction errors.

4.2.3. Prediction error adjustment

After receiving feedback, learners need to solve the prediction errors—the differences between their expectations (i.e., the previous prediction) and the obtained consequences or feedback ( Schultz and Dickinson, 2000 ; Garrison et al., 2013 ). Moderate prediction errors are beneficial to learners’ timely adjustment of appropriate behaviors and then facilitate the process of learning new social norms, while high prediction errors might lead to learners’ cognitive conflicts toward their prediction and then hinders their acquisition of new social norms. Generally, learners first keep the differences in mind, modify false beliefs in time, adjust their predictions, and finally adapt to appropriate behaviors ( Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004 ). Berns et al. (2010) found that individuals tended to adjust their ratings to be consistent with group preference to relieve anxiety. Using advanced computational modeling (i.e., the Bayesian learner model), researchers further describe the adjustment process in detail that learners first observe the preference of the majority from others’ behaviors, integrate their preference (transcendental belief) with the preference of the majority (social norm) by updating (Bayesian) belief, and then make their behaviors adapt to the group social norm ( Muldoon et al., 2014 ; Garvert et al., 2015 ; Suzuki et al., 2016 ; Reiter et al., 2019 ). As a result, prediction error adjustment plays a crucial role in forming the representation of a new social norm.

4.3. Stage 3: internalization

Internalization is a key element of socialization whereby one follows a certain social norm from one’s own internalized motive rather than out of external surveillance or sanction ( Etzioni, 2000 ; Bell and Cox, 2015 ; Morris et al., 2015 ; Dannals and Miller, 2017 ). That is, people follow the new social norm even when others around them do not obey it after internalizing it. However, how a new social norm can be stored and represented internally remains unclear. We propose three potential ways through which a new norm can be internalized. First, for people who regard this social norm as their values ( Anderson, 2000 ; Bell and Cox, 2015 ), the new social norm might be integrated into the previous system related to their personal and moral values. Second, a new social norm can be viewed as a representation of what “the majority” does. Therefore, people who tend to comply with “the majority” to obtain their identities from society or the organization may internalize the new social norm as a majority norm (vs. minority norm). Third, a new social norm can be cached as a default option. When facing a lack of alternatives or having been exposed to uncertain situations, people may activate the default option to follow this new norm temporarily. Although simple norm conformity does not necessarily need internalizing the norm, once people internalize the norm, they not only comply with it but also show emotional reactions reflecting norm enforcement when facing a norm-violation behavior. Previous research has found that emotions facilitate norm enforcement in a third-party punishment task ( Fehr and Fischbacher, 2004 ; Nelissen and Zeelenberg, 2009 ; Pfattheicher et al., 2019 ), which suggests a potential role of emotion in norm internalization ( Gross and Vostroknutov, 2022 ). In summary, the internalization of new social norms is crucial for maintaining this norm, detecting norm violators, and complying with or enforcing this norm in certain situations. In the long run, people would adapt to a new and changing culture better if they could internalize these new norms.

To conclude, the three-stage model devotes to the main process of social norm learning: (a) Pre-learning stage is aimed at collecting social information from two social sources in a certain situation, including situational sources and social sources, which devotes to forming the initial prediction of a new social norm while preparing for next stage; (b) Reinforcement learning stage includes the substages of forming the social norm prediction, receiving social feedback from others, and continuously adjusting the prediction error between the previous prediction and the outcome, which is a cyclic and dynamic process that aids in updating the primary representation, adapting to others’ behaviors, and eventually forming the new social norm; and (c) Internalization stage includes three possible ways for those who regard the new social norm as personal and moral values, a majority norm, and a default option, respectively, to incorporate the new social norms into the former norm system. This is a step-by-step process of this three-stage social norm learning model from forming the initial social norm prediction to continuously adjusting the prediction error dynamically and internalizing the final social norm into the norm system to help one behave appropriately in this situation in the future (see Figure 1 ).

5. Neural mechanisms of social norm learning

Taking advantage of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), previous literature has mapped distributed brain networks involved in social norm-related processing, such as social norm compliance ( Spitzer et al., 2007 ; Ruff et al., 2013 ; Makwana et al., 2015 ), social learning ( Rilling and Sanfey, 2011 ; Joiner et al., 2017 ), and reinforcement learning ( Behrens et al., 2008 ; Apps et al., 2013 , 2015 ). However, limited attention has been paid to the social norm learning process and its neural substrates. In this section, by reviewing relative studies in this field, we propose the potential neural circuits of social norm learning, especially for the requisite processes (i.e., the pre-learning stage, and the reinforcement learning stage) during which a social norm is learned.

As we mentioned, pre-learning is to generally detect and collect social information from the current situation and monitor one’s behavior. This process demands the involvement of the “social brain”—brain regions (e.g., the frontal cortex) that are evoked by the mere presence of social information ( Tso et al., 2018 ). For instance, the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) is engaged in perceiving complex social stimuli ( Wagner et al., 2016 ), integrating social information ( De Martino et al., 2017 ), and performing social reasoning ( Fiddick et al., 2005 ). Specifically, during the pre-learning stage, learners will generate their representation of appropriate behavior in the current situation (i.e., social norm representation) which is highly associated with the right medial frontal gyrus (MFG; Zinchenko and Arsalidou, 2018 )—a region involved in processing one’s expectation and inference of existing norms ( Christoff et al., 2009 ). With the social norm being represented mentally, individuals may need to monitor their behaviors to comply with the norm. It has been suggested that patients with lesions in the orbitofrontal cortex failed to monitor themselves even though they know what the norm is ( Beer et al., 2006 ). This phenomenon is highly attributed to the incompetence of monitoring social feedback from others caused by orbitofrontal damage ( Kringelbach and Rolls, 2004 ). We, therefore, speculate that the prominent role of the orbitofrontal cortex in facilitating self-monitoring of norm-compliance behavior.

Different from the pre-learning stage, the reinforcement learning stage highly relies on how learners utilize social feedback (i.e., reward or punishment) to reinforce and adjust their predictions and behaviors. How does the brain process social feedback? Previous literature on positive feedback has shown that receiving and anticipating positive social feedback, like smiling faces and verbal praise, are likely to induce greater activation in the ventral striatum ( VS ), particularly in the nucleus accumbens (NAc; Kirsch et al., 2003 ; Spreckelmeyer et al., 2009 ; Rademacher et al., 2010 ). On the other hand, negative feedback, such as social sanctions, promote norm compliance by modulating the right lateral prefrontal cortex ( Ruff et al., 2013 ). It has been documented that the ventral anterior cingulate cortex (vACC) is particularly sensitive to social feedback rather than expectancy violations ( Somerville et al., 2006 ), suggesting that the vACC plays a vital role in processing the feedback in social norm learning. However, researchers also found that the dorsal ACC (dACC) is responsive to expectancy violations ( Somerville et al., 2006 ), which suggests that when learners receive feedback, their estimation of prediction error (i.e., the discrepancy between an expected outcome and what happens) may be associated with the ACC ( Schultz and Dickinson, 2000 ; Garrison et al., 2013 ). In addition to rewards and sanctions directly related to oneself, value and prediction errors of others’ behavior can also reinforce learners’ knowledge of social norms. The gyral surface of the anterior cingulate (gACC) is specifically responsible for learning others’ prediction errors ( Apps et al., 2012 , 2013 ), which can be regarded as part of observational learning ( Hill et al., 2016 ).

Taken together, the current research has mapped a potential brain network in processing social norm learning, with the medial prefrontal and the orbitofrontal cortex involved in the pre-learning stage, and the brain network related to social feedback (e.g., the ventral striatum, ACC) engaged in the reinforcement learning stage.

6. The influencing factors of social norm learning

While people have been universally equipped with the ability to learn social norms, it is no doubt that this ability varies across individuals and groups. For example, cross-cultural evidence showed that cultural tightness predicts higher sensitivity to norm-violation behavior ( Mu et al., 2015 ). In this section, we first discuss the cultural dimension based on norm strength, namely cultural tightness–looseness (TL), highlight the effect of other cultural variations (i.e., individualism–collectivism, the rice theory), and then point out a set of individual factors that may impact social norm learning.

6.1. Cultural factors

Though social norms are universally established in all human groups and societies, cultural variations in the strength of social norms and the degree of tolerance for norm deviance have been deeply discussed in a multilevel framework of cultural TL. Such cultural variations are predicted by the degree of ecological and historical threats that different societies have experienced ( Gelfand et al., 2011 ), not only between countries but also within themselves ( Gelfand et al., 2011 ; Harrington and Gelfand, 2014 ; Chua et al., 2019 ). Specifically, tight societies have higher levels of historical threats (e.g., natural disasters, conflicts, and high population density), and thus they have developed stronger norms and harsher punishments for norm-violation behaviors ( Gelfand et al., 2011 ). For individuals to detect norm-related cues, tight cultures have clearer norm instructions and stricter norm enforcement, and people in a tight society are cultivated to be more vigilant in seeking social norms and are high in self-monitoring. As a result, they may have more “felt accountability” for learning social norms. According to the cultural framework, it is speculated that cultural TL may modulate the pre-learning stage when people need to learn new social norms in the current situation or cultural context. Tight cultures impose more restrictions on people’s daily behaviors by providing more guidelines and regulations in public settings, such as the sign for no chewing gum in Singapore ( Gelfand et al., 2011 ; Chua et al., 2019 ). Consistent with this, Mu et al. (2015) , by using the electroencephalogram technique, found that people from a tight culture exhibited increased endorsement of inappropriateness and greater neural responses to norm violation behaviors. Furthermore, people from tight cultures (e.g., China, Japan) tend to monitor and regulate their behaviors in many domains (e.g., eating behavior, alcohol consumption, and emotional regulation), as compared to those from loose cultures (e.g., American) who exhibit more self-regulation failures ( Gelfand, 2018 ). Accordingly, it is assumed that people from a tight culture are chronically exposed to stricter social norms, which is beneficial for them to detect social norms and monitor their own and others’ behaviors during the pre-learning stage.

Cultural TL may contribute to the sensitivity to social feedback and behavioral adjustment during the reinforcement learning stage. The tight culture societies have stronger punishment for norm-violation behaviors and social praise for the behaviors that obey norms ( Gelfand et al., 2011 ), which is favorable to the individuals to form the norm prediction and make appropriate adjustments according to the social feedback constantly received in tight cultures ( Thombs et al., 2007 ; Li and Yan, 2020 ). Moreover, people in a tight society who do not adhere to norms are more likely to be ostracized and excluded by other society members ( Whitson et al., 2015 ) and are more vulnerable to social sanctions and punishment ( Molho et al., 2020 ). That is, in a tighter culture, people tend to be more sensitive to social feedback and feel more accountable for adjusting their behaviors to reduce the risk of violating the social norm and being punished. Thus, as a norm-based cultural dimension, we propose that cultural TL will play an unignored role in shaping and modulating multiple key processes of learning social norms.

Except for the effect of cultural TL on social norm learning, other cultural variations may also influence newcomers to learn social norms. On the one hand, individualism–collectivism reflects the concern for self and others ( Oyserman et al., 2002 ). Compare to individualism valuing the expression of individual independence and internal traits as the core, collectivist cultures emphasize compliance with obligations, compromise, and harmony ( Triandis et al., 1988 , 1990 ), and focus on common fate, goals, and values in the society ( Oyserman et al., 2002 ), which may be related to norm-related processes, such as norm perception ( Sherman et al., 2021 ) and attitudes toward norm violators ( Stamkou et al., 2019 ). On the other hand, the rice theory indicates that people living in rice-growing areas tend to be more communal and have stronger social norms ( Talhelm et al., 2014 ; Talhelm and English, 2020 ). Thus, stronger and tighter social norms in the rice regions may affect stronger punishment for violators and a higher desire to conform to social norms, which would help people to detect new social norms in the pre-learning stage and adjust their behaviors after receiving the feedback in the reinforcement learning stage.

6.2. Individual factors

Accumulating studies have indicated that people perceive, react to, and enforce social norms differently ( Jacobson et al., 2015 ; Friehe and Schildberg-Hörisch, 2018 ; Xie et al., 2020 ), we thus speculate that individual factors related to norm processing may moderate social norm learning. First, the pre-learning stage discussed above requires sensitivity to processing social information embedded in a certain situation or a changing cultural context. Learners with high social sensitivity relative to those with low sensitivity are better at detecting subtle social cues (e.g., social experiences, brief conversational silences). We, therefore, conjecture that individual sensitivity to social information contributes to gathering and processing social cues, which further help behavioral adjustment to fulfill social expectations. Second, people with high self-monitors tend to behave appropriately to fit into a certain situation and change their behaviors when they are aware of changes in the situation, whereas low self-monitors rely more on their internal cues ( Snyder, 1974 ; Smith et al., 2019 ). Thus, compared to low self-monitoring people, when those with high self-monitoring are exposed to cultural changes or experience temporary changes in a certain situation, they could detect external others’ behaviors more quickly to behave more appropriately, and finally, facilitate the pre-learning stage. Third, the individual ability of mentalization (i.e., the capacity of speculating about other people’s mental states and predict their behaviors; Frith and Frith, 2006 ), is closely related to norm-related processes, such as norm-enforcement ( Baumgartner et al., 2012 ), sharing others’ norm transgression ( Paulus et al., 2015 ), and social norm inferences ( Pegado et al., 2018 ). This capacity could be strengthened via actively learning from others and dynamically updating predictions by combining various aspects of social information ( Silston et al., 2018 ; Wu et al., 2020 ). Learners with high mentalizing capacity relative to those with low mentalization may have more advantages in understanding others’ behaviors and intentions, which helps them to interpret the new social norm and form a concrete prediction. Fourth, compared to the ability of mentalization showing one’s understanding of others, metacognition refers to the ability to represent, monitor, and control one’s mental cognitive processes ( Norman et al., 2019 ; Heyes et al., 2020 ), which helps learners monitor or regulate the cognitive resources required in the reinforcement learning stage. It has been proven that people with high (vs. low) metacognition adjust better to a new country or city and learn new social norms comparatively faster ( Klafehn et al., 2013 ; Shu et al., 2017 ; Morris et al., 2019 ). Moreover, metacognition-related processes (e.g., social judgments, representation of social knowledge or beliefs) are not just involved but also updated during social interactions like social acceptance or rejection ( Petty et al., 2002 , 2007 ; Frith, 2012 ; Wu et al., 2020 ). This suggests that metacognition may accelerate norm adjustment through accurately estimating prediction errors to form precise norm representation and make an optimal adjustment quickly.

To sum up, at the group level, in the cultural dimension, cultural tightness–looseness highlights group variations on the strength of social norms and the tolerance of norm violation, which further may impact how we initially form a norm prediction, process social feedback from others, and adjust to fit into different socio-cultural contexts. At the individual level, individuals’ social preferences and capacities, including social sensitivity, self-monitoring, mentalization, and metacognition, may facilitate the key processes of social norm learning when people face sociocultural changes.

7. Future directions

In this review, we have clarified the specific features of social norms and social norm learning, proposed a theoretical model of social norm learning, highlighted the neural mechanism of social norm learning, and discussed the cultural and social moderators. In this section, we further list a set of intriguing questions to be addressed in the future, including theoretical, methodological, and practical issues. In particular, we encourage future studies to (a) understand factors that influence the process of learning social norms, including contextual factors and individual differences, (b) need various methodological changes to explore the complex process of learning social norms, including longitudinal research, experimental methods, and neuroimaging studies, and (c) pay attention to practical application. The future directions are discussed below to deepen the understanding of social norm learning in multiple ways.

7.1. Societal and individual factors influencing social norm learning

7.1.1. societal influences.

Although we focus on the individual-based model of learning social norms, various macro levels play a role in this learning process. At the group level, individuals observe and receive social information in certain situations to learn new social norms, while groups can teach, manipulate, and develop existing norms for newcomers ( Korte, 2009 ). Moreover, newcomers may change previous norms and even introduce new ones ( Harris et al., 2020 ; Otten et al., 2021 ). At the situational or contextual level, several factors (e.g., threat, risk perception, and uncertainty) be considered in future studies. For instance, certain situations with greater ecological threats (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) develop stronger social norms and punishments for violators to coordinate and maintain social order in face of these threats ( Gelfand et al., 2017 ). At the cultural level, it has been well-documented that cultural values, norms, and practices shared by group members shape and are being shaped by a wide range of psychological and biological processes, such as social perception, emotion regulation, self-related thinking, mental attribution, etc. ( Han and Northoff, 2008 ; Kim and Sasaki, 2014 ). Although empirical evidence has demonstrated cultural variations in norm-related processing (e.g., norm violation detection, and norm compliance; Gelfand et al., 2011 ; Mu et al., 2015 ; Salvador et al., 2020 ), little attention has been paid to the culture modulation on the social norm learning and its underlying mechanisms. At the ideological level, group conformity underlies social conservatism, promoting adherence to traditional social norms within a group and perceiving out-group threats and cultural boundaries ( Claessens et al., 2020 ). Considering the importance of learning social norms for individuals navigating adaptive challenges during urbanization, we encourage future research to examine whether and how the changes caused by urbanization modulate the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms underlying social norm learning at the group, contextual, cultural, and ideological levels. Additionally, it is essential to explore how societal factors interact with personal traits/preferences to impact learning-related processes uniquely or jointly.

