norms and sense making - social psychology Flashcards
What is a norm?
- a shared expectation of behaviour
- prescriptive
- regulates behaviour in social settings
what is a regulatory norm?
a norm that describes prohibitions, obligations and permissions
what is a constitutive norm?
A norm which emerges within interaction. It is reflexively applied and shapes interactions
what is the functionalist perspective on norms? (PARSONS)
?- social order is achieved though internalisation of norms through socialisation
- norms are externally and internally constraining moral rules
what is a criticism of the functionalist perspective on norms?
it suggests a fixed set of expectations
what is the interactionist perspective on norms?
BLUMER AND GOFFMAN
- norms are ‘done’ or ‘performed’ rather than obeyed
- emphasis on context
- people act on the negotiation of meanings
what is the ethnomethodological approach to norms?
- norms require a shared understanding and they involve interpretation and sense making
- this approach was developed as a reaction against the functionalist perspective
- breaching experiments
Why did the ethnomethodological approach to norms critique the functionalist perspective?
critiqued the idea that norms are internalised through socialisation
What are breaching experiments?
experiments which reveal a disruption of shared understanding (norms are therefore constitutive)
Do norms pre exist in social interaction?
no, they are made and made relevant in social interaction
What is ethnomethodology?
the study of how people make sense of their world/the study of the everyday sense making method
Greetings (heritage/Garfinkel)
Greetings involve a choice about how to respond. When someone doesn’t return a greeting in an expected way, we need to make sense of this (norms are therefore ‘doubly constitutive’)
Explain Garfinkel’s documentary method of interpretation
Idea that we search for underlying patterns in order to make sense of a particular instance. We make sense of what we see based on what we know
