What happens when norms change?

Norms structure how we think, eliciting feelings like shame or pride, depending on how well we fit a ‘norm’. But what happens when changing times put norms in flux?

Norms are socially approved ways of being that create socially sanctioned expectations. They structure how we make sense of ourselves and others. Norms are part of who we are because we think with them; this means they feel like they come from within us rather than being something we collectively create. Even when we disagree with them they can still structure our thoughts and feelings. See, for example, feminists critical of the thin ideal wanting to be thin.

For Foucault, meeting socially sanctioned expectations is a moral imperative in society, so that conforming to social norms becomes read as evidence of being a good person. Developing a psychological analysis of these ideas, Davies (2013) argued that because our thinking is structured by norms they become part of us, creating a “passionate attachment” (p. 24) to these norms which might involve a longing to fulfil them or powerful emotions such as fear, anger, anxiety or disgust “toward the one (which might include oneself) who transgresses the norms and thereby risks destabilizing them” (Davies, 2013, p. 24).

This means it can feel emotionally painful not to meet cultural ideals of what is normal. Right now, it can feel a bit like the norms are in flux; our different social groups might have contradictory expectations, perhaps we’ve just found a new normal and it's changed again, or we can’t even find a norm to know if we are doing it ‘right’. This is one of the psychologically destabilising aspects of living in the time of COVID-19. But it also reflects the destabilising experience of living with competing discourses of what it means to be a good person, which characterise much of contemporary life even when life is 'normal'.