Group Norms

6 Key excerpts on "Group Norms"

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  The Psychology of Behaviour at Work

  The Individual in the Organization

  • Adrian Furnham(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  There are several ways of categorizing work roles, as we shall see later in this chapter. There is clearly overlap between the various systems, but the existence of so many attests to the many roles that workgroup members take up.

  Norms

  Norms are the unspoken, unwritten rules that guide individual group members’ behaviour. Norms can be both prescriptive – dictating behaviours that should occur – and proscriptive – dictating behaviours that should not occur. Break the norms and one is punished. Spector (2003) suggested a pattern – first inform, then scold, then punish and, finally, ostracize those who deliberately flout the rules. Norms develop for all sorts of reasons: through precedent – because people tend to repeat models they have seen and follow behaviour patterns, they tend to establish clear habitual patterns (sitting in the same place, doing things in the same order). Or they develop through a carry-over from the situation – because of codified professional standards of conduct (i.e. running committees). Many group members bring a pattern of behaviour with them which they repeat. Norms also develop through explicit orders and suggestions – newcomers get socialized into “how things are around here”. Critical events also lead to norm development – the way crises or unusual situations were handled in the past are remembered and successful behaviours are repeated and unsuccessful solutions avoided. Norms serve to make behaviour consistent, stable and predictable. Shared beliefs and values lead to shared attitudes, which are closely related to the development of norms. There are norms about dress, loyalty, reward allocation and performance.

  Porter, Lawler & Hackman (1975) suggest that norms have three salient characteristics. First, they are primarily concerned with observable behaviours, and less with thoughts and feelings. A punctuality norm is concerned with the time that people show up for work, and less about how people should feel about starting work at that particular time. Naturally, people have clear ideas and feelings about norms and inevitably struggle to change them occasionally. Second, norms develop only for behaviours that are important to the group. Only behaviours that affect the survival and proper functioning of the group and the well-being of the members will lead to the development of norms. Norms are interpretation schemes grounded in the membership of groups. Third, norms usually specify a range of acceptable behaviours rather than a single behaviour. The norm may specify that staff should be in the office by 9.15 a.m., but someone who shows up at 9.20 a.m. does not usually create much negative feeling among group members. On the other hand, if a staff member is late by one hour, it is possible that this behaviour will lead to a serious reprimand from management.

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  Group Processes

  Dynamics within and Between Groups

  • Rupert Brown, Samuel Pehrson(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Just what is a norm? Paraphrasing Sherif and Sherif (1969), a norm is a scale of values, which defines a range of acceptable (and unacceptable) attitudes and behaviours for members of a group. Norms specify, more or less precisely, certain rules for how group members should behave and thus are the basis for mutual expectations amongst the group members. Examples of Group Norms in action would include the different styles of dress and appearance adopted by various subgroups in Britain, ranging from the sartorial unorthodoxy of ‘Goths’ to the bizarre traditionalism of the royal enclosure at Ascot.

  Our interest in Group Norms is not just an exercise in the exotic however. As we shall see, Group Norms are powerful determinants of people's behaviour in a host of different domains. For now, let one example suffice. It is a truism amongst health professionals that a key factor in the initiation and maintenance of substance abuse, (e.g. alcohol, tobacco and other addictive drugs) is the peer group (e.g. Borsari and Carey 2001). A revealing analysis of how that peer group influence can operate in a single group was provided by Phua (2011). Using social network analysis – a technique that maps social relationships within a group by analysing group members' friendship nominations – Phua was able to show that 34 members of a college fraternity house fell into three clusters, one primarily composed of smokers and two mainly non-smoking sub-groups. Following up that same fraternity three years later revealed that the three clusters had given way to two, with smokers and non-smokers forming two separate groups. Moreover, those individuals who took up – or quit – smoking could be partly predicted from the other individuals they were closely connected to in the network (smokers or non-smokers, respectively). Popularity within the fraternity was positively correlated with smoking behaviour (number of cigarettes per day smoked) and that popularity–smoking association was mediated by conformity to peer norms. Similar findings were obtained for alcohol consumption.

