“What’s An Unspoken Social Rule That Americans Follow That Aren’t Obvious To Visitors?” (30 Answers)

So we’re on the same page, social norms are unwritten rules that determine how things should be around here. They apply within communities and societies and essentially dictate what behavior is appropriate given the context.

In the traditional sense, social norms are informal guidelines. These can be anything from shaking one’s hand when greeting them to picking the urinal that’s not the one right next to another guy draining his Johnson.

But, social norms can also manifest in a more formal way, becoming laws and regulations. After all, these are enacted based on the social and cultural climate of the society—that which is accepted and considered fair among its members. That doesn’t mean there can’t be contradictions because it’s complicated, but it works because people.

Bored Panda reached out to Todd Schoepflin, author, sociologist and the face behind the Everyday Sociology and Creative Sociology blogs.

“The American public is on edge, but underneath the angst a friendliness remains. On the one hand, people are stressed out, on the other hand they are friendly and willing to help,” commented Schoepflin.

And based on the submissions in this list, you can see a glimpse of this with Redditor u/marenamoo, who pointed out that visitors should assume most Americans are nice, but they wouldn’t really want anything more than just a “perfunctory greeting.”

On the other hand, Americans are masters at small talk, and one small conversation can lead to a friendship like that. “My wife talks about ‘Minnesota goodbyes’. Everyone says bye and then an hour and a half later you’re pulling food out of the fridge because people are still talking and got hungry,” noted another commenter, u/sutt0nius.

Schoepflin also notes some of the most predominant social norms in the US that thematically deal with privacy and respect:

“I would say it’s key to respect people’s personal space. An important norm is to not cut people in line. People can be nasty if you jump ahead of them in line. So be mindful of others, and do your best to read the mood of the people around you.”

“Another norm is to tip your servers and other workers in service jobs. To not tip is a norm violation and may be met with a mildly negative reaction.”

“When traveling, you are likely to encounter a mix of impatience, indifference, niceness and kindness. Sometimes people are chilled out, sometimes they are not!”

Now, it’s interesting to think that, with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), especially chatbots that are designed to be social beings, some say they don’t really care about social norms at all.

At least with ChatGPT (GPT-3), it is reported that the way it works, it’s incapable of recognizing that there are things that it shouldn’t say. At least for now. This is a combination of the algorithm making statistical guesses as to what it ought to say mixed with feedback provided by the conversation partner.

In the same way, statistically speaking, and given human nature, there are more ways to say the wrong thing than there are to say the right thing. Which is fine, we all make mistakes. But for chatbots, given the stats-based approach, it’s anything but ideal.

This is also besides the fact that humans have things like intuition, broad contextual awareness, and even the same social rules that they abide by at their disposal to avoid conversational hiccups. Hiccups that bots would give zero guffs about because that’s just not how they work.

So, food for thought. Actually, food and thought that you can share in the comment section below!