Why social norms may fail us when we need them most

Where social norms are the ‘glue’ guiding behavior, people hardly think of their behavior as an act of norm compliance. They do consciously look for social norms in situations of environmental or social uncertainty, because i) norms provide behavioral cues that reduce uncertainty and ii) the uncertainty is partially induced by the lack or instability of social norms themselves—creating the (flawed) perception that social norms often fail us when we need them most. We discuss several state-of-the-art conceptualizations of social norms—abstract and specific norms, the social norms life cycle, and social norms in changing contexts—to highlight where and how uncertainty comes into play within each of these approaches, and consequently where the success of social norms might be hindered.