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.However, even asmall minority can be enough to disrupt this perceived consensus and al-low people to break ranks and eventually overturn the public norm.Given that attitudes endorsing culture of honor values are not asstrongly internalized among some southerners as they might first appear,one key to changing these public norms would be to signal that a perceivedconsensus is illusory.Of course, there are reasons one might not want tochange these norms, and these are discussed more fully in Cohen et al.(1998) and Cohen et al.(1999).But if there were to be purposeful actions toalter the norms, there are several potential approaches at various levels ofintervention.At a broad level, laws and social policies may serve to shape culturalnorms.Recently, legal scholars have begun a movement to explore howlaws might be used to shape cultural meanings and customs (Kahan, 1998;Lessig, 1995, 1998).Laws are typically seen as influencing behavior directly,through their power to create compliance, but laws can influence behaviorindirectly and nonlegally as well, by influencing social norms.For instance,TLFeBOOK 12.PERPETUATING NORMS OF VIOLENCE 297McAdams (1997, 2000) talked about an expressive function of laws.That is,laws symbolize societal values and express a culture s standards.By mak-ing policy that expresses a culture s condemnation of violence, law can beused to overturn norms perpetuated through pluralistic ignorance.In otherwords, laws can shape values; further, to the extent that there are pub-lic private discrepancies in people s attitudes, laws can also publicize a so-cietal consensus that might otherwise have remained hidden in people sprivate beliefs.Cooter (1997) provided a colorful example of the way expressive laws orformal enforcement of standards can also catalyze informal, private en-forcement.He gave the example of pooper scooper laws requiring ownersto clean up after their dogs.Given the social awkwardness of taking some-one to task for not cleaning up after their pet, pluralistic ignorance mightdevelop regarding general attitudes toward tolerance for messy publicspaces.However, formal pooper scooper laws can make it easier for peo-ple to enforce informal norms regarding the same behavior. No smoking laws may work similarly: It is easier and much less awkward to remindsomeone of the law or simply point to a No Smoking sign than it is to de-liver a stern moral lecture on the evils of secondhand smoke or the (literal)tragedy of the commons that will result from promiscuous pooping.By giv-ing people a channel or an easy, legitimate way to correct norm violators,expressive laws can increase the private enforcement of norms.Thus, ex-pressive law can both clarify and publicize a social consensus and make iteasier for people to enforce the norms against those who would violatethese consensual standards.At a more micro level, intervention programs aimed at exposing pluralis-tic ignorance may prove effective in changing cultural norms.Indeed, thereis some evidence that this can be a very effective tactic.Schroeder andPrentice (1998) were able to effectively reduce alcohol use among collegestudents by implementing a program to expose pluralistic ignorance.Stu-dents participated in peer-oriented discussion groups in which data werepresented that showed students misperceptions about drinking attitudeson campus.These students later reported less drinking than a controlgroup who had gone through a more standard individual-oriented program.Perhaps a similar approach could be used to change cultural norms regard-ing violence among strong honor subcultures.Such an approach is moremicro in scope than attempting to create laws and social policies to shapebroad cultural norms, but perhaps such modest changes would be enoughto create momentum among cultural members and expose unpopular oroutdated cultural norms on a larger scale (see, e.g., Schelling, 1978; see alsoGladwell, 1996).As discussed in this volume, recent modeling research byLatané and colleagues (Huguet & Latané, 1996; Latané, 1997, 2000; Schaller &Latané, 1996) also demonstrated how changes in local norms can rapidlyTLFeBOOK 298 VANDELLO AND COHENspread through dynamic social impact processes to create larger clustersof social representations.CONCLUSIONSOne popular explanation in sociology for cultural differences in violencehas been the subculture of violence thesis (Wolfgang & Ferracuti, 1967).Thistheory proposes that cultures affect individual behavior by shaping the val-ues (for instance, courage, honor, toughness) of the members of the subcul-ture.These values, in turn, lead to differences in the acceptability of vio-lence.However, the research we reported in this chapter suggests thatculture might also have a very large part of its influence on violence notthrough shaping individuals values, but through establishing shared publicnorms.The processes contributing to cultural persistence discussed in thischapter are part of a more general model for some hypothetical transitionstages in cultural evolution (see Fig.12.1).At the first stage ( the behavioralstage ), behavioral patterns arise as functional adaptations to the environ-ment.That is, the patterns are adaptive (even if not optimally adaptive) forindividuals.At this stage, they are not necessarily internalized, and they arenot necessarily normative [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.However, even asmall minority can be enough to disrupt this perceived consensus and al-low people to break ranks and eventually overturn the public norm.Given that attitudes endorsing culture of honor values are not asstrongly internalized among some southerners as they might first appear,one key to changing these public norms would be to signal that a perceivedconsensus is illusory.Of course, there are reasons one might not want tochange these norms, and these are discussed more fully in Cohen et al.