7.1.2. Individual differences

Personal preferences as well as the individual factors that may help humans learn and internalize a new norm are urgently needed to be explored. As discussed above, high relative to low self-monitoring people are more responsive to adjusting their behaviors accordingly in different settings ( Gomila and Paluck, 2020 ; Chen et al., 2021 ). However, little is known about the role of self-monitoring in modulating social norm learning. Future research is called to explore the mechanism by which self-monitoring affects the procedure and rate of social norm learning. Additionally, the sensitivity to social reward and sanction is particularly important for the reinforcement learning of social norms. Therefore, it is encouraged to test whether individuals with high sensitivity to negative feedback may induce more negative feelings and greater neural activation in the pain matrix when receiving negative social feedback from others (e.g., rejection, exclusion), as this may hinder the learning process.

7.2. Methodological changes in understanding social norm learning

7.2.1. longitudinal research designs.

Considering the importance of social norm learning to human social development, such as children’s psychological well-being and social interaction in the future ( Killen and Smetana, 2015 ; Tomasello, 2016 ), it is suggested that future studies may collect longitudinal data at different stages of childhood development to explore the developmental trajectory of social norm learning and identify causes and consequences of enhancing social norm learning and promoting social adjustment. Second, children could learn social norms from various interpersonal interactions, such as parent–child interactions ( Nguyen et al., 2020 ) and peer interactions ( Pinho et al., 2021 ). During middle childhood, positive mother–child interactions are important to children’s compliance behaviors ( Zhao et al., 2021 ). Along with the growth of age, adolescents’ views of prosocial behaviors and social values are strongly influenced by peer norms ( Pinho et al., 2021 ). Future studies are suggested to focus on the effect of different types of social interactions (e.g., interactions with parents, peers, or teachers) on children’s social norm learning in different stages of development. Besides, it is still unknown how social norm learning influences migrants’ psychological adjustment. Future studies could collect longitudinal data on migrants’ adjustment (e.g., depression, social anxiety, and loneliness) to explore the developmental trajectories of the ability to learn social norms and their socio-emotional adjustments.

7.2.2. Experimental methods

Although there are some tasks designed to examine social-norm-related processing (e.g., norm detection; Mu et al., 2015 ; Salvador et al., 2020 ), they are not well suited for testing social norm learning due to the lack of manipulation of norm learning. Meanwhile, although accumulating attention has been paid to the understanding and mechanisms of the learning process ( Klucharev et al., 2009 ; Morris et al., 2019 ), most of them have neglected social attributes (e.g., social contexts, social interaction, and social feedback) or the lack of manipulating norm learning. Thus, a pressing matter of future work is to develop a paradigm that integrates social norms into the learning process and allows learners to collect social information, receive social feedback, take actions, and adjust their behaviors to acquire a new social norm in a certain context. Expect for laboratory experimental research, more field experiments are encouraged to understand how social norm learning facilitates people to adaptively respond to the new cultural or situational changes in daily life.

7.2.3. Advanced neuroimaging techniques

Although many efforts have been made on investigating social norms from the behavioral level, limited research using neuroimaging techniques uncovers social norm-related processes. To better pinpoint and track the dynamic changes of brain circuits involved in different stages of social norm learning, the high spatiotemporal resolution ma gnetoencephalography (MEG) technique is recommended to examine the network dynamics and features of social norm learning. This may help researchers to further understand the learning processes, i.e., from the detection of social cues in the pre-learning stage, to continuously adjusting behaviors according to social feedback, and internalization of the new norm. Noninvasive brain stimulation techniques, such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) allow researchers to further examine the dissociable causal roles of the brain regions involved in different stages of social norm learning.

7.3. Practical meaning of studying social norm learning

Ultimately, the new theoretical three-stage model we proposed in this review is beneficial for developing individual and group interventions. Growing evidence from cultural psychology has suggested that the migrants keeping the norms from their heritage culture (relative to the local norms) need to face opposition from native people ( Karinen et al., 2019 ), and shared social norms between migrants and natives are helpful for migrants to form intergroup cultural integration ( Choi et al., 2019 ). Furthermore, integration endorsement could improve the intergroup attitudes (e.g., British Muslims and White British, Abu-Rayya and Brown, 2023 ). However, limited studies have focused on the effect of social norm interventions on acculturation (i.e., adapting to a new cultural context). Previous cross-disciplinary studies used social norm interventions to solve specific problems in daily life, such as eco-protection (e.g., purchasing pro-environmental products; Kim and Seock, 2019 ). Thus, future studies could investigate which types of social norm interventions are effective in helping individuals learn novel social norms when entering a fresh cultural context to promote their socio-emotional adjustment and solve cultural conflicts. Specifically, various well-designed community or state interventions could be considered to promote movers’ adaptability to changeable cultural changes and even mitigate the cultural conflicts between native and migrant groups. For example, the community could supply local and migrant members with more social activities to help migrants understand new social norms and stimulate their energy to learn from other local members, and help natives understand foreign norms from migrants to reduce outgroup prejudice and discrimination and build friendly interpersonal relationship.

8. Conclusion

In sum, social norms play a critical role in the development of human society and individuals’ social development. No matter when individuals experience temporary situational changes or dynamic cultural changes, social norm learning is the indispensable process for individuals’ adaptively response to these sociocultural changes, and also the prerequisite process for norm enforcement, maintenance, and compliance. Different from other learning processes, social norm learning has its unique features, including social context, social cognition, and social feedback. In this article, we proposed that social norm learning includes three stages, i.e., pre-learning, reinforcement learning, and internalization. A series of environmental (i.e., cultural tightness) and individual factors (e.g., self-monitoring, social sensitivity, and metacognition) may modulate its underlying processes. Future directions are called for extending our knowledge and understanding at theoretical, methodological, and practical levels, from developing new paradigms to examining underlying causes and integrating them with frontier methodology and multidisciplinary approaches.

Author contributions

WZ and YM conceived the review. WZ, YL, YD, WH, SY, and ZX performed the literature search. WZ, YL, YD, WH, SY, ZX, and YM supported in the drafting of the manuscript which was led by WZ and YM. WZ, YL, SY, and YM discussed the final model and edited the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32071016 and 32271129), CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Projects 2019000050 and Y5CX052003), and the Scientific Foundation of Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Project E2CX3935CX).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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94 Social Norms Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best social norms topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 simple & easy social norms essay titles, 👍 good essay topics on social norms, ❓ questions about social norms.

• Social Norms in “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams In Blanche’s opinion, beauty is the true value of a woman since it enables her to win recognition of men. The main tragedy of Blanche DuBois is that she was conditioned to act and behave […]
• Devil’s Playground: Social Norms and Rules of Morality It is the first step to the social chaos and decline which can be observed today in the youth’s alcohol and drugs abuse in spite of all the limitations. According to the Amish people’s visions, […]
• Breaching Social Norms Experiment The struggle to violate a social norm and the sharp reaction to it is due to the culture that exists in that particular setting.
• Institutions, Social Norms and Rules in U.S. It is important to stress that the American Dream assumes a long-term type of life planning directly reflected in people’s actions and perceptions of society.
• Departing From Social Norms Can Lead to Progress Following rules and social norms set by the community is like agreeing to the dictation of the superego. Fear is known to set boundaries and limit the abilities of people.
• Creating Social Norms: Gender Depiction in Media Sources Among all types of information and misinformation presented in the media, the issue of gender roles is the most damaging of all.
• Researching the Genetic Enhancement: Unethical Practice and Social Norms One of the challenges that have emerged with the advent of genetic enhancement is the inability to ensure that all people have access to the technology.
• Social Norms as the Condition for Being Isolated The nature of changes can be traced in Othello who is treated as a person with different color of skin as well as Edna who is not accepted by the Creole community; Gregor Samsa is […]
• Social Norms in ‘Bread Givers’ by Anzia Yezierska Sara is shocked at the turn of events and their mother is a mute spectator to her daughters’ miserable lives. The harsh realities of life have made her a mature woman, a Jewish woman of […]
• Masculinity as a Social Norms Issue However, the advancements that occurred with the rise of the LGBT movement and the empowerment of women now challenge established ideas.
• Breaching Social Norms Experiment and Analysis Additionally, there was a great relief that the experiment was over and I did not have to break social norms anymore.
• Social Norms and Privacy Violation Online Being exposed to particular behaviors contributes to the concept of the norm, determines what people think they are expected to do, and can ultimately alter the behavior.
• Deviant Law Concepts and Contraries to Social Norms Recently, I broke two norms when my uncle and I went to a movie in a movie theatre. After I had changed my pajamas for nice clothes, some of these people came to compliment me.
• Effects of Media on Social Norms This paper aims to examine the influence of media on GCC’s citizens and international partners to determine ways in which it affects social norm changes.
• Human Sexual Behavioral Ecology and Social Norms In the vast majority of cultures, females are regarded as major caregivers for their offspring while males may invest less time in the parental effort and spend more time searching for mates.
• Breaking Social Norms in United Arab Emirates When I approached an Egyptian family, the mother required me to tell them the dish I wanted to taste and promised to order it for me.
• Public Policy vs. Social Norms and Corruption Political processes enshrined in democratic values of integrity and accountability must continue to shape the institutional framework in the region. Political and civil institutions in Sierra Leone could stop the escalation of illegal trade to […]
• Voluntarily Separable Repeated Games with Social Norms
• The Social Norms of Feminine Appearance in Advertisements
• The Social Norms And Attitudes Of Dating And Courtship
• The Social Status and Adherence of Characters to Social Norms in Sense and Sensibility, a Novel by Jane Austen
• The Relationship between Social Norms and Tax Compliance: The Moderating Role of the Effectiveness of Tax Administration
• The Social Norms and Their Effects on Society and Human Behavior
• The Minnesota Income Tax Compliance Experiment: Replication of the Social Norms Experiment
• The Evolution of Social Norms in Common Property Resource Use
• Total Strangers and the Social Norms of Our Culture
• The Social Norms of Tax Compliance: Evidence from Australia, Singapore, and the United States
• The Violation of Athenian Social Norms and Lysistrata by Aristophanes
• The Criminal Law Is Shaped By The Social Norms And Traditions
• The Friendship Paradox and Systematic Biases in Perceptions and Social Norms
• The Importance of Parental Knowledge and Social Norms: Evidence from Weight Report Cards in Mexico
• The Definitions of Abnormality: Deviation from Social Norms and Ideal Mental Health
• The Influence of Social Norms on Gender Inequality
• The Spirit of the Law over its Letter: The Role of Culture and Social Norms in Shielding Cooperative Banks from Systemic Shocks
• Society Is Influenced By Social Norms That Guides Our Everyday Behavior
• Work Ethic: Influenced By Learned Culture and Social Norms
• Symbols, Signals, and Social Norms in Politics and the Law
• Why do People Punish the Rule Breakers?: The Sustainability of Social Norms
• The Use of Power, Influence, and Social Norms in Keeping the Idea of Slavery Alive by the United States Government
• Strong Reciprocity, Human Cooperation, and the Enforcement of Social Norms
• The Emergence and Effects of Social Norms: A Confrontation of Some Hypotheses of Sociology and Economics
• The Significant Impact of Technology and Social Media on the Evolution of Social Norms
• The Impact of Social Norms on Science and History
• The Underground Labor Market between Social Norms and Economic Incentives
• Themes of Personal Responsibility, Heroism, Social Norms
• What Are the Social Norms Inside a Laundromat
• Spatial Evolution of Social Norms in a Common-Pool Resource Game
• The Influence of Alcohol Advertisements on Social Norms
• Spillover Effects in Healthcare Programs: Evidence on Social Norms and Information Sharing
• What Were The Social Norms Of This Consumer Culture?
• Tax Compliance Social Norms and Institutional Quality: An Evolutionary Theory of Public Good Provision
• What Kind Of Social Norms Do Other Cultures Have?
• The Determinants of Misreporting Weight and Height: The Role of Social Norms
• Using Social Norms Interventions For Reducing Adolescent
• The Impact Of Social Norms On American Society
• The Inevitable Outcome Of Fighting Social Norms
• The Role of Social Norms in Child Labor and Schooling in India
• The Wage Effects of Social Norms – Evidence of Deviations from Peers’ Body Mass in Europe
• Social Norms: The Fundamental Building Blocks Of Sociology
• The Relevance of Social Norms for Economic Efficiency: Theory and its Empirical Test
• Social Norms, Status Spending, and Household Debt: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan
• Stability Criteria for Social Norms with Applications to the Prisoner’s Dilemma
• Tax Law and Social Norms in Mandatory Palestine and Israel
• How Durable Are Social Norms?
• Why Most People Tend to Conform in Most of Their Social Interactions, While Others Deviate From the Existing Social Norms?
• Can Contracts Signal Social Norms?
• How Is Breaking Social Norms Understood as Deviant Behavior?
• Can Economic Pressure Overcome Social Norms?
• How Have Cellphones Impacted Social Norms?
• Can Social Norms Affect the International Allocation of Innovation?
• How Do Delinquents Violate Social Norms and Still Maintain Positive Self-Image?
• What Are the Types of Social Norms?
• How Do Individual Habits Fit or Unfit Social Norms?
• What Are the Social Norms Inside a Laundromat?
• How Does Police Deviance Affect Many Social Norms?
• What Sustains Social Norms and How They Evolve?
• How Do Social Norms Influence Our Behavior?
• What Were the Social Norms of the Consumer Culture?
• How Must Social Norms Be Increased From the Feedback Loop?
• When Do Social Norms and Self-Image Conflict?
• How Do Social Norms Transform as a Result of the Information Age?
• Why Do Juveniles Deviate From Social Norms?
• How Societies Construct Social Norms?
• Are Social Norms a Form of Oppression or a Necessity?
• How Do Social Norms Affect Mental Health?
• What Is the Importance of Social Norms in Society?
• How Do Social Norms Affect Society?
• What Is the Problem With Social Norms?
• How Do Social Norms Help Keep Our Society Functioning?
• What Would Life Be Like Without Social Norms?
• How Can Social Norms Change?
• What Violates Social Norms Concerning Right and Wrong?
• How Do Norms Affect Our Identity?
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METHODS article

Culture and social norms: development and application of a model for culturally contextualized communication measurement (mc 3 m).

• 1 University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States
• 2 Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States
• 3 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States
• 4 Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States
• 5 Peking University, Beijing, China

Studies of social norms are common in the communication literature and are increasingly focused on cultural dynamics: studying co-cultural groups within national boundaries or comparing countries. Based on the review of the status quo in cross-cultural measurement development and our years of experience in conducting this research among a co-cultural group, this paper describes a Model for Culturally Contextualized Communication Measurement (MC 3 M) for intercultural and/or cross-cultural communication research. As an exemplar, we report on a program of research applying the model to develop a culturally derived measurement of social norms and the factors impacting the norm-behavior relationship for members of a unique population group (i.e., ethnically Tibetan pastoralists in Western China). The results provide preliminary evidence for the construct validity and reliability of the culturally derived measurements. The implications, benefits, and shortcomings of the MC 3 M model are discussed. Recommendations for advancing both conceptual and measurement refinement in intercultural and cross-cultural communication research are provided.

Introduction

Social norms research has rapidly garnered popularity in the past several decades in multiple disciplines, such as communication, social psychology, public health, and economics ( Chung and Rimal, 2016 ). Given the power of normative influence on perceptions and actions consistently shown in the body of literature ( Borsari and Carey, 2003 ; Rhodes et al., 2020 ), social norm theories, rooted in the U.S.-based research, are being applied in numerous cross-cultural contexts ( Mackie et al., 2015 ). Yet, problems persist with inconsistencies in the conceptual and operational definitions of norms ( Shulman et al., 2017 ), and findings of prior studies may be culturally bound ( Chung and Rimal, 2016 ).

To help fill this gap and advance scholarship on social norms and other culturally contextualized communication measurements, we combine qualitative and quantitative approaches to develop culturally derived measures of social norms in a unique population. 1 Specifically, we describe research that examines the nature of interpersonal communication as a basis for shaping social norms and normative perceptions ( Lapinski et al., 2021 ), using this information to derive a series of measures rooted in the cultural context. Data obtained from a multi-year project, including field visits, in-depth interviews, and household surveys about grassland conservation behaviors with ethnically Tibetan pastoralists on the Tibetan Plateau in Western China, are presented as the basis for conceptualization, scale development, and initial evidence for the validity of measures of social norms and related constructs from theories on the communication of social norms ( Rimal and Real, 2005 ; Lapinski et al., 2018 ). This population is the focus of our work because of their critical role in ecosystem conservation issues in Asia and as a marginalized cultural group ( Bessho, 2015 ; Bum, 2016 ). As the basis for this research, we offer a model derived from existing research and practice for the development or adaptation of constructs and measures for intercultural or cross-cultural communication research. The value of this paper is the presentation of a model for developing measures of social norms (and related scales in communication studies) accounting for cultural dynamics. This process is useful beyond the particular population studied here, as the detailed steps described in the model shed light on future research on similar issues (e.g., conservation and health) among marginalized groups or populations with unique historical and/or cultural backgrounds (e.g., indigenous people and ethnic minorities).