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  Culture Trumps Everything

  The Unexpected Truth About The Ways Environment Changes Biology, Psychology, And Behavior

  • Gustavo R. Grodnitzky(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Gustavo Grodnitzky, PLLC

    (Publisher)

  Behavioral norms are the fertile ground in which we plant the seeds of organizational culture. In subsequent chapters, I will identify and discuss the behaviors that serve as the seeds of organizational culture to be planted within the fertile ground of behavioral norms. However, before I discuss the seeds to be planted, it is important to understand that we must prepare the soil through the selection of the appropriate behavioral norms. There are several types of behavioral norms; the most critical in a business environment are social norms and business norms.

  Social Norms vs. Business Norms

  We live in two worlds: one of social norms and another of business norms. Traditionally, business norms are used in business, and social norms are used in social settings. When business norms and social norms collide, social norms get pushed out. This is because business norms tend to be more precise than social norms, and particularly in business settings, people prefer clarity and have difficulty tolerating ambiguity.

  Business norms typically have sharper edges. You get what you pay for, quid pro quo, and value is always tallied in the local currency. Prompt payment for services or products is expected, if not demanded. It is a world of comparable benefits. Business norms are the behavioral norms most often associated with CEOs and organizations that care about profitability – and little else. They believe that the bottom line is the be-all and end-all in business. This belief is also often associated with both a competitive need to win at all costs and a fear of being taken advantage of, which leads to a culture where people compete rather than collaborate, are compliant rather than creative (avoiding risk), and watch out for themselves rather than for their team or the organization as a whole.

  Social norms are part of the world that includes friendly requests, social favors, and genuine interest and caring. For example, opening doors for others, giving up your seat on public transportation for an elderly person, and allowing others to go before you when merging into traffic (believe it or not, this does happen in certain parts of the country). In the world of social norms, instant payback is neither required nor expected. This creates less clarity and greater ambiguity that is more naturally accepted within the realm of social norms.

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  Individuals, Groups, and Business Ethics

  • Chris Provis(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The idea of a local moral order can be developed as a set of local norms, which may or may not emerge from intermingled roles. That norms may be associated with intermingled roles seems clear:

  Rules develop in the course of a relationship, and many relationships emerge out of mutual role enactments which are bounded by roles and normative prescriptions generally accepted by all the actors. If one wishes to predict and understand the social behaviors occurring in that situation, one needs to know about its norms.

  (Smith and Bond, 2003: 55)

  However, social psychologists may refer to Group Norms even in the absence of differentiated role descriptions (Brown, 1988: 52; Forsyth, 1990: 160–63; Baron et al., 1992: 11–12). According to this usage, Sherif’s experiments on the autokinetic effect establish Group Norms, even though the individuals in the experiment do not constitute a recognisably institutionalised group. In this sense, the situation is the same with Group Norms as with pressures to conform with perceived role requirements: they are not confined to institutionalised groups, but may be especially salient there.

  In groups generally, a major reason for the development of norms is that this ‘reflects the development of group standards that serve as frames of reference for behaviors and perceptions’: ‘A group facing an ambiguous problem or situation lacks internal consensus, but members soon structure their experiences until they conform to a standard accepted by the group’ (Forsyth, 1990: 161; citing Sherif, 1936, 1966; Sherif, 1976). We can see various explanations of how Group Norms may develop, and this explanation perhaps refers to one of the most basic, ‘to reduce uncertainty and confusion when the environment seems unpredictable, unusual or threatening’ (Baron et al., 1992: 12).

  That explanation shades into a slightly different one, the explanation of norm emergence that refers to the function of norms in solving coordination problems (Nowak et al., 2003). A simple and familiar example is which side of the road to drive on. It does not matter very much whether we all drive on the left or on the right, but it is quite important that all of us within a single community drive on the same side of the road. Once we have a rule of driving on the left, it contains a positive feedback loop that helps the rule sustain itself: I drive on the left not just because it is the traditional thing to do, but because I know that other drivers will do so, and I must do likewise to avoid a collision. People’s expecting one another to drive on the left causes them to do so, and their doing so sustains the expectation that they will do so. Although there are legal rules that prescribe driving on the left, those rules are neither necessary nor sufficient for me to do so. The need to avoid a collision is the key factor in my behaviour. Driving on the left is the use of a convention to solve a ‘coordination problem’, the sort of problem that arises whenever different people have to coordinate their actions to achieve some mutually desired result.1

