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Violated! A Report on Social Norms My mother always told me that there are things that you just don’t do. For example, horsing around in Church, being loud and yelling at the table or in public, picking your nose, etc. While your mother may have simply called this “behaving,” sociologists call these things social norms. Social norms are defined as “the implicit or explicit rules a group has for the acceptable behaviors, values, and beliefs of its members.” In layman’s terms, social norms are like an everyday code of conduct that determines how you behave in certain situations. Social norms are often very strictly enforced and offenders are often ostracized or outright rebuked for their conduct. Also, such norms are more rigorously held to in certain situations than in others. For example, it is a social norm that people should be decently covered in public, but a woman wearing a swimsuit and shorts into McDonald’s is less likely to be ostracized than a woman wearing the same outfit