Conceptualizing and Measuring Social Norms in Cultural Context

Generally, social norms are “rules and standards that are understood by members of a group, and that guide or constrain social behavior without the force of law” ( Cialdini and Trost, 1998 , p. 152) shared through interpersonal and mediated communication ( Kincaid, 2004 ). Social norms can influence health, environmental, and philanthropic attitudes and behaviors and can be influenced through communication campaigns ( Shulman et al., 2017 ). International attention has focused on the use of social norm campaigns as key to social change on various issues (e.g., child marriage, female genital mutilation/cutting, food waste, vaccination) because these efforts involve changing beliefs and actions of an entire community or cultural group rather than those of individuals ( UNICEF, 2010 ).

Despite the growing popularity of social norms research, critical issues remain in literature, including vague conceptualizations of what constitutes a social norm and conflated definitions and inadequacies in the measures of different types of norms ( Shulman et al., 2017 ). These problems “impair our ability to understand what norms are, how they work, how they should be measured, and boundary conditions that dictate where norms should and should not be applied” ( Shulman et al., 2017 , p.1209). Meanwhile, the increasing trend of social norms research conducted as comparative studies or in countries other than the U.S. and Europe in recent years (e.g., Geber et al., 2019 ; Stamkou et al., 2019 ) has created a demand for new methods conceptualizing and measuring social norms and related constructs.

Indeed, what we know about norms may be impacted by the so-called WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) phenomenon documented in psychological research ( Henrich et al., 2010 ). Shulman et al.’s (2017) examination of 832 empirical studies in English language journals found that most studies of social norms (82.4%) were conducted in the U.S. and Western Europe; similar findings exist in global development where few international studies address measurement development or fundamental conceptualization of norms ( Mackie et al., 2015 ).

Constructing valid and reliable measures of key study concepts is regarded as one of the most critical steps in empirical research. No matter how well-designed a study is, poor measurement of study constructs can yield errors in interpreting the results. When studies are designed to compare two cultures or to study communication patterns and processes in a unique population or co-cultural group within a larger group, the measurement challenges are compounded ( Croucher and Kelly, 2019 , 2020 ). Differences in the conceptualization of core study ideas, languages, values, and other factors lead to substantial challenges when researchers try to maximize conceptual and measurement equivalence, reliability, and construct validity of measurement for samples from co-cultural groups within national boundaries or across national boundaries ( Herdman et al., 1997 ; Steenkamp and Baumgartner, 1998 ; Davidov et al., 2018 ).

Because of the culturally bound nature of social norms, it is crucial for researchers to establish and clearly describe conceptualizations and measurements of norms embedded in the appropriate cultural and social context. By culturally bound, in this case, we mean that although social norms, as unwritten codes of conduct, appear to exist in all human cultures, their form and function vary by group, complicating measurement. A lack of culturally valid measurement may hinder progress in theory building, especially in identifying boundary conditions for theories.

Studies of social norms and cultural dynamics have focused on nation/country (e.g., Cialdini et al., 1999 ) or race/ethnicity (e.g., LaBrie et al., 2012 ) as a delimiting concept. We recognize the benefits and limitations of using country or nation as the sole proxy or operationalization of culture, despite the prevalence of this practice in cross-cultural research (c.f., Schaffer and Riordan, 2003 ).

Using country, race, or ethnicity to identify cultural groups is convenient, clear, and tidy; most people can self-identify these characteristics when asked with valid indicators in the measures. Yet, country and culture are incongruent under most conditions. Generally, multiple co-cultural groups exist under the same overarching national identity ( Orbe, 1997 ). As such, culture may function at the level of a nation-state, a co-cultural group within a nation-state, or any collective of people who share deep or surface-level cultural elements (termed a unique population ). For the current study, we draw from the intercultural communication literature and use the term “culture” to include communities of people with uniquely shared communication characteristics, perceptions, values, beliefs, and practices . Shared practices, ethnicity, and language serve as indicators for the cultural group, which is the focus of the present study; ethnically Tibetan pastoralists . This group shares the following characteristics: they are historically nomadic and engage in animal husbandry, and they have Tibetan ethnicity with the Kham Tibetan dialect as their primary language.

Because, fundamentally, culture influences how people view the world, identifying within-culture conceptualizations of key study constructs should be the first step in empirical inquiry. As unwritten implicit rules, social norms are formed, shaped, and reinforced through observation and interpersonal and mediated communication among a collective. Normative perceptions may be formed about both the prevalence of behavior (i.e., commonly called descriptive norms ; what is done by most members of a group) and what most people think to be appropriate or inappropriate behaviors (i.e., injunctive norms ; what is socially approved or disapproved; Cialdini et al., 1990 ). Hence, it is critical to acknowledge the socially and culturally shared nature of social norms, as people relate to in-group members within a specific culture. That is, social norms, by their nature, emanate from collectives within a system. As such, it is necessary to identify the influential people and in-groups who are most connected to particular decisions or behaviors in order to contextualize norms.

Some research demonstrates the culturally bound nature of conceptualizations of social norms and their communication (e.g., Jensen and Bute, 2010 ; Lapinski et al., 2015 ). Using in-depth interviews and observation, the literature indicates that key conceptualizations developed in one cultural context (like injunctive norms with social prescriptions for appropriate behavior) may not exist in the same form when examined through a different cultural lens ( Jensen and Bute, 2010 ). Likewise, the nature of interpersonal and mediated communication about what is approved behavior is constrained by the nature of the social system (Elwood et al., 2000; Lapinski et al., 2015 ) and connected to cultural predispositions ( Lapinski et al., 2019 ).

Developing culturally derived social norms measures is also critical to enhance both the internal and external validity of the existing corpus of research to account for culturally-based concepts and processes ( Mollen et al., 2010 ). Surprisingly little is written about how to develop reliable and valid culturally derived measures of communication concepts like social norms; instead, one must go to the literature in cross-cultural and organizational psychology to find scholarship addressing some of these issues (c.f., Schaffer and Riordan, 2003 ). In public health, there is a robust literature on the cross-cultural adaptation of scales; yet, Epstein et al. (2015) reviewed 31 studies making recommendations for cross-cultural adaptation (CCA) and concluded there was no consensus on best practices for adapting measures across cultural contexts.

In sum, identifying and refining the culturally derived conceptualization of social norms is the first step in developing methods for measuring these constructs. Measurement development is critical for expanding social norms research to account for cultural similarities and differences in order to enhance both internal and external validity in the corpus of research to account for culturally-based concepts and processes ( Mollen et al., 2010 ; Lapinski et al., 2019 ).

Studies of Social Norms in Cultural Context: Absolutism, Universalism, and Relativism

Various approaches to studying cultural dynamics in social normative influence are evidenced in the literature (c.f., Fischer et al., 2009 ; Lee and Green, 1991 ; Park and Levine, 1999 ). Many of these studies have involved comparative research designs in which data from a U.S. sample are compared to a sample(s) of people from another nation ( Shulman et al., 2017 ). The predominant theories that address social norms, such as the theory of reasoned action (TRA; Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975 ), the theory of planned behavior (TPB; Ajzen, 1991 ), focus theory of normative conduct ( Cialdini et al., 1990 ), social norms approach (SNA; Berkowitz, 2004 ), and theory of normative social behavior (TNSB; Rimal and Real, 2005 ), have been developed and tested primarily in the U.S. with measures of the core theoretical concepts constructed in English. Studies using these theories sometimes provide evidence for measurement reliability and validity of the study measures using data from samples, often of college undergraduates, in various regions of the U.S. (e.g., Cialdini et al., 1999 ; Jang, 2012 ).

It is when these theories and measures are applied in new cultural contexts that challenges may arise. That is, by moving existing normative concepts and measures into new cultural contexts, studies may fail to account for the dynamics of normative influence unique to the new context . A framework in cross-cultural psychology that can be applied to communication research describes three orientations to the cross-cultural adaptation of theories and measures, including absolutism, universalism, and relativism ( Herdman et al., 1997 ; Berry et al., 2002 ). Based on this framework, there are roughly three approaches to studying social norms in cultural context: 1 ) adoption of the conceptualization and measures from existing theories and using them with no modification in a new cultural context (absolutism); 2 ) using conceptualization and measures developed in one cultural context (often in the language of the researcher) and translating the measures into the primary language of the study participants or making other adjustments for cultural context (universalism), and 3 ) developing the study concepts and measures based on data (or dialogue) from within the cultural context in the language of participants for each cultural group included in the study (relativism). In each of these cases, the nuances of the study procedures and the reporting of the processes are different for each study. For example, studies may or may not report on: the development of conceptual definitions, translation and back translation of items, evidence for scale reliability or validity, or measurement invariance. In the following, we review and summarize examples of these orientations from across disciplines 2 and then propose a series of recommended practices derived from the existing literature, for culturally derived measurement of communication constructs.

Absolutism orientation assumes a minimal impact of “culture” on the constructs being studied (i.e., they are culture-free) because of the species-wide similarities among all human beings. As a result, standard instruments measuring the focal constructs are considered appropriate to be used in different cultures. This practice may result in a construct conceptualized and operationalized in one culture that is “imposed” directly onto another culture ( Berry et al., 2002 ). It involves adopting the conceptual definitions, study materials, and measures directly from prior research without substantial modifications 3 . It may include using measures from prior research in a particular country without any translation procedures or evidence for measurement construct validity or equivalence (e.g., Thøgersen and Ölander, 2006 ; Abikoye and Olley, 2012 ; Nguyen and Neighbors, 2013 ; Savani et al., 2015 ).

For example, Bobek et al. (2007) conducted an experimental study with participants recruited from Australia, Singapore, and the U.S. to examine the effects of social norms on tax compliance using Cialdini and Trost’s (1998) taxonomy of social norms. Factor analysis and scale reliability analysis were performed to establish evidence for the scales’ validity and reliability before proceeding to test hypotheses. However, across the three national samples, the constructs and measures were assumed to be equivalent, and a translation process was not described. 4 Likewise, using measures from the theory of planned behavior (TPB; Ajzen, 1991 ), Wan et al. (2018) examined the moderating effect of subjective norms on the behavioral intention of using urban green spaces among Hong Kong residents. The convergent and discriminant validity and reliability of the measures were assessed before testing the structural model. But, no survey translation information was described, although most people in Hong Kong speak Cantonese as their primary language, and only 4.3% of the population use English regularly ( GovHK, 2020 ).

Universalism

The universalism orientation acknowledges that culture substantially impacts how constructs are expressed and defined across cultures. Though this approach still assumes species-wide similarities (i.e., universal patterns), it accepts the idea that measurement needs to be adapted cross-culturally, given that the context-free constructs and measurements are difficult or impossible to obtain. In this approach, conceptual definitions and measures are developed in one cultural context, typically in English. Then the study materials and measures are translated into the country’s language in which the research is conducted. Evidence for back-translation, construct validity, and measurement equivalence may or may not be described. There are a few social norms studies that account for cultural dynamics using this method (e.g., Cialdini et al., 1999 ; Park and Levine, 1999 ; Boer and Westhoff, 2006 ; Fornara et al., 2011 ; Jang et al., 2013 ; Stamkou et al., 2019 ; Walter et al., 2019 ).

For example, Stamkou et al. (2019) examined the moderating effect of cultural collectivism and tightness on responses to norm violators in 19 countries. The conceptual definition of the key study constructs and the measures, including social norms, norm violations, individualism-collectivism, and tightness-looseness, were adapted from existing literature developed in the U.S and translated into each country’s official language following the procedures outlined by Brislin (1986) ; validity and reliability evidence was provided. Likewise, Jain et al. (2018) investigated the effect of descriptive and injunctive norms on condom use among young men in Ethiopia using norms measures from the TNSB ( Rimal and Real, 2005 ) translated into Amharic, Afan Oromo, and Tigrigna. Adaptations were made in the norm measures to account for cultural context, but measurement validity and reliability evidence was not presented. Limaye et al. (2012) reported similar process in Malawi; acceptable reliability of the scales was presented, but measurement validity evidence was not included.

The last orientation, relativism , assumes that because of the substantial role of culture in people’s cognitive thinking patterns and behaviors, it is impossible to use standard measurements across cultures; hence, local instruments developed within a specific culture should be adopted ( Herdman et al., 1997 ; Berry et al., 2002 ). In this approach, the conceptual definitions and measures are developed within the focal cultural group, often through collaborative processes and formative data collection. The language in which they are developed may be that of the focal country or region. Measurement construct validity and equivalence evidence may or may not be described (e.g., Babalola, 2007 ; Rimal et al., 2015 ; Yilma et al., 2020 ). For example, Rimal et al. (2019) developed a personal narrative-based intervention, including social norms messages targeting adolescent students in Serbia, to improve their driving behaviors using conceptual definitions and measurement based on theory and cultural context. Formative data (i.e., one-on-one interviews, focus groups, and reaction interviews) was conducted first to develop the intervention and the measures of core concepts, including descriptive and injunctive norms. Results showed acceptable reliability of the normative scales, but measurement validity evidence was not included.

In sum, the literature on social norms and cultural dynamics indicates a range of approaches to developing concepts and measurements in cultural context for both single and multi-culture studies.

Model for Culturally Contextualized Communication Measurement (MC 3 M)

Based on the research on culturally derived measurement (Hui and Triandis, 1985; Pedhazur and Schmelkin, 2013 ; Schaffer and Riordan, 2003 ; Steenkamp and Baumgartner, 1998 ), research on measurement model validation and equivalence ( Bollen, 2005 ), and our team’s international and cross-cultural research, we present a Model for Culturally Contextualized Communication Measurement (MC 3 M) containing a series steps for the development of quantitative measures in communication science taking a relativistic approach ( Figure 1 ) and use a variant of this model in the current research. Although we focus here specifically on social norms, we believe this model may benefit other communication research. In the following sections, we describe a series of studies to illustrate the process of applying the model to develop culturally derived social norm measures.

FIGURE 1 . Proposed model for communication measurement development in cultural context: model for culturally contextualized communication measurement (MC 3 M).

The program of research that we report here was conducted on the Tibetan Platea in the Tsangsum Yungyul (Tibetan) or Sanjiangyuan (Mandarin) area of China, located in southern Qinghai Province. This region is home to about 960,000 inhabitants, 90% of whom are ethnically Tibetan, and nearly 70% are pastoralists, sometimes nomadic, herding mainly yaks and sheep ( see Appendix A). Geographically, the territory is vast, with human settlements dispersed, making data collection in the region challenging. The terrain includes glaciers and high-altitude grasslands, which input to three of Asia’s major rivers, the Yellow, Yangtze, and Mekong providing freshwater to nearly a quarter of the world’s population. The population of this region is generally Tibetan Buddhist. Their position as a unique or co-cultural group within China makes Tibetan pastoralists an important group to study social influence processes. They play a key role in the future of this ecologically sensitive region, but studies conducted in this area are rare ( Shen and Tan, 2012 ).

Step 1: Identification of Key Constructs

Discussions with cultural informants, review of the scientific and gray literature about the study region, field visits, and collaborative discussions with project partners were the first stage of this project; Step 1 in the MC 3 M. The cross-cultural (U.S. multi-ethnic, Han, Tibetan team), cross-disciplinary (anthropology, communication, sustainability, conservation biology, economics) team shared an interest in interpersonal communication about social norms and their effects on conservation behavior and the role of financial incentives in promoting conservation behavior among ethnically Tibetan pastoralists.

The exploratory work conducted in Step 1 revealed results in many key activities and insights, two of which we highlight here. First, discussion with collaborators coupled with our searches of the scientific literature revealed little social science data on the population of interest. This is critical because it drove our approach to the methods we used throughout the remainder of the project. Second, the focal constructs, behaviors, core theory, and research questions/predictions were developed collaboratively based on this process. Animal husbandry behaviors and their impact on the grassland and water ecology were identified as both salient for the study population and conservation practice. Specifically, herding types of animals with less relative ecological impact, reducing herd size to have less impact on grassland quality, and modifying grazing patterns to protect sensitive areas were the behaviors examined; organized patrolling to reduce poaching of wild animals was also examined but is reported elsewhere.

Step 2: In-Depth Interviews

As the next step in developing measures of the normative dimensions and providing construct validity evidence in this cultural context, in-depth interviews were conducted (Step 2 in the MC 3 M). The purpose of the interviews was to determine whether or not and how normative information was communicated to members of our study population and the character of that information in order to identify conceptualizations of social norms. In addition, we sought to understand the conditions under which normative information was available, the people from whom normative information emanates, and expected outcomes for the focal behaviors. Eighty in-depth interviews were conducted with members of our study population; detailed results are reported in companion papers ( Lapinski et al., 2018 ; Lapinski et al., 2021 ). Interview data were analyzed via quantitative content analysis, thematic analysis, and network analysis.

