Deviation from social norms:

• STRENGTH:

  • its usefulness
  • used in clinical practice
  • IE: the key defining characteristic of antisocial personality disorder is the failure to conform to culturally acceptable ethical behaviour ie: aggression
  • These signs of the disorder are all deviations from social norms

  Such norms also play a part in the diagnosis of schizoptypal personality disorder, where the term 'strange' is used to characterise the thinking, behaviour and appearance of people with the disorder.

  This shows that the deviation from social norms criterion has value in psychiatry
• LIMITATION:

  • variability between social norms in different cultures and even different situations
  • A person from one cultural group may label someone from another group as abnormal using their standards rather than the person's standards
  • IE: the experience of hearing voices is the norm in some cultures (as messages from ancestors) but would be seen as a sign of abnormality in most parts of the UK

  This means that it is difficult to judge deviation from social norms across different situations and cultures.