Norm-breaking Behavior Research Articles

Norm violations and behavioral spillovers—Evidence from the lab and the field

This paper explores the contagion effects of norm-violating behavior across decision situations. Through a series of laboratory and field experiments, we empirically establish the conditions under which norm-breaking behavior in one decision situation leads individuals who observe this to violate norms in other, distinct decision situations. Our laboratory findings show that these spillover effects are more pronounced when the norms underlying the decision situations are perceived to be similar. However, spillovers can also affect decision situations governed by relatively dissimilar norms if the observers of norm violations have had the opportunity to first violate the same norm as the observed violator themselves. In an accompanying field experiment, we underscore the economic importance of norm similarity for spillover effects. When workers are exposed to information about celebrities evading taxes, they exhibit significantly higher rates of workplace theft than those in the control group, yet this exposure does not negatively affect work morale.

Family and school factors related to internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescence

ABSTRACT Family and school factors are among the most important determinants of internalizing and externalizing problem behavior in adolescents. The aim of this study is to explore how certain family and school factors explain internalizing and externalizing problems after one year. In addition to individual-level variables, school level variables are taken into account. This multilevel study was conducted among 507 adolescents (mean age 13.44; 52.3% girls) who reported their internalizing problems (anxiety, depressive symptoms), externalizing problems (aggressive and norm-breaking behavior), parental knowledge of their whereabouts, parental rule setting, school connectedness and teacher support. At the school level, the aggregated scores for school connectedness and teacher support were calculated. The results show that the differences between schools explained 13.4% of the variance in externalizing problem behavior although it did not account for internalizing behavior. Parental knowledge and school connectedness were significant predictors of both internalizing and externalizing problems. At the school level, aggregated teacher support predicted fewer externalizing problems. While some of the results are partially in line with previous findings, others were found to be contradictory. The implications for practice are provided.

The Label of Looks: Physical Attractiveness, Stigma, and Deviant Behavior

ABSTRACT There are numerous advantages afforded to physically attractive individuals, including better employment opportunities, higher wages, and being viewed as more intelligent, capable, and nicer than those who are less attractive. From a labeling perspective, there is ample theoretical rationale to believe that people who are less attractive may engage in greater deviant behaviors due to the stigma of feeling “ugly.” Using a sample of 1,486 college students, this study explores how both perceptions of attractiveness as well as the stigma about one’s looks relate to a variety index of norm-breaking behaviors (e.g. chewing with an open mouth, drunk dialing, failing to bathe). Findings revealed that perceptions of physical attractiveness were not a significant correlate of deviance; however, individuals who reported greater levels of stigma about their looks reported significantly greater levels of general deviance than those with lower levels of stigma. Results further showed that stigma moderated a significant negative effect between perceptions of attractiveness and deviance, particularly for people of “average” looks. Echoing prior studies on the importance of physical attractiveness in society, findings from this study highlight that how people feel about their looks carries significant influence on behaviors, including everyday forms of general social deviance.

Problem students, problem classes: Polarization, differentiation and language about disruptive student behaviour in Hungarian primary schools

While the effects of social and ethnic segregation in schools have been thoroughly studied, much less attention has been paid to the internal, more subtle forms of classification, selection, and exclusion at work in Hungarian primary schools. This paper focuses on the characteristic features of the language about classroom disruption and norm-breaking behaviour in socially mixed primary schools and how internal grouping structures frame this language and teachers’ perceptions of disruptive student behaviour. In the empirical analysis, two key notions by which teachers conceptualize norm-breaking behaviour emerged: the ‘problem student’ and the ‘problem class’. While the notion of the ‘problem student’ dominated the behaviour-related narratives of both schools, the notion of the ‘problem class’ was more prevalent and influential in one school, and specifically in those cohorts who attended a rigid, selective internal grouping structure. The in-depth analysis explores the discursive construction of the ‘problem class’ and the ways in which students identified as ‘problematic’ narrated their engagement in an anti-school student culture in the latter school. The findings suggest that inflexible internal grouping structures facilitated pathologizing language about ‘problem classes’ and these two factors together contributed to the polarization of student attitudes and to the development of an anti-school culture, and ultimately played a powerful role in the naturalization of classed educational trajectories.

Conduct Disorder in Immigrant Children and Adolescents: A Nationwide Cohort Study in Sweden.

