Social norms remain one of the least understood forces in the behavioral sciences.
Evidence
Nevertheless, social norms are still poorly understood. Despite some recent progress (Hechter & Opp, 2001), we still know very little about how they are formed, the forces determining their content, how and why they change, their cognitive and emotional underpinnings, how they relate to values, how they shape our perceptions of justice and its violations, and how they are shaped by and shape our neuropsychological architecture. In short, social norms are one of the big unsolved problems in the behavioral sciences. — Ernst Fehr, Third-Party Punishment and Social Norms, 8
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s scaffolding project on Hester Prynne’s scarlet A as a norm-enforcement mechanism — this author’s framing of norms as punishing ‘justice and its violations’ supports the third-party punishment reading. — connects to: Pluralistic ignorance sustains norms even after private attitudes have shifted — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 7327
Related
- Social norm effects hinge on beliefs that others will enforce them. (similarity 0.84)
- Social norm enforcement may be a defining trait of humanity. (similarity 0.81)
Broader Connections
- Pluralistic ignorance sustains norms even after private attitudes have shifted
#exemplifies(0.78) — , The Rod and the Child, 7327