1. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com The Functions of Social Norms According to Charles Horton Cooley A presentation from-- Sociology Overview: An Introduction to the Discipline of Sociology—An Online Course

2. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com The concepts in this presentation are based upon the work of Dressler (1973, pp. 123-124) and Cooley (1964, pp. 296-297).

3. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com Function One: Social norms make it possible for the human organism to survive.

4. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com The newborn infant does not enter the world with the full equipment and capacity to respond appropriately to everything it will encounter in its environment. It would not survive without the social norms that influence adults to take care of it.

5. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com Plato’s Six Basic Assumptions of Society Humankind is an organism. Organisms tend toward survival. Humankind survives in groups. Humankind is a social animal. Humankind lives in an ordered society. The order of society is knowable. (Carroll, 1972; Denisoff, Callahan, & Levine, 1974, pp. 4-5; Rose, 1967)

6. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com Function Two: Social norms are the means by which society is maintained and the needs of its members are fulfilled.

7. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com Unrestrained, our biological needs and inclinations would encourage or perhaps guarantee anarchy. When norms control behavior, individual participants in a culture are constrained to fulfill societal needs, sometimes at the expense of their natural drives.

8. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com Function Three: Social norms make it possible for much of individual behavior to become automatic, greatly reducing the number of personal decisions to be made.

9. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com In the process of internalizing the norms of one’s society, an individual learns countless time-tested procedures for the maintenance of life, health, comfort, and propriety. Once learned, they can be applied automatically in appropriate situations.

10. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com Two examples— – You do not reflect, each time you wish to greet a friend, on whether to extend your right or left hand. – When driving a car, you no longer stop to consider whether to stay in the right or left traffic lane. These procedures were decided for you and you are habituated (socialized) to them.

11. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com The standards which conformity presses upon the individual are often elaborate and valuable products of cumulative thought and experience, and whatever imperfection they may have they are, as a whole, an indispensible foundation for life; it is inconceivable that any one should dispense with them. If I imitate the dress, the manners, the household arrangements of other people, I save so much mental energy for other purposes (Cooley, 1964, pp. 296-297).

12. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com We would not want all our procedures predetermined for us, but a great deal of time and energy are conserved when routine behavior becomes automatic, leaving us freer than we would otherwise be to decide on a number of other procedures calling for individual thought and choice.

13. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com By accepting and following a cultural pattern, Cooley (1964) says, we get “the selected and systemized outcome of the past” (p. 297). Social norms provide rationality to our behaviors and free us from decision-overload that would result from our daily “human interactions” (Dressler, 1973, p. 3).

14. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com Social norms provide value to society beyond the simple “what is proper?” purpose. Social norms are an integral part of the normative/survival processes of society. Society could NOT survive without social norms.

15. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com References Carroll, M. P. (1972, October). Considerations on the analysis of variance paradigm in sociology. Pacific Sociological Review, 15, 443- 459. Cooley, C. H. (1964). Human nature and the social order (rev. ed.). New York: Schocken. Denisoff, R. S., Callahan, O., & Levine, M. H. (1974). Theories and paradigms in contemporary sociology. Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock Publishers. Dressler, D. (1973). Sociology: The study of human interaction (2nd ed.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Rose, A. (1967). The relation of theory and method. In L. Gross (Ed.), Sociology theory: Inquiries and paradigms (pp. 207-219). New York: Harper & Row.

16. © 2009 Bolender Initiatives, LLC www.bolenderinitiatives.com Dr. Ronald Keith Bolender, Presenter Dr. Bolender' s Portfolio To contact Dr. Bolender, ronald_bolender@yahoo.comronald_bolender@yahoo.com