Introduction. Conduct disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis characterized by repetitive and persistent norm-breaking behavior. This study aimed to compare the risk of conduct disorder between first- and second-generation immigrant children and adolescents and their native controls. Methods. In this nationwide, open-cohort study from Sweden, participants were born 1987–2010, aged 4–16 years at baseline, and were living in the country for at least one year during the follow-up period between 2001 and 2015. The sample included 1,902,526 and 805,450 children-adolescents with native and immigrant backgrounds, respectively. Data on the conduct disorder diagnoses were retrieved through the National Patient Register. We estimated the incidence of conduct disorder and calculated adjusted Hazard Ratios. Results. Overall, the adjusted risk of conduct disorder was lower among first-generation immigrants and most second-generation immigrant groups compared with natives (both males and females). However, second-generation immigrants with a Swedish-born mother and a foreign-born father had a higher risk of conduct disorder than natives. Similar results were found for sub-diagnoses of conduct disorder. Conclusions. The higher risk of conduct disorder among second-generation immigrants with a Swedish-born mother and the lower risk among most of the other immigrant groups warrants special attention and an investigation of potential underlying mechanisms.

Better Understanding of Norm-breaking Behaviors During the Coronavirus Crisis in Iran Using the Causal Layered Analysis (CLA)

Better Understanding of Norm-breaking Behaviors During the Coronavirus Crisis in Iran Using the Causal Layered Analysis (CLA)

Changes in Adolescents’ Psychosocial Functioning and Well-Being as a Consequence of Long-Term COVID-19 Restrictions

This work studied self-reports from adolescents on how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed their behaviors, relationships, mood, and victimization. Data collection was conducted between September 2020 and February 2021 in five countries (Sweden, the USA, Serbia, Morocco, and Vietnam). In total, 5114 high school students (aged 15 to 19 years, 61.8% females) responded to our electronic survey. A substantial proportion of students reported decreased time being outside (41.7%), meeting friends in real life (59.4%), and school performance (30.7%), while reporting increased time to do things they did not have time for before (49.3%) and using social media to stay connected (44.9%). One third of the adolescents increased exercise and felt that they have more control over their life. Only a small proportion of adolescents reported substance use, norm-breaking behaviors, or victimization. The overall COVID-19 impact on adolescent life was gender-specific: we found a stronger negative impact on female students. The results indicated that the majority of adolescents could adapt to the dramatic changes in their environment. However, healthcare institutions, municipalities, schools, and social services could benefit from the findings of this study in their work to meet the needs of those young people who signaled worsened psychosocial functioning, increased stress, and victimization.

Longitudinal Associations Between Energy Drink Consumption, Health, and Norm-Breaking Behavior Among Swedish Adolescents.

Objectives: To describe the intake of energy drinks (EDs) among a sample of Swedish adolescents while considering health-related variables, and to investigate the longitudinal associations between ED consumption, health, and norm-breaking behavior. Longitudinal studies on this topic are scarce.Methods: Questionnaire data were collected in the northern part of Sweden in 2010–2011 from 1,622 adolescents in grades 6–9. Analyses were performed using a chi-squared test and logistic regression.Results: Seventy-four percent of the boys and 54% of the girls had consumed EDs (P < 0.001). ED consumption was associated with variables related to low health, low support levels, and norm-breaking behavior. The associations were generally stronger among the girls and the boys who consumed EDs at least once a week. ED consumption was a predictor of worse health and norm-breaking behavior 1 year later. Adjusted odds ratios ranged from 1.53 (95% CI: 1.07, 2.20; school-related stress) to 4.88 (95% CI: 2.28, 10.43; gaming-related truancy).Conclusions: Health promotion activities benefit from a broad approach but could focus on girls who consume EDs and those boys with the highest consumption levels.

Beholden: The Emotional Effects of Having Eye Contact While Breaking Social Norms.

This study looks into the role that eye contact plays in helping people to control themselves in social settings and to avoid breaking social norms. Based on previous research, it is likely that eye contact increases prosocial behavior via heightened self-awareness and increased interpersonal synchrony. In our study, we propose that eye contact can also support constructive social behavior by causing people to experience heightened embarrassment when they are breaking social norms. We tested this in a lab experiment (N = 60) in which participants read insults at the experimenter (i.e., they exhibited norm breaking behavior). In the experimental condition, participants maintained eye contact with the experimenter. In the control condition, the experimenter did not maintain eye contact. We measured embarrassment with a self-report measure, heart rate to capture arousal, and two observational indicators of embarrassment (hesitation and laughter). In line with our hypotheses, having eye contact during norm breaking behavior as compared to no eye contact led to a stronger increase in self-reported embarrassment, a higher heart rate as well as more hesitation and more laughter. We conclude that eye contact does indeed lead to more embarrassment, while breaking social norms. This implies that eye contact gives people the power to punish norm breaking in others by inducing an aversive emotional experience.

