Deviation from Social Norms
- Abnormality has always been incredibly hard to define in psychology. This is down to psychologists being unable to agree on the causes of abnormalities, they disagree about the causes of mental disorders. Is it flawed biology, learning difficulties or could it be down to personality?
- As psychologists cannot agree on the causes, it makes it hard to define, also, each theory has been favoured at different periods of time and in different cultures, again, emphasising the difficulty to define abnormality.
Deviation from social norms
- Social norms vary in each society, they are a set of unwritten rules to follow. One way to define abnormal behaviour, is to see if it goes against the societal norms. the definition has a clear line between desirable and undesirable behaviours. It labels those individuals with undesirable behaviours as socially deviant
- One thing we have to remember is that social norms are specific to the culture we currently live in and are often different for different generations and cultures. E.g. Homosexuality was deemed abnormal in our culture in the past in the UK but today it is accepted and homophobia is a crime
- However, homosexuality is still seeming as abnormal and illegal in some cultures globally