Establishing Norms in Groups

Reading through Chapter 2 in "The Essential Guide to Group Communication", I came upon a section discussing norms in groups. Norms according to the text are "sets of expectations held by group members concerning what kind of behavior is acceptable or unacceptable, good or bad, right or wrong, or appropriate or inappropriate." The text clearly is about improving group communication in an educational enviroment, but I couldn't help but think how it could really apply to any group. Take my group for example. Though it is clearly "bad behavior" to smoke cigarettes to a large majority or people, it is something that is widely accepted as normal in my group. Literally everyone smokes in my group, and no one really gives it a second thought, while another group hanging out nearby could be shaking their heads in disgust, clearly disapproving of our habit. The text also goes into detail about how norms affect the kind of topics that can be expressed, or if negative comments are appropriate. I can definitely say that my group has an established set of norms on the kind of topics we talk about, as they usually only involve either cars, sports, or video games. This concept was really helpful in allowing me to know that I should be careful entering other groups, be it in an educational enviroment or outside of school, to not cause a conflict if my norms happened to differ from theres. In the case that there is a clash of norms, I now know that it would be best to politely conform or bring up ways in which we could re-establish a new norm that is comfortable for everyone in the group.