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Social Norms Research Paper

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What are norms and how do norms affect behavior?

A norm refers to a standard of appropriate behavior to have in a society or in a group, mainly ways on how to do something. Norms define the social behavior by defining what an individual or a group can and cannot do, they translate the dominating values and role model of the society or the group.
There is different kind of norms : formal norms such as laws, regulation, codes to respect and informal noms witch form the customs, the habit … The non respect of those norms can either be tolerated either be punished depending on the kind of the non respected norm : jail, tickets for formal ones and moral sanction such as the exclusion of an individual from the group. That is why most members of …show more content…
Norms can affect an actor indirectly via an other actor, the example of Women's suffrage demonstrate so, indeed during the early 1900s this change in behavior become really important in the United States while other states were demanding the same change at home, the fact that it became really important in the US helped to influence the change in those other states and then became an international norm. Such domestic changes like the Women's suffrage which become international norms led to cause other changes regarding humanitarian rights (rights to life, food, shelter etc). One norm that can hardly effect the behavior of one actor can still do so by affecting the behavior of other actors that will next influence the first one to make this change in its behavior. An other example is the practice of Female Genital Cutting (FGC) in India. In fact if a family does not perform FGC to their daughter in a community (a tribe for example) where that is normally the case, where it is the norm, their daughter risks to be marginalized and ostracized by her peers but she also might never be able to get married. Social norms not only dictate the behaviors to adopt but also condemn deviation from

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