This course is Part 2 of the Social Norms, Social Change series. In this course, we will examine social change, the tools we may use to enact change, and put into practice all we have learned in Part 1. See Social Norms, Social Change Part I at this link: https://coursera.org/learn/norms This course covers scripts and schemas, the cognitive structures in which social expectations are embedded, and their relationship with social norms. The course then examines the essentials of norm abandonment, including the relations between personal beliefs and social expectations. We will also evaluate existing intervention strategies, including legal reforms, information campaigns, economic incentives, and group deliberations. Finally, we look at a variety of tools policy makers may use to effect change, highlight the role of trendsetters in social change, and explore the conditions under which they can be successful. The course is a joint Penn-UNICEF project." Please see the following link for a 30% discount on the book that accompanies this course: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/9780190622053/?cc=us&lang=en&promocode=AAFLYG6
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Social Norms, Social Change II
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From the lesson
Honors Lesson: Scripts and Schemas
This course is "part 2" of Social Norms, Social Change and the lessons here are a continuation of the first course.
This module covers scripts and schemas, the cognitive structures in which social expectations are embedded, and their relationship with social norms.
Meet the Instructors
Cristina BicchieriS. J. Patterson Harvie Professor of Social Thought and Comparative Ethics
Department of Philosophy
[MUSIC]
Schemas are connected in a mental network.
When one schema is activated, related schemas that share some of
its internal elements will be primed for activation.
This process is called spreading activation.
The degree of priming will be proportional to how close a subschema,
a related consent or element is to the original schema.
Remember that the structure of this network, as the original schema itself,
is influenced a culture, by it's values, beliefs, expectations.
Let us now look at a possible schema for a good wife.
Let's say that the good wife schema was activated, and you can see
that there are many elements that are connected in the good wife schema.
In this particular conservative culture,
being a good wife is connected to characteristics such as faithfulness,
obedience, caring, being a good mother and the like.
You see that when the closer good mother schema is activated,
other elements will also be activated such as nurturing and disciplining children.
In this example, you see how the activation the good wife schema
primes related concepts and schemas for activation.
Gender schemas are shared within a culture and they perform two important functions.
They describe how women are, how they do behave as women,
and they also prescribe how they ought to be, how they should behave as women.
So gender schemas include both empirical and
normative expectation about women and, of course, also men.
This is the place where our social expectations come from.
We know that social norms are rules of behavior
that are shared within a community and are followed precisely because
individuals have both empirical and normative expectation.
They expect other community member to follow the rule and
believe that conforming to the rule is approved of.
Norms are part of the community script and schemas.
Let's listen to some examples.
>> Women and men have very different roles and there are many social and
gender norms regulating women's behavior.
These include boy preference, dowry payments rather than bride wealth,
women are not supposed to work outside of the home, etc.
Child marriage used to be an integral part of traditional Indian society, but
as society is changing due to educating, modernization and
urbanization, child marriage is retreating.
At the same time, many of the underlying social and
gender norms are continuing to dominate the lives of women and men.
>> Schemas also involve the understanding of what a child is,
social expectations about what a child normally does,
what a child should do, and how a child should be treated.
Let's listen to some example.
>> So in Congo and in Africa in many places,
children are seen as socially useful in the sense that they
are seen as pragmatic contributors to the survival of the family.
So they spend quite some time carrying water, searching for
wood, carrying out little work such as working on the market, or
some types of labor that bring in money to the household.
But, children are little seen as being encouraged
to follow their aspirations, to follow their dreams, to actually have dreams.
It's much more about following what their parents say, what the elders think.
Usually, it's considered that respect is due to the elders and
that children aren't expected to disagree.
There are many families who have an alternative behavior to this general
train of thought to exclude children from the decision making process.
They are some families who could be trendsetters for
a new way of doing and who actually include their children.
Often there are people who have spent some time outside or
who are very much exposed to the media,
who just have a different understanding of what the role of a child can be.
And they may very well play a role as
influencer on the behavior and on the expectations of
parents who still are in the traditional mold.
But so far they haven't had a large scale impact.
>> Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world.
Madagascar has the fourth highest chronic malnutrition rate in the world.
The son is welcomed with a celebration as an asset
whereas the girl is seen as a liability and
impending economic threat.
Son is preferred in order to perpetuate the family name,
where the girl loses her identity with marriage.
Grandfather and father are the decision makers and
keepers of this common practice.
They feed first man in the bush.
I prefer, and further think family has to feed man in the bush first.
And it is the right thing to do.
>> Let's go back for a moment, to the formation of gender schemas.
Understanding the genesis of a schema might help understand why
certain elements are more central than others and more difficult to change.
Let's say we consistently observe the division of labor between men and
women, and this division is a strict one.
Men act as providers and work outside the home and
women only engage in nurturing and domestic activities.
It is quite natural to develop beliefs about attributes of different roles.
For example, beliefs about character traits, skills, abilities.
A typical inference we would make, and of course has been made,
is that men are assertive and women are supportive and compliant.
In many cultures these have become
prototypical characteristics of men and women.
Men's role is related to agency and
women role to communion, empathy, and nurturing.
It is important to realize that the permanence of gender
schemas is supported by some cognitive biases we all share.
The first bias is psychological essentialism.
This is a tendency to perceive social categories as natural, not artificial,
so that it is assumed that members of a category, women for example,
have some underlying, immutable essential characteristics.
These characteristics are not only biological, but also psychological,
such as nurturance, empathy, submissiveness, and non-competitiveness.
Observable external traits and behaviors,
are thought to reflect in an observable internal immutable essence.
All members of a category are similar because they share the same essence.
Stereotyping is an example of this essentials bias.
The essentials belief in the existence of fixed characteristics, natural attributes,
and traits limits the possibilities of change.
Another bias is the fundamental attribution error,
the tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are.
We cannot enter into other people's minds, but we can observe their behavior and
tend to explain it as view to internal factors like intentions or personality.
We systematically discount external factors
like situational influences as causes of behavior.
Although when we have to explain our own behavior,
we have the post tendency to invoke situation of causes.
Let me give you an example of how, in explaining other behavior, we
overestimate the facts of personality and underestimate the facts of the situation.
Suppose you observe someone kicking a cat.
You assume this happens because this person dislike cats,
when in fact it was accidental.
The cat stepped in front of him suddenly.
Finally, there is a generalization bias.
Individual traits are generalized to entire groups.
We reach conclusion about members of a group based on what we know about one or
very few people.
Think of being familiar with women who do not have jobs, stay home, and
take care of children.
A faulty generalization would be that all women are like them.
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