Relation Between Culture & Norm

A person is about to cross the street. What does he do? If there are no cars coming, does he stay at the crosswalk, waiting for the lights to change? Or does he just go for it? Does he look left first before crossing or does he look right? Or maybe he just darts across the street shouting, ‘Hey, I am walking over here!’ No matter what he does is going to be dependent on culture. His actions may depend on how he has been brought up in a society or it may depend on in which society is he now.

From very small things like street-crossing to broader concepts like traditional arts are all part of culture.

It is generally observed that people living in a certain country think and behave in similar ways and people from one country or culture are so different from people of another culture. The difference here is to do with cultural norms. The term ‘Culture’ refers to patterns of behavior and attitudes in a given group. ‘Norm’ refers to attitudes and patterns of behavior that are considered typically normal within a group.

Cultural norms are what keep people moving in a similar direction. All societies have cultural norms.

These norms influence every facet of our lives. People are often unaware that their values, their attitudes and how they behave are all influenced by it. This paper tries to define and explain this relationship between culture and norms that exist in every society. This paper also tries to find out what are the different types of norms, about culture and psychology and why such relationships exist in the first place.

Culture

We need to first define these terms independently, only then it is possible to figure out the relation between them.

Culture is the way that non-material objects like thoughts, action, language and values come to 1 gether with material objects to form a way of life. Culture can be basically broken down into two main components namely, things and ideas. When a person is crossing a road, he/she can see markers of their culture in the things around them like the street signs, width of the road, speed and style of cars. This is material culture, the culture of things. But a lot of culture that’s packed into crossing the street is non-material too. We interpret the color of red to mean stop, because our culture has assigned red as the sign for stop and green for go. If a person grows up in a country where cars drive on the right side of the road, his parents probably taught him to look left first before crossing.

This is non-material culture, the culture of things. It’s made up of the intangible creations of human society which are values, symbols, customs and ideals. Language, Values, Beliefs and Norms are the 4 pillars of any culture. All cultures can be thought as a function of these four variables.

Language

Written language, spoken language or non-verbal language, allow us to share things that make up a culture in a process known as cultural transmission. Language helps in communicating with each other and moreover affects how people within a culture see things around them. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a theory according to which a person’s thoughts and actions are influenced by the cultural lens created by the language he/she speaks. For example, what is the gender of the moon.

In many languages like German, the moon is regarded as a male whereas in others like Spanish, it is regarded as a female object and this affects how the german and the spanish people perceive the moon. There was a study in which the german and spanish people were given a task to describe the moon’s characteristics, like is the moon beautiful, is the moon rugged, is the moon forceful. It was found that as the Germans used the moon as a masculine article, they associated the moon with stereotypically masculine traits and Spanish in the opposite manner. Thus it can be very clearly observed that language help in communicating, shaping and passing of culture.

Values

Values are what help in organizing culture into moral categories. Values are the cultural standards that people use to decide as to what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong. They are regarded as the ideals and guidelines that people live by in a society. Different cultures value different things and these values help us understand why different social structures are observed all around the world For example, it is generally observed in western cultures that young adults live separately from their parents because there people tend to value individualism and stress the importance of each person’s needs. Whereas in eastern cultures it is observed that young adults 2 generally live with their parents because those people value collectivism and stress the importance of groups over individuals.

Beliefs

Beliefs are more explicit than values. Beliefs are specific idea about what people living in a society think is true about the world.

Norms

Definition

Wikipedia defines social norms as collective representations of acceptable group conduct as well as individual perceptions of particular group conduct. They basically help in defining the living standards of people living in a society. People imbibe these norms from their parents, friends, immediate peers while growing up. Norms usually differ across cultures, and often end up contributing to cross-cultural misunderstandings. Norms are agreed-upon expectations and rules by which people belonging to a culture are guided. For example giving up seat for a elderly person is preferred but picking up nose in public is looked down upon. In layman’s term norm simply relates to what every- one thinks is ‘normal’, whether something is culturally acceptable or not.

Types

There are basically three types of norms which can be identified in any human society.

Folkways

The first are what sociologists call ‘folkways’. Folkways are informal little rules that go without saying. It is not considered illegal if people violate folkway, but there are ramifications to it. There are negative sanctions associated with it if not followed. A very simple example can be if someone enters an elevator and stands facing the back wall instead of facing the main door. Nobody is going to come up to the person that he/she is standing incorrectly but people are going to judge and give bad looks. Folkway are generally very subjective that too in a hierarchical manner. A particular folkway may be subjective to a person or to a group or to a whole society. Sometimes they can be some positive sanctions to it too. An example of it can be that if a teenager gets a lip ring. He/she may be grounded by the parents but his/her friends might think that it is very cool. Thus proving the subjectivity of it.

