Everyday norms have become more permissive over time and vary across cultures

Eriksson, Kimmo (author), Boštjančič, Eva (author), Lep, Žan (author)

Every social situation that people encounter in their daily lives comes with a set of unwritten rules about what behavior is considered appropriate or inappropriate. These everyday norms can vary across societies: some societies may have more permissive norms in general or for certain behaviors, or for certain behaviors in specific situations. In a preregistered survey of 25,422 participants across 90 societies, we map societal differences in 150 everyday norms and show that they can be explained by how societies prioritize individualizing moral foundations such as care and liberty versus binding moral foundations such as purity. Specifically, societies with more individualistic morality tend to have more permissive norms in general (greater liberty) and especially for behaviors deemed vulgar (less purity), but they exhibit less permissive norms for behaviors perceived to have negative consequences in specific situations (greater care). By comparing our data with available data collected twenty years ago, we find a global pattern of change toward more permissive norms overall but less permissive norms for the most vulgar and inconsiderate behaviors. This study explains how social norms vary across behaviors, situations, societies, and time.

• Language: English
• Keywords: social psychology, social norms, cross cultural studies, cross cultural differences
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: 14 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 3, art. 45
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-176287
• UDC: 316.754
• ISSN on article: 2731-9121
• DOI: 10.1038/s44271-025-00324-4
• COBISS.SI-ID: 258794755
• Publication date in RUL: 26.11.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Communications psychology
• Shortened title: Commun. psychol.
• Publisher: Nature Portfolio
• ISSN: 2731-9121
• COBISS.SI-ID: 177868547

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: socialna psihologija, socialne norme, spremembe v času, medkulturne študije, medkulturne razlike