The interviews provided the basis for understanding indigenous conceptualizations of injunctive and descriptive norms, outcome expectancies associated with the behaviors, important referent groups for information about our study topics. In brief, the findings from the interviews uncovered normative influence as one basis for social power ( Kelman, 1961 ) among members of the study community ( Lapinski et al., 2018 ) and three essential themes for conceptualizing social norms ( Lapinski et al., 2021 ): 1 ) a shared understanding of what the participants believe is typical in the community, particularly local herding groups or villages (descriptive norms); 2 ) what participants believe is approved and disapproved or expected in the community (injunctive norms), and the anticipated reactions of others to compliance or noncompliance with expectations; and 3 ) important referent groups for decisions about herding (normative referents). Key referents were identified as dependent on the nature of information (general information, advice-seeking, or problem-focused), including herding group members, other villagers, family, and people in positions of power (e.g., veterinarians, government officials, village leaders).

Step 3: Refining Conceptualizations

Based on the findings from the interviews, revised conceptual definitions (Step 3 in the MC 3 M) and quantitative items were developed (Step 4, described in the method) to investigate further the influences of social norms on behaviors guided by several existing theories of social norms ( Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975 ; Cialdini et al., 1990 ; Rimal and Real, 2005 ) and our prior research ( Lapinski et al., 2018 ). Based on the interview data, the conceptualizations of both normative constructs (i.e., perceived descriptive norms and perceived injunctive norms, provided earlier in this paper) have been modified slightly to be culturally appropriate. Consistent with prior research, perceived descriptive norms are conceptualized as pastoralists’ perceptions of the prevalence of referent others’ (herding group and village group member) behavior. Perceived injunctive norms are conceptualized as perceptions of the referent others’ opinions and expectations about behaviors. A common element in conceptualizations of social norms–that social sanctions exist for noncompliance with the norm–was not included in the definition because it was not evidenced in our data. The key referent groups for this behavior are the herding group (if the pastoralist belongs to one) or others from the same village (if the pastoralist does not herd with a herding group). Families have been incorporated into the herding group conceptualization, given the clear overlap revealed from the interview data between these two groups.

Outcome expectations, as well as group identification and group orientation, were considered as key constructs in the study because prior research has shown they enhance the influence of social norms and appear to be critical in studies of cultural dynamics ( Cruz et al., 2000 ; Lapinski et al., 2007 ) and conceptualizations were shaped based on the results of the in-depth interviews. Outcome expectation is conceptualized as beliefs of the potential losses or benefits related to the behavior and includes monetary and non-monetary outcomes. The types of outcomes identified in the interviews included changes to the grassland, changes to economic well-being, and changes to identity as a Tibetan ( Lapinski et al., 2021 ). Group identity refers to feelings of affinity with one’s social group and the desire to be connected to that group ( Rimal and Real, 2005 ). Group orientation refers to one’s connection to the collective (i.e., the extent to which one’s social groups are central to the decision-making process). Giving priority to group goals over personal goals may function to enhance the influence of social norms on behaviors since group-oriented individuals are guided by group goals and norms in order to maintain harmony within groups ( Lapinski et al., 2007 ). Finally, we conceptualized behavioral intention as a person’s readiness to perform a behavior ( Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975 ) and a possible outcome of normative influence.

These conceptualizations form the basis for the development of items designed to measure each of the constructs. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with our study population in order to complete Steps 4–7 in the MC 3 M: The hypothesis is proposed:

H: The measures of perceived descriptive norms (PDN), perceived injunctive norms (PIN), outcome expectations (OE), group identity (GID), group orientation (GO), and behavioral intentions (BI) will yield valid and reliable unidimensional scales.

Sampling and Participants

Participants were recruited from one city and three counties in the study region via network sampling by project partners ( see Appendix A). Yushu Prefecture is an area of 267,000 square kilometers, with a total population of 283,100 people (95.3 percent Tibetan). As of 2015, Yushu Prefecture has one city and five counties; our sample included: Yushu City, Zaduo County, Nangqian County, and Chengduo County. Because of the behaviors examined in this study, three filter questions were asked at the beginning of the survey to ensure that the participant 1 ) was a pastoralist, 2 ) with at least 10 yaks in their herd, and 3 ) was the primary decision-maker in the household (i.e., the head of the household). Only people who answered affirmatively to these questions were included in the sample. During data cleaning, one participant was removed from the data analysis because his household had fewer than 10 yaks.

In total, 360 Tibetan pastoralists (85% male) in 10 townships participated in the surveys 5 , with an average age of 45.85 ( SD = 12.29), ranging from 18 to 80. The average size of the household was 6.52 ( SD = 2.57), with an average number of 2.36 ( SD = 1.48) school-aged children and 2.31 ( SD = 1.48) family members who helped with herding. Regarding the level of education, on average, participants had 1.3 years ( SD = 2.36) of schooling (including public schools and monastery schools), ranging from 0 (illiterate; 68.1%) to 15 years. Nearly all (98.3%) reported owning only yaks; less than 1% had both yaks and sheep (three misssing responses). The average herd size of yaks was 40.87 ( SD = 28.27), ranging from 0 to 200. Approximately 20% of the participants ( n = 71) belonged to herding groups, and 9 (12.7%) of them reported themselves as the leader of the herding group.

Survey Instrument Development

Step 4: initial item development and cognitive interviews.

The survey items were developed by the project team based on the results of the in-depth interviews ( Lapinski et al., 2018 , 2021 ) and prior research on social norms-related variables (Step 4 in the MC 3 M). The scale items were developed via the procedures suggested by Hunter and Gerbing (1982) . Items were developed for each distinct dimension by examining the conceptual definitions of the constructs and by deriving content from the interviews. Multiple items were created for each construct in order to allow for subsequent statistical tests of construct validity ( Hunter and Gerbing, 1982 ). The item construction process resulted in a large pool of items reviewed for face validity by the researchers. To enhance conceptual equivalence ( Herdman et al., 1997 ), each question was discussed by study team members and revised based on the discussion. Items that matched the conceptual definition of the construct were retained. The measures were developed in English and Tibetan simultaneously, captured in English, and then translated into Tibetan with flexibility for local variations in the dialect. The instrument was then back-translated to English to check for accuracy in interpretation and to avoid cultural biases. Then, the study team members discussed the final version of questionnaire questions one by one ( see Appendix B for the detailed procedures of translation and back-translation).

Two groups of cognitive interviews (four participants per group) were conducted with local community members to pilot the survey instrument before the data collection. This qualitative approach, conducted prior to the quantitative data collection, helped researchers examine how the respondents process and interpret questions and identify the factors influencing their answers ( Cabral and Savageau, 2013 ). Due to the benefit of improving item interpretation and strengthening scale quality shown in numerous studies (e.g., Collins, 2003 ; Ryan et al., 2012 ), the cognitive interview has been recommended as a standard step in survey development, refinement, and adaptation.

During the cognitive interviews, participants were asked to evaluate the survey questions with the goal of increasing the clarity, meaningfulness, and cultural appropriateness of the questions. Modifications were made to question wording and question order, and some questions were eliminated. Although we developed the scales to use verbally administered Likert-type response scales ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), based on the suggestions from local collaborators and cognitive interview participants, we adopted the strategy of using fingers (digits; commonly used among people in the sample in everyday life) as a response scale when asking about Likert-type questions (e.g., thumb = strongly agree; the little finger = strongly disagree), to help participant better understand the options. A “Not Sure” option was added based on the suggestions from the local collaborator and the feedback generated from the cognitive interviews.

Surveys were conducted by four ethnically-Tibetan enumerators who were native speakers of the Kham Tibetan dialect and also fluent in Mandarin Chinese. Enumerators received training on survey skills, survey instruments, and the protection of human subjects by the study team (Step 5 in the MC 3 M). The enumerators verbally administered all questions using the digit response scale described above and recorded the responses in booklets due to the low level of literacy among our potential participants 6 based on the exciting literature (e.g., John, 2000 ; Bangsbo, 2008 ), the fieldwork of our community collaborators in our study area over the years, and data from our previous interviews. To minimize unintended enumerator effects on the survey data, enumerators were trained not to provide any explanations to the survey questions other than clarification or to provide verbal or nonverbal reactions toward participants’ answers. Statistical analysis was conducted to ensure that no significant differences existed in study variables for different enumerators.

Upon approaching a potential participant, each enumerator first introduced him/herself and the purpose of the survey briefly. If the individual agreed to answer the initial eligibility questions, the enumerator would record the sex of the respondent through observation first and then ask the three filter questions mentioned above (i.e., a pastoralist with at least 10 yaks who is the head of their household). Once the participant was determined as eligible for the survey, the enumerator proceeded with the informed consent process, adapted to be culturally appropriate while retaining the key elements of consent. Participants were also provided with opportunities to ask questions before deciding to participate or not. If they agreed to participate, the enumerator would proceed to the main survey questions. First, each participant was asked if he/she belonged to a herding group. Based on the participant’s answer to this question, he/she was directed to the subsequent questions associated with a specific referent group (people in my herding group vs people in my village), measuring their perceived descriptive norms, perceived injunctive norms, group orientation, group identity, perceived outcome expectation, behavioral intentions of reducing their herd size and demographics. Based on local norms, participants did not receive incentives for participation.

Surveys were conducted in semi-private settings in Kham Tibetan dialect and lasted approximately 30 min each. Participants’ responses to each question were recorded on the survey paper in Mandarin Chinese by the surveyors and manually entered into the computer later by two research assistants who were fluent in both Chinese and English. Each research assistant first entered all the survey data independently, and then their data entry files were carefully compared to identify any inconsistencies caused by human error during the data entry process. Following several days of data collection, data were reviewed, and procedures were discussed to determine whether modifications were necessary; all study procedures were retained. One researcher who was tri-lingual (Kham Tibetan, Mandarin, and English) was responsible for quality control of the procedures and data. All procedures were approved by a university institutional review board.

Measurement

Likert-type scales ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) were adopted, with an additional option “Not Sure” added; response scales were administered using the enumerators’ fingers as a guide. All survey items ( see Appendix D), including factor loadings, are presented in Table 1 . Items either focused on herding group members or village group members as the referent, the 5 years prior to the survey as the time period, and herd size reduction as the behavior. Because of the nature of the study procedures, which were conducted in the field in naturalistic conditions, without incentives, every effort was made to streamline the questionnaire content and number of items per dimension in order to avoid attrition. For all scales, items retained following confirmatory factor analysis were summed such that higher scores indicated greater levels of the variable.

TABLE 1 . The Measurement Model of the Six Constructs.

Establishment of Measurement Model

Based on Hunter and Gerbing (1982) , the development and evaluation of a measurement model via factor analysis procedures included three steps: 1 ) construction of the model, 2 ) estimation of the observed correlations among the variables/items in the model, and 3 ) comparison of the observed correlations among variables with the correlations predicted by the model. The measurement model was specified first based on a theory of the relationships among the items. Thus, it was appropriate to use confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) procedures to estimate the parameters of the models and provide construct validity evidence. These procedures are included in Step 6 of the MC 3 M in Figure 1 ; all scale items are presented in Table 1 , with items removed following measurement analysis designated.

Scales and Items

Perceived descriptive norms (PDN). Participants’ perceived prevalence of others’ behavior of reducing the herd size among their referent group (herding group or people in the same village) was assessed with four items. One item directly asking about how many yaks they think the most households in their herding group/village own was dropped as it failed the internal consistency test with a low factor loading.

Perceived injunctive norms (PIN). Participants’ perceptions of the referent others’ opinions and anticipations of them reducing the size of their herds were assessed with four items initially. Two items, including a reverse-coded item, were eliminated due to low factor loadings.

Group identity (GID). Participants’ perceived attitudinal similarity and closeness with their referent group (their herding group or people in the same village) was assessed with four items derived from Rimal and Real (2005) . One item measuring participants’ perceived closeness to their herding group/village was dropped as it failed the internal consistency test with a low factor loading.

Outcome expectations (OE). Expectations about behavioral outcomes were measured by four items, including a reverse-coded item measuring the perceived benefits associated with herd reduction behavior. The results indicated small correlations among all the items ( see Table 1 ). Hence, it was deemed inappropriate to compose the variable by summing the items. This variable was removed from the rest of the analysis assessing the validity and reliability of the scales.

Group orientation (GO). The extent to which one is oriented toward group goals as opposed to individual goals was measured by a four-item scale derived from Triandis’ (1995) individualism-collectivism (INDCOL) scale and prior research ( Lapinski et al., 2007 ), which has been modified for this study based on the in-depth interviews.

Behavioral intention (BI). Participants’ intent to engage in the study behavior of reducing the number of yaks in their herds was measured with three items initially, including a reverse-coded item measuring the intention to increase the number of yaks in their herds. One item was eliminated due to its low factor loading.

Demographics. Participants’ demographic information was collected at the end of the survey, including biological sex (observed and recorded by the enumerator), age, number of people in their households, number of children, level of education, and residence location (county and township).

Missing Data and “Not-Sure” Responses

Missing data and responses of “not sure” (NS) were scrutinized for patterns ( Rubin, 1976 ) because the population under study is rarely surveyed, and the scales are newly developed ( see detailed results in Appendix C). The findings show that NS answers are more prevalent among village groups than herding groups, accounting for 93.62% of the total NS answers, suggesting the influential power of one’s herding group as the source of clearer normative information. For measurement validation in the subsequent analyses, both the missing and the NS data were eliminated, and the pairwise deletion was employed to retain sufficient statistical power.

Construct Validity Assessment

CFA was conducted using the lessR package developed by Gerbing (2021) within R programming environment to provide evidence that the observed scale items measured the same theoretical constructs. Both internal consistency and parallelism ( Hunter and Gerbing, 1982 ) were tested to evaluate the unidimensionality of the measurement model. The a priori specified criteria for item retention for tests of internal consistency include both the pattern and magnitude of the errors between predicted and obtained correlations between items ( e < 0.20) and examination of the size of the factor loadings. Once items were eliminated from a factor, factors were reanalyzed to test the unidimensionality of the new factor. Behavioral intentions with three items 7 was not included in this test.

In testing the internal consistency among items designed to measure PDN, item #4 was dropped as it failed the internal consistency test with a low factor loading and large error for predicted and obtained inter-item correlations ( e > 0.20). Since there were only three items left after the elimination, this factor was not tested again for internal consistency. When testing items measuring PIN, items #3 (reverse-coded) and #4 were eliminated due to the low factor loadings and large errors yielded. Two items were retained. Likewise, when testing items measuring group identity, item #4 was eliminated due to the low factor loading and large error. As such, no further internal consistency test was conducted. For the items measuring OE, the results showed insufficient factor loadings of all items developed in this scale with large errors. Hence, we deemed it was inappropriate to compose the variable by summing up the items and removed this variable from the rest of the analysis.

For the items measuring GO, the test of internal consistency via CFA indicated a plausible four-item solution for the scale; all items were retained. All errors for predicted and obtained inter-item correlations were small ( e < 0.20, goodness of fit RMSE = 0.06).

Tests of parallelism were next conducted to estimate how items measuring the same factor are distinct from other factors. Instead of assessing macro-level correlations between scales, tests of parallelism are conducted at the level of individual items with a low tolerance for errors (i.e., the discrepancy between the predicted correlations and the observed correlations). Results from the parallelism test showed that the four-factor model solution was acceptable: Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = 0.94, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = 0.91, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = 0.07, Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) = 0.06, χ 2 (67) = 228.01, p < 0.00, all errors were below the a priori specified value of 0.20. The factor loading for each scale item was reported in Table 1 , in which the five-factor solution was clearly demonstrated.

Discriminant Validity of the Constructs

After establishing the measurement model, the relationships among the four constructs were examined to assess the discriminant validity, which refers to measurement items within different constructs that should be unrelated ( Hunter and Gerbing, 1982 ). See Table 2 for the correlations among the variables in both herding and village groups. The mean and standard deviation for each variable were also reported in the table.

TABLE 2 . Zero-Order Correlations, Means, and Standard Deviations of Measured Variables for Both Herding Group and Village Group Participants.

To assess discriminant validity, average variance extracted (AVE) was analyzed, which measures the amount of variance captured by a construct in relation to the amount of variance due to measurement error ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981 ). The formula for calculating AVE is as below:

where λ i is the factor loading of each measurement item on its corresponding construct, and ε i is the error measurement. A widely used criterion to assess discriminant validity is Fornell-Larcker criterion ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981 ), which suggested that based on the corrected correlations from the CFA model, the square root of a construct’s AVE should be larger than the coefficient of correlations between the specific construct and other constructs in the model–that is to say, a latent construct should explain better the variance of its own indicator rather than the variance of other latent constructs. Therefore, the square root of each construct’s AVE should have a greater value than the correlations with other latent constructs. If that is the case, discriminant validity is established on the construct level. In Table 2 , evidence is provided for the construct validity of the scales.

