Collective Norms

Collective norms are the shared rules, standards, and expectations that guide behavior within a group or society and that members generally recognize as binding. They range from informal customs and etiquette to moral codes and formal laws, and they are sustained through socialization, approval, and sanction. Emile Durkheim treated them as social facts that exist beyond any single individual and exert constraint, arguing that shared moral rules are essential for solidarity and that their weakening produces anomie. Talcott Parsons saw shared norms and values as the foundation of social order, internalized by individuals through socialization. William Graham Sumner distinguished folkways from mores according to their moral weight, and Muzafer Sherif’s experiments showed how group norms emerge through interaction and then guide perception and judgment. Robert Axelrod and Jon Elster have analyzed norms in terms of cooperation and social enforcement, while Cristina Bicchieri examined how expectations about what others do and approve shape conformity. Karl Marx and conflict theorists argue that dominant norms often reflect the interests of powerful groups. Norms vary across cultures and change through social movements and conflict. Collective norms remain central to research on conformity, deviance, culture, law, and social control.