Understanding Social Norms and Their Impact on Behavior

Closure – The effectiveness of these norms depends on society’s ability to impose external situations.
For example, when a child has divorced parents, each parent has a different idea of an appropriate bedtime. Therefore, there is no social norm that is established, and the child lacks the closure needed to make it effective.

Delinquency – The relationship between juvenile delinquency and social networks is described by two different approaches.

Normative Influence (Socialization) – This states that you will behave similarly to the people you consider your friends.

Opportunity for Delinquency – Interpersonal relations are relevant as part of the process by which the social structure shapes the spatial and temporal contours of social life, thereby increasing opportunities for some behaviors and decreasing opportunities for others.

The Assimilation Perspective – This suggests a gradual decline in social and economic contact with the home country as immigrants link together their societies of origin and settlement.

Trans-National Perspective – Immigrants manage to sustain a relationship with their home country they left behind, even after being in the new country for a long time.

Transitivity – A relationship is transitive when everyone involved knows each other (they form a triangle). It is a very dense connection between two nodes.

We Shape Our Network – We determine the structure of our network and how many people we are connected to.
We influence the density of interconnections between friends and family: we introduce friends from different groups to each other.
We control how central we are in each network; the way you are with your friends influences the way the network is built.
For example, if you choose to separate your friends, then you are choosing a network that is not connected.

Contagion – Anything that flows across ties, whether bad or good.
Examples include germs, happiness, money, fashion, and violence.

Dyadic Spread – The tendency of effects to spread from one person to their direct social ties.

Hyper Dyadic Spread – The tendency of effects to spread from one person to another person outside of that person’s direct social ties.

Context Collapse – Acting differently in different contexts, especially when we have to present ourselves to different audiences simultaneously.
For example, presenting oneself as professional while at the same time posting pictures of oneself drunk and being irresponsible.