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

Abstract

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.

Fig. 1. The geographical scope of the study.

A Societal variation in norms is studied across 90 societies colored red. B Norm change is studied in 26 societies, colored blue, for which data are available from two studies, 20 years apart.

Fig. 2. Measures of everyday norms.

The norm for a given situated behavior in a given society was measured by ratings on a six-step scale from extremely inappropriate, coded −2.5, to extremely appropriate, coded 2.5, and averaged across participants (n = 54.3 on average, ranging from 1 to 217 across cells). A lighter color means a higher inappropriateness rating. White cells represent missing data due to some countries not allowing some questions.

Fig. 3. Behavior-specific and situation-specific global everyday norms.

A A color-coded matrix illustrating the global appropriateness ratings (averaged over 71 societies) of fifteen behaviors in each of ten situations. B Scatter plot illustrating appropriateness ratings of fifteen specific behaviors aggregated across various situations (centered on the mean across behaviors) and their strong negative association with the sum of behavior-specific concerns about vulgarity and inconsiderateness. The index ‘b’ indicates that measures refer to behaviors. C Scatter plot illustrating appropriateness ratings of 15 behaviors in ten specific situations (n = 150 situated behaviors, centered on the mean across situations for each behavior) and their strong negative association with the sum of situation-specific concerns about inconsiderateness and lacking sense. The index ‘xb’ indicates that measures refer to situated behaviors. Gray shading indicates 95% confidence intervals.

Fig. 4. Results on societal variation in everyday norms from a mixed-level model of appropriateness ratings.

A The graph shows the estimated coefficients for societies’ scores on individualistic morality (IM) and their interactions with situation-general concerns about vulgarity (Vulgar_b) and inconsiderateness (Inconsiderate_b), and situation-specific concerns about inconsiderateness (Inconsiderate_xb) and lacking sense (Lacks sense_xb). Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. Results are presented for data collected up to the preregistered deadline (red, n = 547,170 appropriateness ratings from 71 societies), all data (yellow, n = 833,930 ratings from 90 societies)), and only including participants who passed the attention check (blue, n–515,162 ratings from 80 societies). The confidence intervals for the interaction effects become somewhat wider if random slopes are included (see Supplementary Fig. 3A). B Scatter plot illustrating the positive relation between a society’s individualistic morality and its overall (context- and behavior-general) appropriateness rating across 71 societies. Labels are ISO codes. Gray shading indicates 95% confidence intervals.

Fig. 5. The global average change in everyday norms.

Every panel shows appropriateness ratings of a specific behavior in ten different situations at two times: 2000–2003 (dashed lines) and 2023–2024 (solid lines). Ratings are aggregated across 22 societies (but only 21 for laughing, because Israel missed 2000–2003 data for laughing at a party).

Fig. 6. Results on global change in everyday norms from a mixed-level model of appropriateness ratings.

A The graph shows the estimated coefficients for time and its interactions with situation-general concerns about vulgarity and inconsiderateness, and situation-specific concerns about inconsiderateness. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. Results are presented for data collected up to the preregistered deadline (red, n = 869,180 appropriateness ratings from 22 societies), all data (yellow, n = 929,143 appropriateness ratings from 26 societies), and only including participants who passed the attention check (blue, n = 856,692 appropriateness ratings from 26 societies). The confidence intervals for the interaction effects become somewhat wider if random slopes are included (see Supplementary Fig. 3B). B Boxplots of the coefficients for time and its interactions with concerns estimated separately in each of the 22 societes. Dots represent societies, boxes indicate the first and third quartiles, and the bold lines indicate medians.