My mother always told me that there are things that you just don’t do. For example, horsing around in Church, being loud and yelling at the table or in public, picking your nose, etc. While your mother may have simply called this “behaving,” sociologists call these things social norms. Social norms are defined as “the implicit or explicit rules a group has for the acceptable behaviors, values, and beliefs of its members.” In layman’s terms, social norms are like an everyday code of conduct that determines how you behave in certain situations.
Social norms are often very strictly enforced and offenders are often ostracized or outright rebuked for their conduct. Also, such norms are more rigorously held to in certain situations than in others. For example, it is a social norm that people should be decently covered in public, but a woman wearing a swimsuit and shorts into McDonald’s is less likely to be ostracized than a woman wearing the same outfit
The reactions I received varied in their nature and in their strength, but in all cases there was at least some response. The mildest response came from those incidents where I stood very close to someone while talking to them. In most cases, the individual would simply back away, or in a few cases, he or she would become visually agitated, but no one ever said anything to me about my conduct. The bus scenario was slightly different. Most people visually showed their annoyance at the pointless intrusion of their space when other seats were available and a couple actually got up and moved to another seat. Again, nothing was said. The bathroom scenario was something on a completely new level. I was shown outright hostility and scorn, several men actually asked if I was gay or a pervert, leading me to conclude that this was the most grievous of space violations I had committed.
Not all cultures are the same. For example, had I done many of these things in another country, a more collectivist and crowd
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