{"id":9841,"date":"2014-03-31T09:43:03","date_gmt":"2014-03-31T14:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=9841"},"modified":"2014-05-20T13:23:28","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T18:23:28","slug":"breaking-social-norms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2014\/03\/31\/breaking-social-norms\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking social norms"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DSC_6018<\/a><\/p>\n

Social norms are the unwritten rules that govern our daily interactions. They can be seen on campus in how we greet one another and interact \u2013 even in how we behave on an elevator.<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial norms are typically an unwritten or implied rule about how one is expected to behave,\u201d Associate Professor Nadien Cichy said. “How we greet people, how closely people can stand \u2014 and a lot of our non-verbal communication is a result of learning social norms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cichy also said social norms dictate how we behave and how we respond to situations when it comes to verbal and non-verbal communication, adding that people typically become upset when these norms are violated.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the primary reasons we have social norms at all is so we know what to expect from others around us,\u201d she said. \u201cSo we understand how we\u2019re expected to behave in new situations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Social norms are also seen as a way to manage uncertainty and can be established very quickly, according to Cichy.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example if a number of adults in Ohio get on an elevator and they\u2019ve been Americans all their lives, they already understand what the norms are and they typically don\u2019t violate them,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you put a group of people together who come from entirely different cultures, they\u2019re going to eventually come up with a set of norms that works in that group that won\u2019t necessarily reflect any of their cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eman Burgman, a first-year student at Sinclair who was born in Iran, said she had to adjust to more than a few local social norms when she first came to the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to get used to a lot of the little things,\u201d she said. \u201cEye contact was something I was never very good at, but here in America it\u2019s considered impolite to not look at someone when speaking to them. I\u2019ve gotten better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cichy said she uses the breaking of social norms in her classroom while teaching non-verbal communication, where she will not start the class when it is intended to, and flip through pages of a book and stare at the computer for a couple minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cEventually I started class and asked, \u2018okay so, what happened there \u2013 why is class late? How do you know class hadn\u2019t started yet,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cSometimes I use it as a device to get people to recognize we use a lot of these norms.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said when social norms are broken people often get frustrated because they don\u2019t know the unspoken rules, and the behavior of others can become unpredictable, which causes anxiety.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we don\u2019t understand how we\u2019re supposed to behave we get frustrated,\u201d she said. \u201cAdd to that the fact that we like to predict how others will behave, so when people violate norms, their behavior becomes unpredictable and you are dealing with levels of anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cichy said sometimes people take social norms for granted and have a hard time understanding that others may not share specific social norms.<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial norms are absolutely essential in order to function in a culture without constantly being confused,\u201d she said. \u201cThe funny thing about them is that sometimes we don\u2019t share our norms and that\u2019s okay \u2014 it doesn\u2019t make them bad, or unstable, or an unpredictable person, we just sometimes don\u2019t share as many norms as we think
\nwe do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social norms are the unwritten rules that govern our daily interactions. They can be seen on campus in how we greet one another and interact \u2013 even in how we behave on an elevator. \u201cSocial norms are typically an unwritten or implied rule about how one is expected to behave,\u201d Associate Professor Nadien Cichy said. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9834,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-2yJ","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/DSC_6018-copy.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9841"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9843,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9841\/revisions\/9843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}