At the moment the planet has more than 7 billion people. It is difficult to imagine, but somewhere people still eat each other, somewhere there is slavery in the truest sense of the word and ritual murders. For our modern society, where even the push of another person must necessarily be accompanied by apologies from both sides, it seems uncivilized and wild. What prevents us from killing each other? To answer this question, it is necessary to consider the functions of social norms.
Social norms, in simple words, are the rules by which every member of society lives. To understand the definition and function of social norms, consider one of the experiments. G. Garfinkel invited his students to behave in a non-standard way. For example, when shopping in a store, students took products not from the shelf, but from the baskets of other buyers, paid for a home dinner and constantly demanded clarification of the matter in a friendly conversation. As a rule, people were disturbed by background expectations, and they did not know how to react adequately and correctly to such strange behavior.
Social norms allow you to integrate a person into society, to give him a set of rules and actions, on which it is worth living, so as not to cause any suspicion and make acquaintances. Often we automatically say "thank you" to the courtesy of a person, at greeting we reach out to a man, but not to a woman. So, the first functions of social norms are the integration of a person into society and the regulation of his growing up and living in it.
But not all people recognize the rules of the game. Inside any society, there are many subcultures and countercultures. The first can include protesting punks and skinheads, smoking hippies and rappers, and to the second culture - terrorists and prostitutes. The prevention and elimination of such deviant behavior is also a function of social norms. Since childhood, the society in all its grandeur from the TV screens and posters, from the pages of books, through speeches of relatives and friends, tells us how to act and what to beware of. In childhood we believe everything that an authoritative person will tell us. Through the above agents, we absorb these social norms. The rules influence and prompt us to exit from simple situations, saving our time. They form stereotypes and background expectations, the violation of which we mentioned, describing Garfinkel's experiment. That is, the last function of social norms is the formation of acceptable types of behavior.
For general development and understanding of the function of social norms in society, we advise you to watch the performances of such remarkable comedians as George Carlin, Joe Rogan, Ellen DeGenerazaras and Dylan Moran. In their comedic speeches, they ridicule the outdated and bizarre rules of games in society, which we repeat every day without any backward thought.
The functions of social norms can render "disservice" by turning into dysfunctions and deviations. The constant demand of consumer ideology to buy more and more has a negative impact on the environment and the psychological well-being of society. To avoid this social genocide, it is necessary to read a lot and develop critical thinking.