Measurement Invariance Tests

Since the survey questions pertained to different referent groups (herding group vs people in the same village), multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) was conducted using Mplus following procedures recommended by Byrne (2013) . These tests provide evidence that the observed scale indicators/items under study measured the same theoretical constructs (latent variables or factors) across the two groups of the sample. Without established measurement invariance, comparative analyses do not produce meaningful results, and results of differences between groups cannot be unambiguously interpreted ( Milfont and Fischer, 2015 ).

Firstly, a baseline model (Model 1) was established from each group without constraints imposed across the groups for configural invariance (i.e., pattern invariance test). Next, Model 2 examining metric invariance was tested by constraining the factor loadings to be equal across the two groups (i.e., weak measurement invariance test). Model 3 tested scalar invariance by constraining both the factor loadings and indicator/item intercepts equal across the two groups (i.e., strong measurement invariance test; Byrne, 2013 ). Results showed no significant changes in Chi-squares across the three models, indicating a satisfactory measurement equivalence across the two groups. This enabled us to compare mean scores for the underlying factors across groups in the later analysis. The results were reported in Table 3 .

TABLE 3 . Fit Indices for Measurement Invariance Tests between the Herding Group Members vs Village Group Members.

Reliability Assessment

Following the establishment of scale dimensionality, parallelism, and invariance, reliability was assessed via calculation of Cronbach’s alpha for each scale using SPSS v.25, with both the split data file based on the referent group (i.e., herding group vs village group) and the combined dataset. Hunter and Gerbing (1982) suggested that when establishing new measures, validity and reliability should be treated separately. Hence, it was necessary to establish the dimensionality of the scales before examining scale reliability.

In addition to Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability (sometimes called construct reliability) was assessed as an indicator of internal consistency in scale items ( Netemeyer et al., 2003 ). By measuring the total amount of true score variance relative to the total scale score variance ( Brunner and SÜβ, 2005 ), it serves as an indicator of the shared variance among the observed variables used as an indicator of a latent construct ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981 ). Thresholds for composite reliability are up for debate, but as a general guideline ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981 ; Netemeyer et al., 2003 ), composite reliability of the constructs should be higher than 0.7; The formula ( Netemeyer et al., 2003 ) is:

where: λ i = completely standardized loading for the i th indicator, V(δ i ) = variance of the error term for the i th indicator, and p = number of indicators.

Results ( see Table 1 ) showed that coefficient alphas ranged from 0.60 to 0.93. Considering the uniqueness of the target culture group in this study and the fact that this was the very first study ever in which the measures were developed, the relatively lower-alpha scores for group orientation (α = 0.68) and behavioral intentions (α = 0.60) suggest that future use of these scales should correct estimates for unreliability due to error of measurement. The composite reliability estimates ranged from 0.77 to 0.91, providing additional evidence for scale reliability.

Ground Truthing Results

Step 7 in the MC 3 M is “ground truthing” of process, method, and findings throughout the entire course of the research with stakeholders, including cultural insiders. In the current study, this was accomplished in several key ways. First, by conducting cognitive interviewing and ongoing data and procedural quality checks during the course of the study, we accounted for perceptions of cultural insiders. Second, we regularly presented our procedures and progress to our community collaborators and enumerators to gain their input; changes to procedures were made when possible without compromising study rigor or validity. Third, the findings of the study were presented to people working in this region and on these topics prior to publication to discuss the findings and learn about their understanding of the study findings relative to their experience. Fourth, our project partners who work in this region and one of whom is a member of the population from which we sampled, were included in all publications and reviewed the content for consistency with their experience and understanding of the cultural context.

Noting the critical role of reliable and valid culturally derived measures for social norms constructs and the lack of models for developing measures in cultural context, the present study was designed to propose and apply a model to guide intercultural and cross-cultural communication researchers developing quantitative measures of study constructs. Specifically, this study contributed to the existing corpus of communication literature by offering the Model for Culturally Contextualized Communication Measurement (MC 3 M) to describe the process of developing measures for communication research involving unique populations. This model, derived from prior research in disciplines outside of communication and applied over several years in a program of research among ethnically Tibetan pastoralists, provides a clear path forward for researchers conducting studies of communication processes across or within cultures among marginalized or co-cultural groups. In addition to proposing and applying the MC 3 M, the results of this study provide preliminary evidence for measurement validity and reliability of measures of key social norms constructs. We first discuss the measurement development and findings using the MC 3 M process and then describe the utility and limitations of the MC 3 M.

Social Norms Measures

The development of the culturally contextualized measures of social norms constructs began with significant informal and formal information gathering processes and data collection. Existing social norms theories and measures (e.g., Cialdini et al., 1990 ; Lapinski and Rimal, 2005 ) and the culturally-contextualized conceptual definitions served as the basis for new item development and testing using a cross-sectional survey. The content evaluation was conducted by discussions among the multi-lingual, multi-cultural team members, translation and back-translation, and through cognitive interviews among participants from the study population. As a result, we modified questions, revised the response scale, and decided to use finger-counting as a way to describe the response scale to respondents. Continuous process and data quality monitoring during data collection contributed to the development of the measures.

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) provided initial evidence for the construct validity of the culturally derived social norm measures. Tests of internal consistency and parallelism indicated that the data were consistent with unidimensional factors measuring the two types of norms: descriptive norms and injunctive norms, as well as group identity, group orientation, and behavioral intentions. Notably, several items were removed from the scales for each of these constructs due to insufficient factor loadings suggesting the need for continued scrutiny of these items in future research. The items designed to measure outcome expectations failed to meet a priori standards, and as such, these items were removed from the final measurement analysis. Outcome expectations play a key role in enhancing the effects of social norms ( Chung and Rimal, 2016 ), and future research should consider improved measures of this construct appropriate to cultural context. The failure of these items is difficult to explain. The content of the items was derived from in-depth interviews, and the adoption of procedures described by Ajzen et al. (1995) for belief elicitation was included; the item administration followed the same procedures as other scales. Nonetheless, it is clear that the items appear to be measuring unique concepts and do not form a unidimensional scale.

Most of the scales exhibited reliability coefficients within generally accepted ranges. However, the scale measuring behavioral intentions is relatively low. Perhaps this is due to the small number of items measuring this dimension since alpha is a function of the number of items on a scale. Because of the study procedures and the need to keep the questionnaire to a reasonable length to recruit and retain study participants without incentives, minimal items per dimension were administered. The behavioral intention scale could benefit from additional item refinement in future research studying behaviors in a cultural context. As an important limitation: although we focused a great deal on identifying, conceptualizing, and understanding the behaviors under study in the in-depth interviews ( Lapinski et al., 2021 ), we did not focus our efforts on understanding our study community’s thinking about the concept of “intent.” This is something any legal scholar will remind us is complicated and perhaps culturally bound.

Because of the novelty of the study issue and information from our collaborators that most of our participants would not have the experience participating in research studies, a significant amount of time was spent reviewing and refining the item response scales. Ultimately, we decided to use digit counting and verbal descriptions of the responses. A “not sure” category was included in the scales, based on the cognitive interviewing process, and many participants used this option. The fact that many used this response option reinforces the importance of including it, but also makes the analysis and treatment of “not sure” responses complicated. It stands as a key limitation to our measures and will be explored carefully in future research. Reviewing the measurement literature for advice on how to handle these data, there was surprisingly little guidance. This represents an opening for future research on measurement and the development of response scales to be used when verbal administration of items is necessary, and populations may have little experience participating in research. This finding also highlights the utility of using cognitive interviewing to refine response scales and items.

Substantively, the “not sure” responses show that participants who were asked about village group members as the referent were more uncertain about what is considered normative behavior compared to those belonging to a herding group. These findings were consistent with the existing social norms and communication theories (e.g., Kincaid, 2004 ; Lapinski and Rimal, 2005 ; Mackie et al., 2015 ) on the critical role of physically or psychologically proximal groups in shaping, communicating, and maintaining normative information of certain behaviors.

The process described for developing, evaluating, and validating the culturally derived social norm measures presented in this study has valuable empirical and theoretical implications for researchers who intend to conduct studies of co-cultural groups or unique populations. The model delineating the specific steps in developing culturally derived communication measures, starting from identifying and refining culturally derived conceptualizations, is a major contribution of this paper. Although we focus specifically on social norms research among the Tibetan population, we believe this model may have relevance for other communication research issues targeting other populations.

The MC 3 M has a number of key benefits and limitations. First, it provides a roadmap to researchers who wish to combine qualitative and quantitative methods to study communication processes in cultural contexts by specifying a set of best practices for developing measures. It is particularly applicable for populations or issues with little existing communication research, such as what we describe here. Second, it is based on existing research and practice and meant to function as a nascent and evolvable model as research on measurement development in cultural context progresses in the field of communication. There are certain additions and changes that could be incorporated into this model, and it is the hope of the researchers that it will have heuristic value, evolving as new knowledge is generated. Third, it is directly designed to be applied to intercultural, cross-cultural, and global communication research, filling a gap in the literature that has been dominated by other disciplines.

The model is not without limitations. Most importantly, we recognize that implementing the entire model requires significant time, resources, and relationships in a community. Further, the measures developed using the model cannot be simply taken and used in other cultural contexts but can serve as a basis for adaptation in intercultural communication research among similar populations and for similar issues. The relativism approach taken in the MC 3 M represents a departure from some of the existing cross-cultural/intercultural research, in which absolutism or universalism approaches are commonly adopted, and measures are used in communities without adaptation. With this said, we acknowledge that absolutism or universalism may still be appropriate in certain study contexts, such as when the research constructs are likely to be less sensitive to the influence of cultural or social factors.

Nonetheless, it is crucial to recognize the substantial role of culture in people’s communication, cognitions, and behaviors ( Herdman et al., 1997 ; Berry et al., 2002 ). As such, we encourage researchers to develop quantitative measures derived within a specific cultural context following rigorous procedures. Measurement development and validation are critical for expanding social norms and other communication research accounting for cultural similarities and differences. Doing so can enhance both internal and external validity in the corpus of research to account for culturally-based concepts and processes ( Mollen et al., 2010 ; Croucher et al., 2019 ).

The continued increasing global interactions highlight the need for cross-cultural researchers to be particularly careful and attentive to the issues of adapting existing constructs, theories, and measures developed in one culture for use in other cultures, and such issues are applicable to a variety of research disciplines. Acknowledging that nuances of the research process are different for each study, we hope that the proposed Model for Culturally Contextualized Communication Measurement, as well as the case we have described in this study, could serve to stimulate advancement in both conceptual and measurement refinement in intercultural and cross-cultural communication research.

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Michigan State University. Written informed consent for participation was not required for this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the many years of collaborative work and approved it for publication. The authors would like to acknowledge Ariane Leclerq, Ed Glazer, and the team of interviewers, coders, and surveyors/enumerators for their assistance with this project.

This project would not have been possible without a grant from the Sustainable Michigan Endowed Project at Michigan State University # 2011001. Partial support was provided by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch project numbers MICL02244, MICL02173, and MICL02362, and by National Science Foundation Award #SMA-1328503.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2021.770513/full#supplementary-material

1 This study reports on a long-term program of research involving an interdisciplinary, intercultural team of scientists and non-governmental organization staff first supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2013 and continuing with data collections from 2014 to 2016. The authors do not have financial conflicts of interest.

2 As a caveat, only studies published in English language journals are reviewed here. Further, we only use the information available about these studies in the published version of the paper which may be incomplete.

3 Minor adaptions of the scales may be involved to fit with the specific study scenarios or focal behaviors.

4 Although English is the dominant language in Australia and the U.S., Singapore’s national languages are English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil ( Department of Statistics Singapore, 2019 ).

5 The geographical distance between villages is very far with some hundreds of kilometers apart and the primary transportation relies on rough mountain roads, so obtaining the sample was challenging. The participants were recruited primarily through community events and snowball sampling strategies.

6 We were conducting research in a politically sensitive area in China (c.f., Huang, 2013 ) and participants were likely to be unfamiliar with surveys. As such, we used verbally administered surveys.

7 Based on the suggestions from our experienced local collaborators and cultural insiders, we had to keep the survey short by limiting the number of items for each scale as much as possible, due to the reasons that 1 ) our survey was verbally administered, which took a much longer time to complete compared to a written/online survey, and 2 ) our study group had never participated in any studies or completed any surveys. Items developed in each scale with closely shared meaning may confuse them when answering the questions.

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Keywords: unique populations, social norms, cross-cultural communication, culturally derived measures, measurement validation

Citation: Liu RW, Lapinski MK, Kerr JM, Zhao J, Bum T and Lu Z (2022) Culture and Social Norms: Development and Application of a Model for Culturally Contextualized Communication Measurement (MC 3 M). Front. Commun. 6:770513. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2021.770513

Received: 03 September 2021; Accepted: 06 December 2021; Published: 03 January 2022.

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Copyright © 2022 Liu, Lapinski, Kerr, Zhao, Bum and Lu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Rain W. Liu, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

ESSAYS ON SOCIAL NORMS AND THE MANY SIDES OF RACISM

My dissertation is divided into five relatively freestanding yet thematically linked essays, investigating a number of ways in which social norms and the question of racism are related. In these chapters, I aim to show the vital influence of social norms on our interpersonal relationships, going beyond the futile binary between individual (moral philosophy) and state (political philosophy), thereby affirming the primacy of the social over the political. Considering social norms can help us to see how individual agents are socially and culturally mediated, shaped, and distorted. In the dissertation, I discuss the racial contract (John Rawls and Charles Mills), racism as volitional states (Jorge Garcia), racism as ideology (Tommie Shelby and Sally Haslanger), and anti-racism through social movements (Elizabeth Anderson). By engaging them, I argue that racism as a socially harmful norm should be understood in the context of broader social environments. My thesis is that racism as a socially harmful norm should be understood as a manifestation in broad social environments where the mechanisms of social norms function structurally. In conclusion, I argue for the relevance of social critique instead of a narrow moral critique of racism. In this regard, my solution is not intended as a complete solution for the termination of all forms of racism, rather as certainly a needed viable approach both morally warranted and pragmatically efficacious.

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• Philosophy not elsewhere classified

Social Norms and Public Policy

Subscribe to the economic studies bulletin, h. peyton young h. peyton young professor in economics - johns hopkins university.

October 31, 2007

Why do medical practices vary so much between localities within the same state? Why do smoking rates among teens differ across age cohorts? Why do rates of voter turnout vary significantly between electoral districts that have the same socio-economic characteristics? Differences in social norms may help to explain these and other puzzling differences in group behavior that are not readily attributable to differences in income, tastes, and other individual characteristics.

Social norms are rules of conduct that govern interactions among individuals within a reference group. Norm violations often provoke disapproval and loss of esteem, which is the force that holds them in place [1]. Although social norms exert a powerful influence on people’s behavior in many arenas, they are difficult to measure directly and are often neglected in the design of policy. Standard policy analysis focuses mainly on individual responses to incentives, such as prices. If individuals are influenced by rules of conduct within their reference groups, however, policies must be designed to induce change at the group level, as well as, at the individual level. This requires a different set of tools than is provided by conventional policy analysis.

To analyze how norm shifts occur, and how policies can be designed to engineer such shifts, one must view individuals as embedded in a larger social system. Two factors of particular importance are: i) the social network, that is, the web of connections that describe who interacts with whom; and ii) the mechanism by which norms of behavior are enforced by the group.

Social norms are pertinent to many areas of policy, particularly health policy. Evidence is accumulating, for example, that obesity is spread in part by social contagion: if someone’s close friends become obese it is more likely that they will become obese also. Such effects are observed even after controlling for many factors that friends may have in common, such as income, education, ethnicity, even place of residence. Similarly, there is evidence that teenagers are more likely to take up smoking if their friends take up smoking; and adults are more likely to give it up if their friends give it up. These issues arise in many other areas of social policy, including teenage pregnancy, the willingness to get vaccinated, and the propensity to engage in criminal behavior.

The logic of these situations is that people want to conform to the customary practices and ideals of their reference group because they will be stigmatized if they fail to do so. This may or may not conflict with the choices they would make on their own, but there certainly are situations where perverse norms become entrenched that are quite detrimental to individuals’ welfare. Conventional policy interventions, such as taxing harmful practices or dispensing information about their negative consequences, will not have much impact unless they succeed in shifting the equilibrium at the group level. This may require targeted interventions that take account of the social network structure. In fact, when such interventions are correctly designed, they can sometimes “tip” group behavior into a new equilibrium even more rapidly than if norms were not a factor. Policy can use group norms to its advantage.

