Reaction Paper: The Power of Norms - Essay Example

This is achieved through the set of guidelines used as the basis of making estimation. The estimation is what explains how far an individual can go before having an experience of rejection, loss, and ridicule power of the status within co-workers, acquaintances, and friends. More often than not, a group norm has been applied in dealing with violation punishments. This way, they have served the purpose of restricting of excessive behaviour freedom and other unprecedented character defaults in the entire SOCIETY.

Such group norms have the collective power that helps regulate and form up social reality (Zimbardo 4). When one learns the operating norms, he or she is able to anticipate what other individuals are likely to do in certain circumstances. It is a well documented fact that norms aid in specific social situations where the interlocking of the roles of people takes place. A role is termed as a behaviour that is socially programmed and available for personal expression within a group. It follows that it is after understanding the performance expectations of some norms of an individual’s role that one is capable of taking part in a social interaction.

There are other forms of norms that are oppressive in their functionality. An example of such norms is ethnocentrism. This norm is concerned with observing other people’s cultures through the mirror of one’s own culture. For example, in the Saharan Africa, individuals in the society perform a clittectomy to girls who are extremely young during their puberty (Zimbardo 9). This is a savage mutilation, despite the fact that the society in the Saharan Africa views it as a way of ensuring that the behavioural norms of a woman are adhered.

This implies, in essence, that the implication of norms is dictated through ethnocentricity. Additionally, though the society considers female circumcision as a wrong practice, traditional cultures of Africa do not. This, therefore, brings up the cultural relativism idea that is normally observed whenever a norm believed to have been broken in this society is an example of a correct behaviour in some other society. The idea that stands out in this discussion, therefore, is that the whole practice of breaking a norm is relative.

This is because different societies have different approaches as far as the issue of breaking a norm is concerned. The experiment described below outlines how I became entangled in a scenario of breaking a norm. Method I am going to break a public restaurant unspoken norm. I am going to ask my friend to call my cell phone at exactly 9.00 pm to help me to organize a dinner meeting at the city restaurant. My cell phone will be so regulated as to have a loud ringing tone. At about 8.30 pm, I am on my way to the city restaurant for dinner.

In the restaurant, I immediately order my dinner. At around 9.00 pm, my cell phone starts ringing due to the planned call from my friend. The ringing tone of my phone is an irritating one and its volume is exceedingly high to an extent that it has to cause interruptions. I intentionally ignore my ringing cell phone for a lengthy period of time – about one hour of continuous ringing, to be exact. As the cell phone is ringing, I am staring up as if unaware of the surrounding but keen to take note of the people’s reactions.

At this time of the day, the restaurant is full of people who have come to have