In the course of their life, people enter into a relationship with nature objects (material objects), as well as with each other. Despite the variety of relationships, they can be typed to determine what kind of behavior is common, widespread and normal. Thus, social norms are the most important tool for the organization of social relations. These norms and rules provide the most appropriate and harmonious functioning of society in accordance with the requirements of its development. In such a way the main aims of this paper are to describe the process of norm violation and present people’s reaction on the action.As it was previously said social norms are part of the society. The general nature of social norms is reflected in the fact that its requirements do not apply to a specific person, but to many people. In other words, social norms are a set of certain rules that are common in a group and which a group uses for inappropriate and appropriate beliefs, behaviors, values and attitudes.
It is easy to break some social norms, but since we are living inside the society we need to respect some reasonable norms and rules of it. Nevertheless, there are many different norms that everybody can break from time to time I am not an ideal person and it can be said that I am among those numerous people who break some social norms from time to time. For the best understanding of the topic about social norms and the process of their violations I decided to explore my own feelings and reactions of people around me during the breaking of the social norm. The social norm of my choice is to give a seat in a bus. This is a kind of the social norms of explicit and injunctive character, and it is normal in our society to let an elder person to have a seat in a public conveyance instead of one or other person.
Observing my experiment with different details it is important to mention that I was sitting in the bus, when I saw an elder woman entered it at the next bus stop. I knew that the woman and other people around me expect me to let her have the seat. It is a rule of the social group I belong to. I felt tired and I decided to keep sitting on my place. I saw the reaction of people around me. Sure they did not tell me that I should stand up and let the woman sit, nevertheless, I saw that many of passengers were looking at me. They were waiting for my reaction, while in some minutes other person stood up and let the woman sit. During the journey I was giving myself different reasons why I did not let that woman have a seat. First of all, I paid for the seat and I had a right to keep it. Secondly, I felt tired after working day. And finally, I did not make the woman to enter the bus where there were no free seats. Also I was thinking that it was not just my duty and there were many different men in the bus.
I have violated this norm with a seat twice, but in different buses and among different people. In the first case there were young people around me and all of them were busy by their own thoughts and deeds, thus, nobody even didn’t pay a big attention to the fact that I didn’t let an elder woman to have a sit, they were waiting for my actions. I felt myself not very pleasant in this case, and was even surprised that others around me try not to pay attention to the fact that the elder person is standing in the bus. In the next time I was surrounded by elder people and one old lady even passed a remark about my bad education and absence of respect to the elder person.
Analyzing my violation of the same norm, I found that the reaction of people were different because both violations had the same sense, but they were different in their social context. In the first case young people try to ignore the situation, while in the second time old people try to educate me and show that my actions were wrong and I need to do something to change them.
Being honest, I felt myself bad during the process of social norm violations. It had a place because I am a well educated person and always try to be polite and follow social norms in respect to others. As any other person I can find many justifications for own actions, as in the case with the elder woman described in this paper, but it doesn’t mean that I will feel myself good in such situations. I don’t like to be a deviant and try to follow social norms prescribed by the society.
Thus, taking into account everything presented in the paper, it is important to mention that social norm comes into play whenever there is a typical situation contemplated as a condition of its entry into the regulatory process. It should be noted that social norms are always defined in the content, but by the typical way, as a general model of behavior. Social norms are freedoms of the individual measures that establish the limits of the expansion of social, behavioral activity, ways to satisfy the interests and needs. It is obvious that some degree of insubordination to social norms exists in every society and in any group, but social norms, as a normative expression of social need, are always required to have prescriptive character in one or another way.