Agent-based models are especially well-suited to study these issues. Firstly, they are dynamic, and can simulate behavior both in and out of equilibrium. Secondly, the agents who populate the models are fully heterogeneous: they have a range of personal traits, differ in the amount of information they possess, have different positions within the social network, and so forth. The models are also explicit about the ways agents interact and respond to information, which may be highly rational, merely adaptive, or somewhere in-between. Recent advances in stochastic dynamical systems theory, some of them pioneered by members of the Brookings Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, allow researchers to study the long-run dynamical behavior of such models with great accuracy [2].

This general approach can be used to analyze such questions as how quickly norm shifts can spread through a society, and what types of interventions are most likely to trigger such shifts. The answers depend crucially on how agents use the information generated by other agents, and also on the topology of the social network [3, 4]. Empirical applications include a study of how new agricultural technologies diffuse [5], and how shifts in smoking behavior can be induced by targeted interventions [6].

Agent-based models also provide insights into the qualitative effects of social norms on group behavior. One of the most interesting is that norms often have a ‘patchy’ look; that is, they induce overly uniform behavior within a given community (in spite of individual differences among its members), yet they may also induce very different behaviors among communities (even though these communities are quite similar in a cross-sectional sense). This is known as the local conformity/global diversity effect [2].

Empirical support for this proposition can be found in a number of domains, including strong regional differences in medical treatments for a given condition combined with an excessive uniformity of practice within a given region [7]. This has implications for health policy, because it suggests that powerful professional norms can get in the way of delivering efficient medical care. It is therefore crucial to understand what holds such norms in place and how norms can be altered by targeted forms of intervention. This is one of many examples showing how policy analysis can benefit from models that incorporate social norms.

1. H. P. Young, “Social Norms,” forthcoming in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2 nd edition . London: Macmillan.

2. H. P. Young, Individual Strategy and Social Structure: An Evolutionary Theory of Institutions. Princeton University Press, 1998.

3. H. P. Young, “The Diffusion of Innovations in Social Networks,” in Lawrence E. Blume and Steven N. Durlauf, eds. The Economy as a Complex Evolving System, vol. III . , Oxford University Press, 2003.

4. H. P. Young, “Innovation Diffusion in Heterogeneous Populations: Contagion, Social Influence, and Social Learning.” CSED Working Paper #51. October, 2007.

5. H. P. Young, “The Spread of Innovations through Social Learning,” CSED Working Paper #43, December ,2005.

6. Social Influences and Smoking Behavior: Final Report to The American Legacy Foundation. February, 2006. brookings-edu-2023.go-vip.net/dynamics/publications.aspx

7. Mary A. Burke, Gary Fournier, and Kislaya Prasad, “Physician Social Networks and Geographical Variation in Medical Care.” CSED Working Paper #33. July, 2003.

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Individual and Society — Social Norms

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Examples Of Social Norms & Societal Standards: Including Cultural Norms

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Norms are implicit (unwritten) social rules which define what is expected of individuals in certain situations. They are measures of what is seen as normal in society, and govern the acceptable behavior in society (societal standards).

Norms operate at several levels, from regulations concerning etiquette at the table to moral norms relating to the prior discharging of duties ( see values ).

Social norms vary from culture to culture, and can be specific to a particular group or situation. Some social norms are explicit, such as laws or religious teachings, while others are more implicit, such as etiquette.

Violating social norms can result in negative consequences, such as being ostracized from a community or, though only in exceptional circumstances, punished by law (Bicchieri, 2011).

Everyday social convention Norms

The following are some common social norms that people in the US and UK follow daily (Hechter & Opp, 2001):

Shaking hands when greeting someone

• Saying “please” and “thank you”

Apologizing when one makes a mistake

Standing up when someone enters the room

Making eye contact during a conversation

Listening when someone is speaking

Offering help when someone is struggling

Respecting personal space

Accepting others” opinions even if we don’t agree with them

Being on time

Dressing appropriately for the occasion-

Thanking someone for a gift

Paying attention to personal hygiene

Speaking quietly in public and formal places

Clearing one”s dishes from the table after a meal at one’s own home, or at one of a friend or stranger

Not interrupting when someone else is speaking

Asking before borrowing something that belongs to someone else

Walking on the right side of a hallway or sidewalk

Saying “bless you” or “gesundheit” after someone sneezes

-Standing in line and not cutting in front of others

Yielding to pedestrians when driving

Hanging up one’s coat when entering someone else’s home

Taking off one”s shoes when entering someone else”s home (if this is the custom)

Not talking with food in one’s mouth

Chewing with one’s mouth closed

Not staring at others

Cultural Norms

Social norms vary widely across cultures and contexts (Reno et al., 1993).

For example, in Japan, some social norms that are typically followed include:

• Bowing instead of shaking hands when greeting someone
• Removing shoes before entering a home or certain public places
• Eating quietly and with small bites
• Using chopsticks correctly
• Not blowing your nose in public
• Speaking softly
• Not making direct eye contact with others
• Some social norms that are specific to meeting new people include:
• Dressing neatly and conservatively
• Exchanging business cards formally
• Presenting and receiving gifts with two hands

In South America, in contrast, people are expected to (Young, 2007):

• Greet others with a hug and a kiss on the cheek, even if one does not know them well
• Stand close to someone when talking to them
• Talk loudly for emphasis
• Make eye contact
• Use a lot of gestures when talking
• Dress more casually than in Japan or the UK
• It is common for men to whistle at women they find attractive
• In some cultures, it is considered rude to refuse a drink when offered one by someone else
• It is also considered rude to turn down food when offered some
• Table manners are not as formal as in Japan or the UK, and it is common to see people eating with their hands
• Burping and belching are also considered normal and not rude
• In some cultures, it is considered good luck to spit on someone or something
• Yawning is also considered normal and not rude

Social Norms For Students

School teaches children respect for authority, structure, and tolerance. The social norms expected of students follow suit (Hechter & Opp, 2001):

Being respectful to teachers

Listening in class

Handing in homework on time

Not talking when others are talking

Taking turns

Include everyone in activities

Playing fairly

Encouraging others

Trying one”s best

Respecting property and equipment

Being a good listener

Accepting differences among people

• Avoiding put-downs and hurtful teasing

Some social norms that are generally followed while taking exams include:

• Not cheating
• Arriving on time
• Not talking during the exam
• Listening to and following the instructions given by the person administering the exam
• Not leaving the room until the exam is over
• Not bringing in any outside materials that are not allowed
• Not looking at other people”s papers

Gender Social Norms

Some social norms that are associated with being a woman include (Moi, 2001):

• Wearing makeup
• Dressing in feminine clothing
• Being polite and well mannered
• Keeping one’s legs and arms covered
• Not swearing
• Avoiding physical labor
• Letting men take the lead

Some social norms that are associated with being a man include (Moi, 2001):

• Wearing masculine clothing
• Having short hair
• Taking up space
• Talking loudly
• Being assertive and confident
• Engaging in physical labor
• Protecting and providing for others
• leading and being in charge

Some social norms that are associated with being transgender or gender non-conforming include:

• Dressing in a way that does not conform to traditional gender norms
• Using pronouns that do not correspond to the sex assigned at birth
• Going by a different name than the one given at birth
• Requesting that others use the pronoun corresponding to their preferred gender
• Taking hormones or undergoing surgery to transition to the desired gender

Social Norms With Family

Young (2007) outlined numerous social norms pertaining to family, such as:

• Listening to elders
• Treating siblings and cousins with love and respect
• Doing chores without being asked
• Children not talking back to parents
• Paying attention during family gatherings
• Showing affection in appropriate ways
• Respecting others’ privacy
• Keeping family secrets
• Being grateful for what you have
• Appreciating the sacrifices made by your parents or guardians
• Celebrating birthdays and other special occasions together
• Sharing in family traditions

Social Norms At Work

Social norms at work are similar to those enforced at school (Hechter & Opp, 2001):

Coming to work on time

Dressing appropriately for the job

Putting in a full day”s work

Not calling in sick unnecessarily

Not taking extended lunches or coffee breaks

Not spending excessive time chatting with co-workers – Completing assigned tasks

Following company policies and procedures

Being a team player

Respecting others” opinions

Listening to and considering others” suggestions

Being an active participant in meetings

Completing assigned tasks on time

Respecting the decisions of the group even if you don’t agree with them

Social Norms While Dining Out

Some social norms that are typically followed while dining out include (Hechter & Opp, 2001):

• Dressing neatly and appropriately for the occasion
• Arriving on time for reservations
• Refraining from talking loudly
• Putting phones away and not using them at the table
• Not ordering food that is too smelly
• Ordering an appropriate amount of food
• Not leaving a mess behind
• Tipping the server generously (in American cultures)
• Saying “please” and “thank you” to the staff
• In many cultures, it is also considered rude to:
• Critique the food or drink
• Send food back
• Make a scene
• Interrupt others while they are talking
• Leave without saying goodbye

Using Your Phon e

Social norms surrounding using phones include (Carter et al., 2014):

• Putting one’s phone away when one is with other people
• In many formal situations, only using one’s phone in designated areas
• Silencing one’s phone when in class, at a meeting, or in any other situation where it would be disruptive to have one’s phone make noise
• Asking permission before using someone else’s phone
• Returning a missed call or voicemail within a reasonable amount of time
• Not texting or talking on the phone while walking if it means one’s not paying attention to where they are going and could bump into someone or something

Social Norms While Driving

Although often broken, there are expectations surrounding one”s behavior on the road (Carter et al., 2014), such as:

• Obeying the speed limit
• Yielding to pedestrians
• Coming to a complete stop at stop signs and red lights
• Using turn signals when changing lanes or making turns
• Yielding to other drivers who have the right of way
• Not driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol
• Not using a cell phone while driving
• Paying attention to the road and not being distracted by passengers, music, or other things going on inside or outside of the car

Social Norms When Meeting A New Person

In general, some social norms that are typically followed when interacting with others include (Hechter & Opp, 2001):

• Making eye contact
• Standing up straight
• Offering a handshake
• Introducing oneself
• Speaking clearly
• Listening attentively
• Asking questions
• Not interrupting others while they are talking
• Refraining from talking too much about oneself
• Being polite and well-mannered
• Not making any offensive jokes or comments

Social Norms With Friends

In general, close confidants follow a more relaxed set of social norms than acquaintances and strangers. Nonetheless, there are still expectations as to what constitutes a friend in many Western cultures, including (Young, 2007):

• Giving each other honest feedback, though often without a harsh start-up
• Accepting each other’s differences
• forgiving each other
• celebrating each other’s successes
• comforting each other during tough times
• laughing together and in response to each other’s jokes
• sharing common interests
• spending time together
• making sacrifices for each other

What is the difference between mores, norms, and values?

Mores are the regulator of social life, while norms are the very specific rules and expectations that govern the behavior of individuals in a community. Mores are a subset of norms, representing the morality and character of a group or community.

Generally, they are considered to be absolutely right. On the other hand, norms can involve customs and expected behaviors that are more flexible and can change over time.

They usually deal with day-to-day behavior and are not as deeply ingrained as mores. While the violation of a norm may be uncomfortable, the violation of a more is usually socially unacceptable.

Mores 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.

While norms are specific rules dictating how people should act in a particular situation, values are general ideas that support the norm”.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 .

Three essays on social norms

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Article contents

Norms and social constructivism in international relations.

• Matthew J. Hoffmann Matthew J. Hoffmann Department of Political Science, University of Toronto Scarborough
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.60
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 22 December 2017

Social norms were conceptualized as aspects of social structure that emerged from the actions and beliefs of actors in specific communities; norms shaped those actions and beliefs by constituting actors’ identities and interests. Early constructivist work in the 1980s and early 1990s sought to establish a countervailing approach to the material and rational theories that dominated the study of international relations. Empirically oriented constructivists worked to show that shared ideas about appropriate state behavior had a significant impact on the nature and functioning of world politics. Initial constructivist studies of social norms can be divided into three areas: normative, socialization, and normative emergence. After making the case that norms matter and developing a number of theoretical frameworks to show how norms emerge, spread, and influence behavior, norms-oriented constructivists have shifted their attention to a new set of questions, and in particular compliance with the strictures of social norms and change in norms themselves. Ideas about whether actors reason about norms or through norms can be linked to behavioral logics, which provide conceptions of how actors and norms are linked. Two types of normative dynamics can be identified: the first is endogenous contestation; the second is compliance or diffusion. In order to better understand compliance with and contestation over norms either in isolation or together, it is necessary to pay more attention to the prior understanding of who is in the community. Another topic that requires further consideration in future research is the relationship between intersubjective and subjective reality.

• social norms
• international relations
• social constructivism
• world politics
• normative behavior
• socialization
• normative emergence
• behavioral logics
• endogenous contestation

Introduction

This review examines the constructivist norms-oriented literature from early efforts geared at gaining acceptance in a field dominated by the neorealist/neoliberal debates, through the recent emergence of agendas focused on norm compliance and contestation. Early empirical studies of social norms tended to consider social norms as static and relatively specific social facts. This analytic move facilitated conversation and competition with rational/material theoretical competitors. More recent constructivist norms scholarship has revisited this perspective on social norms, positing a different set of normative dynamics more focused on contestation over social norms. The essay proceeds by first describing the initial establishment of constructivist norms research and critiques that flowed from the original choices made. It then turns to a discussion of two directions currently being explored in social norms research and the open questions that remain.

Establishing Constructivist Social Norms Research

Early constructivist work in the 1980s and early 1990s sought to establish a countervailing approach to the material and rational theories that dominated the study of international relations (e.g., Wendt 1987 , 1992 ; Onuf 1989 ; Kratochwil 1989 ; Ruggie 1993 ; Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986 ). These initial works laid the theoretical foundation for an approach to world politics that included the assumption that important aspects of politics are socially constructed, a commitment to mutual constitution as an answer to the agent-structure problem, a dedication to the importance of intersubjective reality in contrast to objective/subjective realities, and a focus on ideational and identity factors in analyses of world politics.

This was a vastly different kind of theorizing than was current in the mainstream of international relations that was locked in the neorealist/neoliberal debate (e.g., Krasner 1983 ; Keohane 1984 , 1986 ; Baldwin 1990 ; Grieco 1990 ). Constructivism was and remains a very different approach to world politics than its erstwhile competitors. In contrast to these other approaches, constructivism is a social theory (or family of social theories) or theory of process (Adler 1997 , 2003 ; Checkel 1998 ; Wendt 1999 ; Hoffmann 2009 ), which means it necessarily lacks a priori commitments on key elements of international relations theories – the identity, nature, interests, and behavior of important actors and the structure of world politics. Instead, constructivism is held together by consensus on broader questions of social process – its position on the agent-structure problem and the primacy of the ideational and the intersubjective aspects of social life (for overviews of constructivism see Onuf 1998 ; Ruggie 1998 ; Finnemore and Sikkink 2001 ; Ba and Hoffmann 2003 ).

While early constructivist theorizing proved to be an exciting new avenue for thinking about international relations in the abstract, both constructivists and their critics were eager to see constructivist theory applied empirically. As one notable example, Keohane ( 1988 :392) critiqued this new perspective by arguing that “the greatest weakness of the reflective school lies not in deficiencies in their critical arguments but in the lack of a clear reflective research program that could be employed by students of world politics.” At the forefront of the initial empirical push in constructivist research were the norms-oriented and identity approaches. Reviewing the complementary identity-oriented approaches is beyond the scope of this essay, but its neglect here in no way reflects the importance of this crucial aspect of constructivist theorizing (on identity see, e.g., Hall 1999 ; Hopf 2002 ).

The category of “social norm” was not an invention of constructivism. On the contrary, this analytic device has a deep history in the sociological and economic literatures. However, when defined as ideas or expectations about “appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity” (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998 :891), it became an ideal conceptual tool for operationalizing processes of social construction. Social norms were conceived as aspects of social structure that emerged from the actions and beliefs of actors in specific communities and in turn norms shaped those actions and beliefs by constituting actors’ identities and interests. Social norms were considered, in many ways, the medium of mutual constitution. In addition, the use of norms to study international relations directly challenged the orthodox assumption that the international realm was one largely devoid of sociality, merely a system of power calculations and material forces (a challenge also issued by the English school; see Bull 1977 ). On the contrary, early, empirically oriented constructivists worked to demonstrate that shared ideas about appropriate state behavior had a profound impact on the nature and functioning of world politics.

Initial constructivist studies of social norms generally clustered into three areas. (1) Normative behavior – how an extant norm influences behavior within a community. (2) Socialization – how an extant norm or a nascent norm from one community diffuses and is internalized by actors outside that community. (3) Normative emergence – how an idea reaches intersubjective status in a community. Focusing on these elements of normative dynamics led to progress in how constructivists understood conformance with normative strictures, the spread of existing norms, and the emergence of new norms.

