Breaking the Norm

357 Words2 Pages
Almost every single thing we do in life is judged by a certain set of guidelines. When we are growing up, we are taught by our parents of what to do and what not to do. Of course, every household lives by a different set of ideals and beliefs. It can be influenced by religion, the environment they live in, and what kind of government they abide by. However, the one constant which holds true in all households and societies are norms. Norms are established standards of behavior maintained by a society. Norms are important to a society because it pretty much keeps every citizen in a society in check with themselves and their behavior. Laws are not sufficient enough to keep a society at peace. The two types of norms that exist are formal and informal. Formal norms are pretty much what we call laws in our society, while informal norms are pretty much norms in which there is a mutual agreement among everyone in a society to follow. Norms can be viewed as all the petty things and the serious things combined in which all citizens should abide by. It can be more important than laws in a way because informal norms cover a lot of things in which there can be many disagreements among people and can cause fights, which might escalate to violating laws. It is not very clear if all people in a society follow all the norms, but it is clear people understand these norms and live their life according to it. Our experiment, which we will explain more about in detail later on in the paper, was basically about us being dressed up as a homeless person and holding obscure signs out in the public streets. We held up signs saying things as, ¡°Need Money for a Car¡±, ¡°Change for Hats¡±, etc. The kind of norm which we breached is informal norm, and a folkway to be more exact. There is no concrete law stating that homeless people should or should not hold up such weird and unorthodox messages,
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