Deviation from social norms

• how does it define abnormality

  • when a person behaves in a way that is different from how we expect people to behave
  • groups of people choose to define behaviour as abnormal on the basis that it offends their sense of what is acceptable
  • norms can be implicit or explicit
• example where it has been successful

  • antisocial personality disorder (psychopathy) - absence of prosocial internal standards associated with failure to conform to lawful/culturally ethical behaviour
• limitation

  • social norms can vary from one generation from another and from one community to another
  • a person from one cultural group may label someone as abnormal according to their standards rather than the standards of the person behaving that way
  • this creates problems for people from one culture living within another culture group
• limitation

  • too much reliance on deviation from social norms to understand abnormality can lead to human right abuses
  • some psychologists suggest that some of our modern categories of mental disorder are really abuses of peoples rights to be different
• limitation

  • norms change over time so what is classed as abnormal changes
  • eg: homosexuality
  • in order to consider whether a behaviour is abnormal or not we need to take into account the time period