Conformance – how social norms as intersubjective objects stabilize expectations and even bound what is considered to be possible (Yee 1996 ) – was a crucial area for constructivists because without evidence of conformance with the strictures of social norms, constructivists could not demonstrate that norms mattered. Initial constructivist norm studies thus tended to focus on how behavior in a community coalesces around a norm or is reconstituted when a norm emerges. These studies were inclined to treat social norms as independent variables and show how some political behavior is made possible or constrained by such ideational factors (e.g., Barkin and Cronin 1994 ; Klotz 1995 ; Finnemore 1996 , 2003 ; Katzenstein 1996 ; Legro 1996 ; Price 1997 ; Tannenwald 1999 ). The goal was to show how a target behavior can be accounted by considering the ideational context, how ideas and norms constitute interests, or how social norms influence actors’ understandings of the material world.

From this mainly structural perspective, social norms were conceptualized as an alternative to rationalist/materialist variables in explanations of world politics. The empirical studies in this area were diverse. Klotz ( 1995 ), for instance, chronicled how the anti-apartheid norm shaped the expectations and actions of the US towards South Africa in the 1980s. Legro ( 1996 ) provided insight on a traditional security issue by delineating how normative ideas embedded in organizational culture at the domestic level could explain puzzling (for traditional international relations theories) variation in war fighting decisions in World War II.

Studies of norm diffusion or spread moved constructivists into the area of socialization. Prominent in the initial empirical norms research in this vein were studies that examined how given norms in a particular community diffused to actors outside the community (e.g., Risse-Kappen 1994 ; Keck and Sikkink 1998 ; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999 ; Checkel 2001 ; Johnston 2001 ). As Johnston ( 2001 :494) clarifies, “socialization is aimed at creating membership in a society where the intersubjective understandings of the society become taken for granted.” These studies generally began from the perspective of a single, established norm and posited mechanisms (arguing, bargaining, persuading, and learning) for how the community of norm acceptors could be enlarged (Acharya 2004 ). The main empirical focus tended to be on either the development of a European polity (e.g., Checkel 2001 ) or on attempts at socializing Southern states into (relatively) universal international norms like human rights and sovereign statehood (Finnemore 1996 ; Risse et al. 1999 ). Less explicit attention was paid to the alternative perspectives on socialization: processes by which groups are maintained, the manner in which the targets of socialization affect both the socializers and targets of socialization (see Acharya 2004 ; Ba 2006 ), or the socialization of reluctant powerful actors (Cortell and Davis 2006 ; Johnston 2008 ).

Norm emergence studies were concerned with how ideas come to achieve normative status (e.g., Nadelmann 1990 ; Klotz 1995 ; Finnemore 1996 ; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998 ) and why some ideas become norms and others do not (e.g., Cortell and Davis 1996 , 2000 ; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998 ; Legro 2000 ; Payne 2001 ). Hegemony, entrepreneurial leadership, domestic context, framing, moral argument, and epistemic community actions figured prominently in these works as the impetus for emergence (Ikenberry and Kupchan 1990 ; Haas 1992 ; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998 ; Keck and Sikkink 1998 ; Risse 2000 ). There is significant overlap with the socialization literature here as the mechanisms by which an idea becomes a norm are not all that different from the mechanisms by which an actor outside a normative community is brought within. Prominent in this part of the literature was Finnemore and Sikkink’s ( 1998 ) development of the “norm life cycle” whereby normative entrepreneurs (see also Nadelmann 1990 ) work to persuade states of the appropriateness of a new norm and serve as a catalyst for a cascade of new normative understandings.

These initial waves of constructivist writing met the challenge issued by Keohane and played a significant role in vaulting constructivism into prominence during the 1990s and early 2000s (Checkel 1998 , 2004 ). They demonstrated that constructivism consisted of more than a metatheoretical critique of rational/material approaches and could indeed be used to structure rigorous empirical investigations across the spectrum of issues in international relations. Constructivists provided empirical studies on a full range of topics important to the international relations discipline – both in areas largely neglected by mainstream international relations like human rights (Klotz 1995 ; Risse, Ropp and Sikkink 1999 ), development (Finnemore 1996 ), and areas directly relevant to mainstream concerns like security (e.g., Legro 1996 ; contributors to Katzenstein 1996 ; Price 1997 ; Tannenwald 1999 ). By the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, constructivists were engaging with both the “small number of big important things” that Waltz ( 1986 :329, cited in Finnemore 1996 :1) famously claimed for structural realism and the “large number of ‘big important things’” that other approaches ignored (Finnemore 1996 :1).

However, the success of this initial wave of constructivist norms studies was built on an analytic move that would engender significant debate in the 2000s. The initial empirical norms research tended to simplify normative dynamics to facilitate analysis and dialogue with competing perspectives, treating the norms that they analyzed as relatively static entities with relatively specific meanings and strictures. Early empirical approaches did engage with normative dynamics and change (e.g., Finnemore and Sikkink 1998 ), but the understanding of dynamics and change was relatively circumscribed. Norms were conceptualized as having specific behavioral strictures (a relatively bounded set of appropriate behaviors) that did not change. The first wave of empirical constructivist studies tended to “freeze” norms. Wiener ( 2004 :191, 192) notes that this “behavioralist” approach “operates with stable norms” and is best suited to “inferring and predicting behavior by referring to a particular category of norms that entail standards for behavior.” While these studies unveiled how the norms they examined contributed to dynamic political processes, they tended to hold the norms themselves constant. Even studies of norm emergence tended to treat the norms in question as relatively static – one relatively fully formed norm is replaced by a new idea that becomes a norm. The norms’ (both established and potential) meaning, constitutive properties, and behavioral strictures remain unchanged throughout the analysis (Van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007 ).

From the perspective of those who work on norms, there are very good reasons to focus on static and specific norms when analyzing international relations. First, norms are relatively stable – if they were not, it would be hard to justify or observe this analytic category. While constructivists know that social norms are always being reconstituted in the dynamic interplay of agents and social structures known as mutual constitution, social norms do elicit common behavioral expectations such that they are recognizable as relatively stable shared ideas. Second, analytic tractability is necessary and is no trivial accomplishment. Allowing the meaning of social norms to vary in the course of analysis can quickly devolve into an expository morass. The goal of most norms-oriented studies in the initial wave of empirical constructivist work was to explain something about how world politics functions. Holding social norms relatively constant in order to do this was deemed an acceptable trade-off. The focus was not on analyzing norms as much as it was using norms as a device to analyze world politics. Finally, the sociology of the discipline faced by early empirical constructivist studies virtually forced constructivists to adopt a focus on static norms. To gain acceptance and make the case that constructivist ideas mattered empirically, constructivists endeavored to demonstrate how their ideational perspective could provide superior understanding and explanation of political phenomena. Put simply, social norms were treated as independent variables – explanations for varied behaviors observed in world politics.

The simplification of social norm dynamics at the foundation of the initial wave of constructivist norms writing contributed to the meteoric rise of social constructivism within the international relations literature. Yet, the analytic choices made had consequences for how norms were understood and these initial conditions significantly shaped both constructivist analysis and the kind of critiques of norms research that subsequently emerged. Critics too began to understand social norms as static and specific and this facilitated an erroneous notion that evidence of norm-breaking behavior somehow invalidated or falsified constructivist theorizing. Rebuttals to constructivist arguments used evidence of behavior that was inconsistent with the specific and unchanging strictures of norms in question to claim that nonconstructivist (usually material or rational) factors must be the driving catalyst of political behavior and outcomes (Shannon 2000 ).

Similarly, treating social norms as static independent variables led to calls for constructivists to define the conditions under which normative and nonnormative influences on behavior are likely to be the most important in determining behavior (Legro and Kowert 1996 ; Risse et al. 1999 ; Jacobsen 2003 ). Shannon ( 2000 :294) makes a sophisticated argument along these lines, claiming that “due to the fuzzy nature of norms and situations, and due to the imperfect interpretation of such norms by human agency, oftentimes norms are what states (meaning state leaders) make of them.” Such an interpretation of constructivist thought moves him to make a familiar argument about the split between norm-based and interest-based behavioral impulses (Shannon 2000 :298–302; Van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007 ).

Both of these critiques run afoul of constructivist logic yet are legitimate given how norms were conceptualized in the initial wave of empirical constructivist work. Norm-breaking behavior may be evident but is only problematic for constructivist arguments if norms are specific and static. If the meaning of a norm can change or if different communities of actors adhere to different norms (or different versions of a norm), then “norm-breaking” takes on a different meaning. In addition, taking constructivist thought to its logical conclusion, there is no such thing as nonnormative behavior or pure material self-interest independent of a normative context. Certainly actors are strategic, but constructivist logic dictates that the normative context defines and shapes that strategic behavior (Muller 2004 ).

Beyond fueling critiques of constructivism, treating norms as static entities made it difficult for constructivists to explain normative change (ironic for an approach that rose to prominence with its critique of other theories’ inability to explain change). To be clear, constructivists have been quite good at demonstrating the replacement of one norm with another. However, this focus did little to advance understanding of how norms themselves change without necessarily being replaced (Van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007 ; Hoffmann 2005 ; Chwieroth 2008 ; Sandholtz 2008 ).

The initial wave of empirical norms work provided a solid foundation for the newly emergent constructivist approach, but it tended to bracket the vibrant existence of norms themselves. Constructivist thought makes it clear that social norms do not exist independently of communities of actors that believe in and enact them. They are thus animated entities that strengthen, weaken, and evolve. Treating social norms as fully formed, static constructs, even for analytic convenience, underplayed this dynamism. This freezing of norms tended to make them independent from politics – as variables in political behavior. Laffey and Weldes ( 1997 :195) warned against this when they argued that ideas “should be understood as elements of constitutive practices and relations rather than as ‘neo-positivist causal variables…’” None of this was unknown to the pioneering empirical constructivists who fleshed out the early theoretical forays into constructivist thought. They were aware of and noted the simplifications being made – caveating their work with notations about the fluid and inherently contested nature of norms. Quintessentially, Finnemore and Sikkink ( 1998 :914) noted “the highly contingent and contested nature of normative change and normative influence” in their examination of the norm life cycle. The norms-oriented work that followed this initial burst of activity in the 2000s built upon the success that was achieved, but also changed the trajectory of research on social norms in world politics to include broader notions of norm dynamics.

Current Directions in Norms Research

Having made the case that norms matter and having developed a number of theoretical frameworks to show how norms emerge, spread, and influence behavior, normsoriented constructivists have begun to turn their attention to a new set of questions. Two have become particularly prominent – compliance with the strictures of social norms and change in norms themselves. This pivot is an interesting development in norms research for two reasons.

First, the compliance and norm change research agenda (loosely defined) is more internally focused than the previous wave of norms-oriented research. To be sure, the international relations literature still contains healthy debate and sparring between constructivism and realism/liberalism (e.g., Petrova 2003 ; Fehl 2004 ; Williams 2004 ; Goddard and Nexon 2005 ; Sørenson 2008 ). Yet, constructivists are beginning to define their enterprise more independently of competing approaches. In the last decade the development of constructivist thought and empirical research has been occurring more on terms defined by constructivism itself (Checkel 2004 ). This has led the constructivist literature away from Keohane’s ( 1988 ) original vision of a division of labor – constructivists provide insight into what the interests are, rational approaches take the analysis from there (Legro 1996 ). Instead, attempts at synthesis of constructivism and rationalism are now en vogue (e.g., Fearon and Wendt 2001 ; Schimmelfennig 2001 , 2005 ; Checkel and Zurn 2005 ; Kornprobst 2007 ; Culpepper 2008 ; Kelley 2008 ). In addition, norms-oriented research and the constructivist literature writ large has begun to concern itself more with research questions that fall out from constructivist thought independently without as much reference to competing approaches (Checkel 2004 ).

Second, and more significantly, both the norm compliance and norm change research agendas engage seriously with notions of normative contestation, directly problematizing aspects of norm dynamics that tended to be held constant in earlier work. Following the initial success of empirical norms studies that established the efficacy of studying norms and showed that they mattered, current norms research explores when/where norms matter and how/when/why norms themselves change to a greater extent. This recent research speaks to and is driven by broader questions of conceptualizing the relationship between actors and norms – whether actors reason through or about social norms. Some constructivists stress reflection and consider that agents are able to reason about the various pulls on their possible behavior (either solely normative/ideational pulls or those in addition to material/strategic pulls). What agents want and who they are may be constituted by social structures, but there is never a complete sublimation of agents – they retain an ability to reason about constitutive social structures and make relatively independent behavioral choices. At the other end of the spectrum are constructivists who argue that agents reason through social structures. In other words, actors can never significantly remove themselves from their social structure to make independent judgments.

One’s position on this spectrum of reasoning about norms or reasoning through norms has consequences. Beginning with the assumption that actors reason about social norms means considering norms to be (at least somewhat) external to actors, part of their social context, but at least potentially manipulable by actors. Assuming that actors reason through social norms means beginning analysis with the understanding that the very way that actors view and understand the world is shaped by social norms. While this is obviously a false dichotomy and constructivist studies do not treat norms as exclusively internal or external to actors, the distinction matters for how scholars approach compliance and contestation. It matters if one assumes that norms are manipulable by political actors who can reason about them from an external standpoint or if norms (and social structure more generally) more fundamentally constitute actors such that they cannot stand outside the social norms that shape their interests and behaviors. The rest of this section explores this distinction in greater detail, discussing the behavioral logics at the foundation of the about/through spectrum before examining the recent compliance and contestation literatures that are developing new ideas about norm dynamics.

Behavioral Logics

Ideas about whether actors reason about norms or through norms can be linked to underlying behavioral logics that constructivists have devised and developed since the inception of the approach. Behavioral logics are concrete expressions of how mutual constitution works and what motivates actors to behave they way that they do. They serve as concrete foundations for the different conceptions of norm dynamics that are emerging in the current literature because they provide conceptions of how actors and norms are linked.

March and Olsen introduced the discipline to the notion of behavioral logics in delineating the logic of consequences and the logic of appropriateness, framing their discussion in terms of a rationalist-sociological debate (March and Olsen 1998 ). For March and Olsen, the logic of consequences – where agents undertake actions on the basis of rationally calculating the optimal (usually materially) course of action – remained an insufficient foundation for theorizing behavior in international relations. They posited the LoA as a corrective. Constructivists used this logic in early efforts to contrast their work with more established rationalist perspectives on world politics (see especially Finnemore 1996 ) because the logic of appropriateness contends that actors in world politics undertake actions that are appropriate for their particular identity. Instead of calculating what is best for improving its utility, an actor motivated by the logic of appropriateness will instead reason what actors like me should do. This logic fitted well with the commitment to mutual constitution (the notion of what is appropriate for different identities is socially constructed) and it also laid the groundwork for the norms-based challenge to strictly material explanations of world politics.

The underlying idea of the logic of appropriateness – that actors draw upon ideas about what they should do in specific situations given who they are – was consistent with social constructivism’s commitment to the causal and constitutive (Wendt 1998 ) effects of norms. This logic structured seminal empirical work that endeavored to show how ideational and normative factors could explain puzzles in world politics (e.g., Klotz 1995 ; Finnemore 1996 ). It was a tool for constructivists to show that ideas, norms, and morals mattered vis-à-vis rationalist variables in explanations of world political phenomena.

Yet the logic of appropriateness appears to cede the ground of purposeful, goal-oriented behavior to rationalist perspectives (whether it actually cedes this ground is an additional, and crucial question). The use of logic of appropriateness put constructivists in the curious position of having to show that norms, ideas, and identity mattered instead of material interests, which from a constructivist viewpoint is nonsensical. Some scholars have sought a way through or out of the logic of appropriateness/logic of consequences debate by following March and Olsen’s ( 1998 ) suggestions about scrutinizing the relationship between the logics, especially possible temporal sequencing of the logics, theorizing that sometimes actors calculate optimal material courses and at others they reason about their normative/identity obligations (Shannon 2000 ; Nielson, Tierney, and Weaver 2006 ; see Muller 2004 for a caution on this synthesis strategy).

Further, constructivists became more cautious about basing their analyses on the logic of appropriateness. Risse ( 2000 :6) captured the essence of the internal critique when he noted that the logic of appropriateness “actually encompasses two different modes of social action and interaction.” In one mode, appropriate actions are internalized and become thoughtlessly enacted at times as a precursor to or foundation of strategic behavior (Risse 2000 :6) – actors reasoning through social norms. In the other mode, actors actively consider their normative context in an attempt to reason about the best (appropriate) course of action – actors reasoning about social norms. Critics found this dual understanding of the logic of appropriateness wanting and thus developed additional behavioral logics that modeled differing motivations and modes of behavior more explicitly.

