Social Norms and Types of Influence

Nobody posts a sign in the elevator telling you which way to face. You turn toward the doors because everyone else does, and some part of you doesn't want to be the one person staring at strangers' faces. That's a social norm at work: an unwritten expectation for behavior that a group enforces just by existing. You pick it up by watching, not by being told.

Psychologists split conformity to norms into two engines. Normative influence is chasing approval — you go along so you don't look weird, even if you privately think the group is wrong. Informational influence is chasing truth — you go along because you genuinely believe the group has better information than you do, especially in confusing or unfamiliar situations. Same behavior, turning to face the doors, can come from either one, which is why you have to ask what the person actually believes, not just what they do.

Norms don't just steer small moments like elevators. They harden into social roles, the set of behaviors expected of someone in a given position, and roles can overpower personality fast. A gentle, soft-spoken student handed the role of prison guard in a role-play study can turn authoritarian within days, not because their character changed but because the role came with its own script of expectations. This connects forward to obedience: roles and norms are the quiet machinery that makes people follow authority even when instinct objects. And norms are fragile in a specific way — one person openly breaking a norm, refusing to face the doors, can loosen its grip on everyone else, revealing how much of the norm was just people assuming everyone else wanted it too.