(1998) and Cohen et al.(1999).But if there were to be purposeful actions toalter the norms, there are several potential approaches at various levels ofintervention.At a broad level, laws and social policies may serve to shape culturalnorms.Recently, legal scholars have begun a movement to explore howlaws might be used to shape cultural meanings and customs (Kahan, 1998;Lessig, 1995, 1998).Laws are typically seen as influencing behavior directly,through their power to create compliance, but laws can influence behaviorindirectly and nonlegally as well, by influencing social norms.For instance,TLFeBOOK 12.PERPETUATING NORMS OF VIOLENCE 297McAdams (1997, 2000) talked about an expressive function of laws.That is,laws symbolize societal values and express a culture s standards.By mak-ing policy that expresses a culture s condemnation of violence, law can beused to overturn norms perpetuated through pluralistic ignorance.In otherwords, laws can shape values; further, to the extent that there are pub-lic private discrepancies in people s attitudes, laws can also publicize a so-cietal consensus that might otherwise have remained hidden in people sprivate beliefs.Cooter (1997) provided a colorful example of the way expressive laws orformal enforcement of standards can also catalyze informal, private en-forcement.He gave the example of pooper scooper laws requiring ownersto clean up after their dogs.Given the social awkwardness of taking some-one to task for not cleaning up after their pet, pluralistic ignorance mightdevelop regarding general attitudes toward tolerance for messy publicspaces.However, formal pooper scooper laws can make it easier for peo-ple to enforce informal norms regarding the same behavior. No smoking laws may work similarly: It is easier and much less awkward to remindsomeone of the law or simply point to a No Smoking sign than it is to de-liver a stern moral lecture on the evils of secondhand smoke or the (literal)tragedy of the commons that will result from promiscuous pooping.By giv-ing people a channel or an easy, legitimate way to correct norm violators,expressive laws can increase the private enforcement of norms.Thus, ex-pressive law can both clarify and publicize a social consensus and make iteasier for people to enforce the norms against those who would violatethese consensual standards.At a more micro level, intervention programs aimed at exposing pluralis-tic ignorance may prove effective in changing cultural norms.Indeed, thereis some evidence that this can be a very effective tactic.Schroeder andPrentice (1998) were able to effectively reduce alcohol use among collegestudents by implementing a program to expose pluralistic ignorance.Stu-dents participated in peer-oriented discussion groups in which data werepresented that showed students misperceptions about drinking attitudeson campus.These students later reported less drinking than a controlgroup who had gone through a more standard individual-oriented program.Perhaps a similar approach could be used to change cultural norms regard-ing violence among strong honor subcultures.Such an approach is moremicro in scope than attempting to create laws and social policies to shapebroad cultural norms, but perhaps such modest changes would be enoughto create momentum among cultural members and expose unpopular oroutdated cultural norms on a larger scale (see, e.g., Schelling, 1978; see alsoGladwell, 1996).As discussed in this volume, recent modeling research byLatané and colleagues (Huguet & Latané, 1996; Latané, 1997, 2000; Schaller &Latané, 1996) also demonstrated how changes in local norms can rapidlyTLFeBOOK 298 VANDELLO AND COHENspread through dynamic social impact processes to create larger clustersof social representations.CONCLUSIONSOne popular explanation in sociology for cultural differences in violencehas been the subculture of violence thesis (Wolfgang & Ferracuti, 1967).Thistheory proposes that cultures affect individual behavior by shaping the val-ues (for instance, courage, honor, toughness) of the members of the subcul-ture.These values, in turn, lead to differences in the acceptability of vio-lence.However, the research we reported in this chapter suggests thatculture might also have a very large part of its influence on violence notthrough shaping individuals values, but through establishing shared publicnorms.The processes contributing to cultural persistence discussed in thischapter are part of a more general model for some hypothetical transitionstages in cultural evolution (see Fig.12.1).At the first stage ( the behavioralstage ), behavioral patterns arise as functional adaptations to the environ-ment.That is, the patterns are adaptive (even if not optimally adaptive) forindividuals.At this stage, they are not necessarily internalized, and they arenot necessarily normative [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]