Risse’s ( 2000 ) and Sending’s ( 2002 ) critiques’ focus on the taken-for-granted mode of action implied the logic of appropriateness. Sending goes so far as to claim that the logic of appropriateness is incompatible with constructivist thought because it violates the tenets of mutual constitution and does not allow for change – he contends ( 2002 :458) that in the logic of appropriateness, social structure has “objective authority” over actors, not allowing for the kind of reflection necessary for mutual constitution and change. A similar concern motivated Risse ( 2000 ) to draw on Habermas’s work with communicative action and propose a new behavioral logic that would inject agency and more purposive reflection into the process of social construction. His (2000:2) logic of arguing is designed to clarify “how actors develop a common knowledge” and how norms and ideas can have a constitutive effect while retaining the “reflection and choice” Sending ( 2002 :458) deems necessary for mutual constitution and change. When actors follow the logic of arguing, they seek common understandings through discourse and dialogue. The logic of arguing has inspired the development of significant empirical research (e.g., Muller 2004 ; Bjola 2005 ; Leiteritz 2005 ; Mitzen 2005 ) and it is the foundation for some approaches to reasoning about social norms (the logic of consequences is also implicated in approaches that consider that actors reason about norms).

Other scholars deemed the logic of appropriateness (as well as the logics of consequences and arguing) to be too agentic to fit well with constructivist tenets. From this perspective, the logic of appropriateness, as it was developed through engagement with the logic of consequences foil, allowed the socially constructed ideational/normative world to play a role by providing cues as to what behaviors were appropriate. However, some scholars found the mode of action where actors consciously reason about what is appropriate to be a problematic foundation for constructivist thought. Scholars such as Adler ( 2008 ), Pouliot ( 2008 ), and Hopf ( 2002 ) found this reflective aspect of the logic of appropriateness to allow for too much independence between agents and structures. In other words, they worry that mutual constitution implies that actors have a difficult time stepping outside the bounds of their social/normative context to decide what is right to do. Pouliot and Adler draw on Bourdieu to develop a logic of practice and Hopf devised a logic of habit to reflect these concerns. In essence, these scholars and those who draw upon their work consider that much of behavior in world politics arises from ingrained, unconscious motivations – either habits or practices that drive precognitive behavior. Pouliot ( 2008 :259) argues that “most of what people do in world politics, as in any other social field, does not derive from conscious deliberation or thoughtful reflection. Instead, practices are the result of inarticulate, practical knowledge that makes what is done appear ‘self-evident’ or commensenical.”

Constructivists are certainly aware that actual behavior in world politics fails to correlate exactly to what are in essence ideal typical models of behavior. Risse ( 2000 ) extended March and Olsen’s ( 1998 ) discussion of the relationship between the logics of consequences and appropriateness to a tripartite linking of three logics. He argued:

If behavior in the real social world can almost always be located in some of the intermediate spaces between the corners of the triangle, one single metatheoretical orientation will probably not capture it. Rather the controversies mainly focus on how far one can push one logic of action to account for observable practices and which logic dominates a given situation. (Risse 2000 :3)

Similarly, rather than dismissing the more agentic logics, Pouliot ( 2008 :276) argues that the logic of practice is ontologically prior and “it is thanks to their practical sense that agents feel whether a given social context calls for instrumental rationality, norm compliance, or communicative action.”

The development of and debate over logics of behavior is the foundation of the reasoning about norms–reasoning through norms spectrum. Empirical norms studies have both drawn on these debates and fueled them with empirical data supporting different claims. Clearly this is a continuum because if agents were truly independent from or entirely dependent upon social structures, we would not be talking about constructivism. Yet, the degree to which agents are able to independently evaluate their social context (as well as their material reality as far as that goes) and act upon it is what separates different behavioral logics and it is one way that different constructivist approaches in the current “second wave” (Acharya 2004 ) of norms research can be differentiated. Both compliance and contestation studies have broadened our understanding of norm dynamics – allowing norms themselves to change and exploring the conditions under which norms will elicit conformance – but they do so in different ways. Compliance studies tend to fall on the side of reasoning about norms, considering how actors react to external norms and attempts at socialization, while contestation studies tend to view actors as reasoning through norms, examining how communities of norm acceptors can alter the meaning of constitutive norms through their bounded interpretations of prevailing norms and actions in line with those interpretations.

Compliance with External Norms

The current literature on compliance with social norms has taken a question that motivated the socialization studies of the 1990s – “Why do some transnational ideas and norms find greater acceptance in a particular locale than in others?” (Acharya 2004 :240) – in new directions. The seminal volume edited by Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink ( 1999 ) was the fountainhead for much of this research as it provided an explicit mechanism for how a particular set of human rights norms diffused beyond the community that originally endorsed them. The Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink volume developed the spiral model that explained socialization of recalcitrant Southern states into universal human rights norms by referring to the linkages between and actions of transnational human rights activists, domestic human rights activists in the target state, and powerful Western state sponsors. In essence, they theorized norm diffusion as taking place from a community of Western states constituted by compliance with universal human rights norms to individual Southern states.

The literature that has followed this keystone research (e.g., Acharya 2004 ; Cortell and Davis 2005 ; Farrell 2005 ; Mastenbroek and Kaeding 2006 ; Kornprobst 2007 ; Capie 2008 ) moves beyond the boundaries of earlier socialization research, especially the tendency to focus on displacement of local/domestic ideas with international norms through transnational teaching (Finnemore 1996 ; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998 ; Keck and Sikkink 1998 ; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999 ) or to attribute norm diffusion to “fit” between global and local norms (Cortell and Davis 1996 ; Florini 1996 ). It examines the socialization process as more one of contestation between different normative systems and has broadened the scope of analysis to include attempts at socializing both powerful and weaker actors. In addition, rather than taking the external norm as given, recent socialization studies examine compliance with international norms as a process by which states (already normatively constituted) interact with, manipulate, and (sometimes) incorporate external ideas in a dynamic fashion. The analytic focus is shifting to the targets of socialization and the dynamic and agentic process whereby actors interact with their normative context.

The work of Cortell and Davis ( 2005 ) and Acharya ( 2004 ) are relevant examples of this type of compliance research. Cortell and Davis ( 2005 ) still invoke fit or congruence between the local context and global norms in explaining compliance with an international norm, but their twists on this theme are: (1) to examine socialization of a powerful actor – Japan; and (2) to conceive of fit not as a given, but rather the result of conscious domestic political activity. They ( 2005 :25) note, “As domestic actors search about for new ideas to legitimate their self-interested preferences, the norms and institutions of the international system often provide them.” While Cortell and Davis do not problematize the substance of the financial liberalization norm under examination, they do attend to a neglected aspect of norm dynamics – the actions of those actors who are targeted for socialization. Acharya ( 2004 ) goes further in that he allows for the substance of international norms to be molded to fit local contexts – localization. In his study of how the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and its constituent states interacted with global norms, Acharya ( 2004 :251) demonstrates that “localization does not extinguish the cognitive prior of the norm-takers but leads to its mutual inflection with external norms.” International norms are adapted to local circumstances by actors with the ability to observe and manipulate ideas from the external normative context – in so doing they alter the substance of the international norm to build congruence.

In both cases, compliance with an international norm – behaving in a way that matches the behavioral strictures of the norm – is expressly theorized and variation in compliance is explained not by pitting constructivist and rationalist/materialist variables, but by examining processes by which domestic actors interpret and manipulate international and local norms. Along with recent work on strategic social construction – the idea that norms can be deployed in the service of interests (regardless of whether those interests are pre-given or socially constructed themselves) or at least shape strategic behavior (e.g., Barnett and Coleman 2004 ; Muller 2004 ; Nielson, Tierney, and Weaver 2006 ; Seabrooke 2006 ) – the recent writing on compliance has made progress on questions left open by the initial wave of empirical norms research.

In the attempt to understand when and where norms are likely to be efficacious, these authors stake out a position on the reasoning about–reasoning through norms spectrum. They consider that actors can stand outside a normative structure to consider options. This is natural given that this work is still in the area of socialization. The compliance literature is most often concerned with the actions of actors (Japan in the Cortell and Davis piece or the Southeast Asian nations in Acharya’s work) who have yet to accept or internalize international norms (financial liberalization and cooperative security/humanitarian intervention). When interacting with external norms, the targets of socialization reason about and in some cases manipulate the social norms (international or domestic) that shape their behavior. Rather than passive receptacles, norm takers have a very active role to play in socialization and can influence the meaning of the norms that constitute the very community they are being asked to join (Ba 2006 ).

Contestation from Within a Normative Community

Constructivists interested in norm change have recently begun reconceiving norm dynamics in a different way and have focused on contestation within communities of norm acceptors. This aspect of the literature is more focused on how actors understand the norms that constitute them and alternatively consider how actors that reason through norms can contest and reconstruct the norms that bind communities together. Scholars working in this vein often begin by critiquing the analytic move to freeze the content of norms. Wiener ( 2004 :198) warns us that “studying norms as ‘causes for behavior’ …leaves situations of conflicting or changing meanings of norms analytically underestimated.” Certainly norms exhibit stability, as they are recognizable by the common expectations that they structure but, paradoxically, norms are also in a constant state of dynamism and flux. Norms are born anew every day as actors instantiate them through their beliefs and actions and, as Sandholtz ( 2008 :101) notes, “normative structures, in other words, cannot stand still.”

Undoing the freezing of norms has been based on a reimagining of social norms as generic social facts that are inherently dynamic. In eliciting conformance and stabilizing expectations norms do not and cannot define all possible behavior, especially when a norm first emerges. Instead social norms are generic rules that allow agents to behave and get along in a wide range of situations. This reimagining is not new. Giddens ( 1984 :22) argued that social rules do not “specify all the situations which an actor might meet with, nor could [they] do so; rather, [they] provide for the generalized capacity to respond to and influence an indeterminate range of social circumstances.” Until recently this insight was often bracketed and it was assumed that norm acceptors follow the norms that structure their community relatively unproblematically. Recent studies have taken the generic nature of norms more seriously and have subsequently focused on how actors must operationalize their normative context to take specific actions (Hoffmann 2005 ; Van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007 ; Sandholtz 2008 ). These works argue that norms do not provide fully specified rules for every situation, and especially not for novel situations. Instead, norms are general principles that must be translated into specific actions (Gregg 2003 ). Van Kersbergen and Verbeek ( 2007 :221) go so far as to posit that this vagueness is actually designed into norms to facilitate maximum adherence.

Treating norms as generic has been at the foundation of the recent shift towards the study of contestation. As Sandholtz ( 2008 :101) puts it “disputes about acts are at the heart of a process that continually modifies social rules. The inescapable tension between general rules and specific actions ceaselessly casts up disputes which in turn generate arguments, which then reshape both rules and conduct.” The logical chain from general norms to contestation is not long. General norms must be operationalized or translated into specific actions for specific situations. The translation requires interpretation – a subjective understanding of the intersubjective context – to decide on a behavior. The ability to apprehend what is going on inside actors “heads” to understand motivations and interpretations is currently a matter for debate (Cederman and Daase 2003 ; Jackson 2004 ; Wendt 2004 ; Krebs and Jackson 2007 ) but, that debate notwithstanding, the notion that different actors within the same normative community – i.e., a group structured by the same norm(s) – could have different and contested understandings of that norm is at the foundation of the recent work on norm contestation.

Wiener ( 2004 :203) argues that “the interpretation of the meaning of norms, in particular, the meaning of generic sociocultural norms, cannot be assumed as stable and uncontested. On the contrary, discursive interventions contribute to challenging the meaning of norms and subsequently actors are likely to reverse previously supported political positions.” The current norm contestation literature explores processes through which actors come to understand shared norms differently, contest each other’s understandings, and how the contestation alters/reifies the norms that constitute a community of norm acceptors together (Hoffmann 2005 ; Van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007 ; Chwieroth 2008 ; Sandholtz 2008 ). Sandholtz ( 2008 :121) deems this to be a “built-in dynamic of change” whereby “the ever present gap between general rules and specific situations, as well as the inevitable tension between norms, creates openings for disputes.”

A number of recent studies have examined just this tension and the range of empirical topics being considered from this perspective is now quite broad. Studies of contestation and norm change have begun to examine diverse issues like organizational change in international financial institutions (Nielson, Tierney, and Weaver 2006 ; Chwieroth 2008 ); European integration (Meyer 2005 ; Van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007 ; Dimitrakopoulos 2008 ); environment (Bailey 2008 ); election monitoring (Kelley 2008 ); and security (Kornprobst 2007 ). Sandholtz ( 2008 ) himself proposes a cyclical model to explain the evolution of norms prohibiting wartime plunder. He considers that existing norms constrain the possibilities for action, but that different understandings of those norms inevitably arise in the community of norm acceptors. Arguments over the different actions feed back and alter the meaning of the original norms. Wiener ( 2007 ) has advanced what she is calling a new logic of contestedness and has explored ( 2004 ) the dynamics of interpretation and contestation in European responses to the 2003 Iraq War. Hoffmann ( 2005 ) employs insights from the study of complex adaptation to understand how states that all accepted the norm of universal participation in climate governance came to have different subjective understandings of that norm. Contestation over variants of universal participation then had significant impact on the evolution of the universal participation norm and climate governance outcomes.

Open Questions for the Current Norms Research

The Sandholtz ( 2008 :121) passage quoted above brings together the two types of normative dynamics discussed in this section. There is an implicit equivalence made between contestation that goes on within a normative community (generated by the “gap between general rules and specific situations”) and contestation that occurs between different normative communities (“inevitable tension between norms”). The first is endogenous contestation – actors that accept a general norm and are constituted by it nevertheless have different understandings of it or operationalize its strictures differently, leading to disputes and change in the meaning of the norm from within. The second is compliance or diffusion – actors from different normative communities seek to enlarge their communities or to hold on to extant norms in the face of external normative challenges and disputes that arise can lead to normative change in both communities. This is akin to what Krebs and Jackson ( 2007 :43–4) describe as implication contests where actors agree on the nature of an issue, but not the policy implications and framing contests where there is fundamental disagreement about the situation at hand.

These dual visions of normative dynamics are likely related, but the norms literature has yet to describe how. On the contrary, the two parts of the norms literature described above tend to find themselves on different ends of the reasoning about norms–reasoning through norms spectrum. Perhaps this is simply a matter of what questions are being asked. One set of norm dynamics may be implied when one seeks to understand how an actor outside a normative community interacts with norms when it is the target of socialization. An alternative set of norm dynamics may be implicated when one seeks to understand change in norms themselves. However, the separation between the two kinds of norms research discussed above may ultimately be artificial. Those who study compliance realize that actors are constituted by norms and cannot fully separate themselves from their normative context. This realization was part of what prompted the serious focus on domestic political/normative contexts in much of this literature. Those who study contestation do allow for reasoning about norms, appealing to notions of interpretation to generate different understandings of a norm with a community of norm acceptors.

In addition to considering how the two types of norm dynamics are related, the current norms literature brings traditional open questions in constructivism into sharp relief. First, both types of studies may benefit from more attention to the notion of intersubjective communities and their boundaries. Intersubjective facts like social norms only exist within a community of actors that accept them. Studies of compliance and contestation must grapple with this fundamental characteristic of social norms in a more explicit way moving forward. Constructivists are often too fast and loose with the use of the term “norm” without a concomitant discussion of what the community of norm acceptors looks like and by what criteria we can identify a community of norm acceptors. Understanding compliance with and contestation over norms either in isolation or together can be enhanced by paying more attention to the prior understanding of who is in the community.

Second, at a broader level, the current norms literature is wrestling with the relationship between intersubjective and subjective reality. A paradox of social norms is their dual quality. As shared objects, they appear as external to any particular actor – actors experience norms, at least in part, as external rules. But the existence of a norm is dependent on continual enactment by communities of actors – actors thus also experience norms, at least in part, as internal rules (Hoffmann 2005 ). Jacobsen ( 2003 :60) recognizes the need to theorize this relationship observing that, “constructivists of all stripes seem to agree that it is vital to theorize links between subjective experience and social/institutional structures.” The two versions of norm dynamics discussed above posit different conceptions of the intersubjective/subjective relationship, but neither has developed the final answer to this open question.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Alice Ba , Robert Denemark , Phil Triadafilopoulos , and the anonymous reviewer for their helpful discussions and suggestions on this essay. In addition, the students who took POL487 in fall of 2008 at the University of Toronto provided a wonderful sounding board and inspired feedback for the development of some of the ideas in this essay.

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Presentation Master's thesis - Till Konczak - Social Psychology

Roeterseilandcampus - Building L, Street: Nieuwe Achtergracht 129-b, Room: L0.02

While substantial research highlights the role of social norms in behavior regulation, there is less understanding of how norms are perceived following the observation of organizational punishment. This process of determining norms is subjective and is affected by various social-psychological influences, including rank. This study addresses this gap by investigating how perceptions of prescriptive and descriptive norms are shaped by the level of punishment, depending on the rank of the punished individual. Using a series of online scenarios, changes in norm perceptions pre- and post-description of punishment were measured. The results show that while lenient punishment makes unethical behavior seem more common than before, medium and strong punishment increasingly makes unethical behavior seem both uncommon and unacceptable. We find that punishing a low-ranking vs. a high-ranking individual makes unethical behavior seem less common. There is no main effect of the rank of the punished individual on how acceptable unethical behavior seems. However, there is an interaction so that severe punishment for a high-ranking individual makes a behavior particularly unacceptable. Implications for theory and practice, study limitations, and potential mechanisms are discussed.