“Mocked by the Archon of Lust”

Abstract This article argues that the depictions of Gnostic sects performing horrendous rites in Epiphanius of Cyprus’ work Panarion worked as rhetorical devices to shift focus away from his own position vis-à-vis marriage, sex, and consumptions of good food and wine, a position that was considered liberal in the context of fourth century ecclesiastical debates. It here is shown how Epiphanius’ description of Gnostic sects follows clear patterns of the archetypical “other”, going back to Roman slander of Christians. By drawing attention to this fact and by contextualizing Epiphanius’ theological positions and the ecclesiastical struggles he was engaged in during the fourth century, this article cast new light on the work Panarion and the techniques Epiphanius employed in order to impact his theological climate. By retorting to conventional polemical methods of preceding centuries, where the enemy is attached to norm-breaking behavior, Epiphanius managed to make his own positions seem more reasonable and moderate.

Rising from the Ashes: How Ventures use Moralizing Narratives to Reform and Tackle Legitimacy Crises

In their quest for growth, new ventures often engage in norm-breaking behavior that triggers a legitimacy crisis among a key audience. However, it is unclear how new ventures can actually reform su...

Effort-Reward Imbalance: A Risk Factor for Exposure to Workplace Bullying.

Previous research shows that work environment factors are important antecedents of workplace bullying (WB), because of the stress they may induce. While previous studies have typically used Karasek’s Job Demand-Control model or the Demands-Resources model, the present study investigates whether another important occupational stress model, that is the Effort-Reward Imbalance model, is also associated to WB. A survey study in 19 Belgian organizations (n = 5727) confirmed that employees experiencing an imbalance between efforts and reward were more likely to be targets of exposure to bullying. In line with previous research, this study illustrates that stressful situations increase the risk of exposure to WB. It shows that the perceived incongruence between effort and reward may increase employee vulnerability to bullying. The perceived injustice may lead employees to engage in norm-breaking behavior and also signal low social standing to others, thereby potentially eliciting negative behaviors from others.

Energy drink consumption predicts norm-breaking behavior in Swedish adolescents

Energy drink consumption predicts norm-breaking behavior in Swedish adolescents

More is not always better: An experimental individual-level validation of the randomized response technique and the crosswise model.

Social desirability and the fear of sanctions can deter survey respondents from responding truthfully to sensitive questions. Self-reports on norm breaking behavior such as shoplifting, non-voting, or tax evasion may thus be subject to considerable misreporting. To mitigate such response bias, various indirect question techniques, such as the randomized response technique (RRT), have been proposed. We evaluate the viability of several popular variants of the RRT, including the recently proposed crosswise-model RRT, by comparing respondents’ self-reports on cheating in dice games to actual cheating behavior, thereby distinguishing between false negatives (underreporting) and false positives (overreporting). The study has been implemented as an online survey on Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 6, 505). Our results from two validation designs indicate that the forced-response RRT and the unrelated-question RRT, as implemented in our survey, fail to reduce the level of misreporting compared to conventional direct questioning. For the crosswise-model RRT we do observe a reduction of false negatives. At the same time, however, there is a non-ignorable increase in false positives; a flaw that previous evaluation studies relying on comparative or aggregate-level validation could not detect. Overall, none of the evaluated indirect techniques outperformed conventional direct questioning. Furthermore, our study demonstrates the importance of identifying false negatives as well as false positives to avoid false conclusions about the validity of indirect sensitive question techniques.

A Swedish culture of advocacy?

This article sets out to identify a culture of advocacy that has come to characterise Swedish civil society, formed around a long-standing tradition of close and cordial relations between civil society organisations, popular movements, and state and government officials. We argue that Swedish civil society organisations (CSOs) have been allowed to voice critique against public actors and policies and are expected to do so. Based on a large survey of Swedish CSOs, this study contributes unique data on what type of advocacy strategies CSOs practise, and the range of advocacy strategies that organisations employ. The analysis also explores norm-breaking behaviour, such as holding back criticism of public authorities. The results reveal a complex picture of a culture of advocacy: we find patterns of intense political activity among organisations that admit they hold back in their criticism of public authorities and the use of a wide range of advocacy strategies. The article contributes to and challenges established advocacy research and analyses established patterns of organisations’ advocacy activities with the symbolic acts of breaking norms, as an analytical approach for the study of advocacy strategies in general and advocacy culture in particular.