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  European Review of Social Psychology: Volume 24

  • Miles Hewstone, Wolfgang Stroebe(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  group dynamic function of morality allows for the examination of the role of morality on the intra-group regulation processes as a source of group influence which affects behavioural regulation within groups (see also Aquino & Reed, 2002). In line with the reasoning we propose, the research discussed in this review consistently shows that people are particularly concerned about the group’s evaluation of their morality rather than about the group’s evaluations of their competence and are more motivated to behave in ways that demonstrate their morality to the ingroup (Pagliaro, Ellemers, Barreto, & Di Cesare, in press). As a result of this process, individual group members are more likely to adhere to Group Norms when such norms are seen to convey the moral (vs competence) evaluations of other ingroup members (Ellemers et al., 2008; Pagliaro et al., 2011). The effect of moral norms on individuals’ behaviour is guided by the anticipation that pro-normative behaviour allows individuals to earn respect from other ingroup members (Pagliaro et al., 2011). An important consequence of this process is that the impact of moral Group Norms occurs regardless of the specific (e.g., individualistic vs collectivistic) behaviour prescribed by the norm. This allows us to understand that people sometimes persist in behaving in ways that may be considered as immoral, due to group pressure. As long as the moral norms of the group condone or prescribe such behaviour individuals will be motivated to display acts that can earn them respect as a “good” and “proper” group member. In this context, it is also noteworthy that individuals do not adapt their behavioural choices to moral norms when these are conveyed by others who are not seen as relevant to the self (e.g. outgroup members). This last result reminds us that there is scope in going beyond a theorisation of morality as a generic tendency to suppress selfish behaviour. Indeed, it highlights the added value of considering the group-dynamic and social identity implications of group-specific moral judgements that help understand the role of morality and moral judgements for the regulation of individual behaviour in group contexts.

  This approach to morality emphasising intra-group dynamics aims at complementing previous understandings of morality, as well as raising new and intriguing questions. Considering specific social-regulatory functions of morality seems an important starting point to develop new directions for future research. For instance, now that we have determined that morality helps individuals to define who they are, and the groups or organisations they want to belong to, it would be interesting to investigate the reverse process. That is, future research might reveal specific circumstances under which individuals are prone to define themselves in terms of shared moral values, and examine how they respond to other ingroup or outgroup members who either challenge or validate their morality. Moreover, given the centrality of morality for people’s sense of self and social identity, it would be of interest to investigate whether and how people invoke claims of superior ingroup morality as a collective strategy to improve or maintain a positive social identity.

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  Behavioural Research for Marketing

  A Practitioner's Handbook

  • Julian Adams(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Figure 2.2 ). Typically, a reference group is a group that we look up to and wish to emulate; given this, the expectations of reference groups matter to us.

  Figure 2.2

  Reference group expectations

  A peer group is an example of a reference group, that is, a group of people that are similar in terms of age, background, interests and so on. Within this group, we pay attention to the groups’ behaviour, which might include, what people wear, what music they listen to, what they do with their spare time which provides us with social cues for determining acceptable behaviour within that group. Naturally, we will have more than one reference group, including family, college friends, work colleagues, sports teammates, neighbourhoods, celebrities and endorsers, with separate social norms for each.

  2.1.2.5 The dynamic nature of social norms

  Social norms are dynamic in nature, responding to changes in the environment in which they operate. Take the example of Covid-19, governments the world over instructed us to socially distance to contain the spread of the virus, reduce the stress on health care systems and ultimately reduce the number of deaths from the virus. With such dramatic changes in how we live our lives, it is perhaps unsurprising that new social norms emerge. The most obvious example of this is the replacement of the customary handshake, with an elbow bump, as a form of greeting. In this instance, the reference group included politicians and professional sport’s people who publicly adopted elbow bumps.

  2.1.2.6 Wesley Perkins and Alan Berkowitz’s social norm theory

  Social norm theory was first proposed by Perkins and Berkowitz in the mid-1980s to explain alcohol consumption amongst college students in America. The theory is best understood as an approach to harnessing the power of social norms to encourage positive behavioural change (Perkins and Berkowitz, 1986

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