Mores

Another type of norms are mores, which are more official than folkways and are stated as rules and laws of a society. They are generally more codified and formalized. If mores are broken then there are definitely some negative consequences associated with it. The negative sanctions are more strict and severe. Standing facing the back wall of the elevator may lead people to think you as a weirdo but arriving to work without clothes will probably get you fired. The reason is that there are strict rules about the dress code to every place. A particular type of clothing will be considered acceptable at one place and totally inappropriate at another place. It is ok to roam around on a beach without a shirt on but totally wrong in an office.

Taboo

The third type of norm is the most strict and serious form of norm namely taboo. Taboos are the norms that are crucial to a society’s moral center. These behaviours if followed will always lead to negative sanctions. No matter what the circumstances are, it is never okay to disregard a taboo. The reason why they are looked down upon so badly is that they violate the very sense of decency. The following example looks very closely to what is actually regarded as a taboo. If we talk about killing, whether or not killing is a taboo. At first everyone might think that yes because killing is bad therefore it should be regarded as a taboo. But it’s not the case. While most cultures might think that murder is wrong and is illegal but it is not always considered illegal. According to most societies, it is okay to kill in times of war or for self-defense. So what actually can be considered taboo? A few examples are cannibalism, incest or child molestation. These cannot be defended in any case.

They are always considered wrong.

Research

Cultural Psychology

A person living in a particular society is well versed about the cultural norms pertaining in that society. But in order to understand another culture and how the norms present in that cultures are related to each other, it is very important to follow a scientific method so that we can get a clear picture about it. A separate field exist which focuses on such topics known as cultural psychology.

Cultural psychology is the study of how cultures reflect and shape the psychological processes of their members. It focuses on the fact that people are shaped by the fact that people are shaped by their culture and their culture is shaped by the people. Individual thoughts and actions influence cultural 4 norms and practices as they evolve over time, and these cultural norms and practices influence the thoughts and actions of individuals.

Cultural Looseness & Tightness

So, in reality, how much do cultural norms matter, and do norms matter more in some places than others? Recently, Michele Gelfand, along with a large team of cultural psychologists, theorized about the ‘cultural tightness’ and ‘cultural looseness’. Some people may care a lot about their cultural norms, insisting on strong conformity reflecting cultural tightness, whereas others might tolerate a lot of deviance from the norms. In his paper, Gelfand tried to reason out what are the factors that lead a society to become culturally tight or loose. He also describes various situations that demonstrate how one's society transforms from culturally tight to culturally loose. This framework helps a person to take a step back and objectively get to know about a particular society by providing the big picture.

Cross-Cultural Misunderstandings

Psychologists have also tried to understand how to manage Cross-Cultural Misunderstanding, which comes under a slightly different field known as cross-cultural psychology. They try to understand how a person belonging to one culture can fit into a different culture. Carol Archer defines this scenario as ‘cultural bump’. ‘An individual from one culture finding himself or herself in a different, strange or uncomfortable situation when interacting with people of a different culture’. Archer tries to explain about the mindset for cross-cultural misunderstandings, how to manage expectations with cultural understandings and tries to demonstrate methods as to how to work through cross-cultural

misunderstandings.

Conclusion

Norms like these and many others help societies function well. Norms can be a kind of constraint, a social construct that holds people back. Some norms can be bad, like the ones that encourage unhealthy behavior like smoking or drinking. The tricky thing about cultural norms is that most of the time, people don’t notice the cultural forces that are shaping their thoughts and actions because they may just seem too simple, normal, or obvious. That is the reason why psychologists and sociologists study culture. We can’t notice whether our values and our norms are good or bad unless we step back and look at them with an analytical eye.

References

1. https://study.com/academy/lesson/cultural-norms-definition-values-quiz.html
2. https://www.globalcognition.org/cultural-norms/
3. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/sociology/culture-and-societies/cultural-norms
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialnorm
5. https://www.globalcognition.org/cross-cultural-misunderstandings/
6. http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/society/difference-between-norms-and-values-of-society/35068

Citations

1. Gelfand, M. J., Jackson, J. C. (2016). From one mind to many: the emerging science of cultural norms. Current Opinion in Psychology, 8, 175-181.
2. Gelfand, M., Raver, J., Nishii,. (2011). Differences Between Tight and Loose Cultures: A 33-Nation Study Science, 332
3. Gelfand, M. J. (2012). Culture’s constraints: International differences in the strength of social norms.
4. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(6), 420-424.
5. Bond, R. (2005). Group size and conformity. Group processes intergroup relations, 8(4), 331-354.
6. Darrin R. Lehman,1 Chi-yue Chiu,2 and Mark Schaller(2004), Annual Review of Psychology, 55(1), 689-714
7. https://study.com/academy/lesson/cultural-norms-definition-values-quiz.html
8. https://www.globalcognition.org/cultural-norms/
9. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/sociology/culture-and-societies/cultural-norms
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_norm
11. https://www.globalcognition.org/cross-cultural-misunderstandings/
12. http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/society/difference-between-norms-and-values-of-society/35068