Adolescent Female Offenders\u2019 Subjective Experiences of How Peers Influence Norm-Breaking Behavior

Delinquent peers have a strong influence on adolescent delinquent behavior. However, few studies have investigated adolescents’, and in particular young females’, own perspectives of the role of peers on their delinquent behavior. The purpose of the present study was to explore how young female offenders described their delinquent behavior and more specifically the role they assign to peer relations in committing or avoiding delinquent acts. Nine female adolescents, sentenced to youth service, were interviewed, and the data was analyzed using the Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) method. The results showed that committing crimes and taking drugs with peers were portrayed as a way for the female delinquents to socialize. Delinquent and pro-social activities with peers appear to serve similar developmental functions in the sense that it is described to fulfill the same developmental needs. The young offenders also described collectively created pressures and norms in the peer group as the main contributing factor to their norm-breaking behavior, where they described being both recipients and producers of influence in the group. Another important finding was that the female offenders showed an awareness of the importance of pro-social peers and the need to eliminate delinquent friends from their peer network in order to help them refrain from deviant behavior. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.

Elite Circulation in the Hungarian Cultural Elite. A Case Study of Theatres

Recent literature on Hungary seems to be conclusive about the fact that elite consensus has collapsed and democracy is backsliding towards autocracy because of the elites’ norm-breaking behavior (Lengyel 2014; Bozoki 2015; Kristof 2015). It is also recognized that the governmental elite has been gaining influence and power over other elite groups. Since 2010, the ruling political elite has reallocated property rights, public and EU funds to new loyal economic elites who are much more closely controlled by the political elite (Csillag and Szelenyi 2015). Though less the focus of scientific inquiry, a similar process has occurred in the field of culture: the incumbent political elite aspires to eliminate old cultural structures in order to redistribute cultural positions and resources. This case study is based on interviews with leaders of theatres, cultural policy-makers and the most renowned actors and directors in the Hungarian theatrical field. Interviews are supplemented with discourse analysis about the circulation of the theatre elite, and a public opinion poll (N=500) about the reputation of two emblematic figures of the old and the new elite.

Positive deviants and identity formation in classical rabbinic literature: dancing rabbis and divine approbation

A number of studies have set the self-identity of the rabbis as it is developed in classical rabbinic literature in relief through comparison with the rabbinic portrayal of internal and external others. This study explores rabbinic identity formation from the reverse angle through the sociological concept of positive deviance, the study of transgressions of societal norms that are judged to be good and even admirable. I argue that this concept discloses a sort of self-negotiation that arises in the tension between religious ideals and the socially sanctioned means to achieve them. Rabbinic literature presents a number of stories of sages who are praised despite their eccentric, norm-breaking behaviour. I analyse three such narratives and their possible social function: the colourful story of R. Samuel b. Rav Isaac, an anecdote about R. Meir’s self-abasement, and the famous tale of Honi the Circle-Drawer.

Playing Goffman’s Information Game: A Classroom Activity Involving Student Interactions

Goffman’s dramaturgical approach is frequently used to introduce undergraduate students to the sociological understanding of human interaction. While a number of scholars have designed engaging student activities that highlight Goffman’s approach, most of these activities tend to involve atypical embarrassing interactions or norm-breaking behaviors that happen in front of a large public audience. In this way, they are unlike the mundane face-to-face interactions that were the focus of much of Goffman’s work. I have used Goffman’s notion of interactions as an “information game,” discussed at the start of The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, to create a stimulating in-class exercise that involves students having a routine one-on-one interaction with another student. Responses from 170 students in four Introduction to Sociology classes suggest that students found the activity engaging and believed it gave them a richer understanding of Goffman’s approach to human interaction.

Sleep duration and patterns in adolescents: correlates and the role of daily stressors

ObjectivesThe first aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of sleep deficit in a large sample of adolescents. Second, the study aimed to assess whether short sleep duration in the sample was associated with emotional and behavioral problems. Lastly, the study aimed to investigate the association between daily stressors–bedtime activities and sleep duration. DesignCross-sectional survey. SettingThe questionnaires were completed during school hours in 17 municipal junior high schools in Sweden. ParticipantsA total of 2767 adolescents aged 12 to 16 years, 48% girls. Measurements and ResultsSleep measures included total sleep time (TST) for schooldays and weekends, obtained as combined measures of self-reported bed-time, wake-time, and sleep onset latency. We used the new National Sleep Foundation's guidelines to operationalize sleep duration. Overall 12% of younger adolescents (age 12-13 years) and 18% of older adolescents (14-16 years) slept less than recommended (TST < 7 hours). Adolescents reporting nonrecommended TST also reported more behavioral (ie, norm-breaking behaviors) and emotional problems (ie, depression, anxiety, and anger), with effects in the small-medium range. Finally, adolescents reporting bedtime arousal and use of information and communication technology in bed were more likely to report TST < 7 hours. Stress at home (for younger adolescents) and stress of school performance (for older adolescents) were also associated with TST less than 7 hours. ConclusionsThe new National Sleep Foundation's recommendations were informative in this context. Future sleep interventions need to target barriers to good sleep practices, such as use of information and communication technology, stress, and worry that may contribute to arousal at bedtime.