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Up to now we have emphasized the authority of norms in regulating behavior. However, we have suggested that to some extent every individual at some time offers some resistance to the coercion implicit or explicit in social norms. This resistance is not always evident to other people, for there is a difference between ideal norms of behavior and action responses.

An idea norm of behavior consists of what people say should be done in responding to a situation; an action response is what they actually do when confronted by the situation. Ideal norms are standards or guidelines for behavior in specific situations. And what people say they will do may be inconsistent with what they actually do in specific situations. A sample taken a number of years ago by Kinsey and his associates showed that many Americans thought young people should postpone sexual intercourse until after marriage. But approximately 90 % of the men and 60 % of the women in the sample said they had engaged in premarital sexual intercourse. This reflects considerable divergence between what people in the United States of America admitted doing and what they considered desirable.

Why does the action response of some people run contrary to the ideal norm for certain behavior? 

1. First, let us point out that no individual is an absolute and total nonconformist, refusing to behave in accord with any of the norms of her/his society. Consider the late Joe Gould, who called himself the last of the bohemians. A Harvard graduate, he chose to live in Greewich Village, then the bohemian center of New York City. He held no paying job, cadging money, liquor, food, and cast-off clothing. He slept on park benches and in subway stations. He told his associates he subsisted on "air, self-esteem, cigarette butts, cowboy coffee, fried-egg sandwiches, and ketchup." He carried on a promiscuous a sex life as his disreputable appearance and unwashed condition permitted. 

He insisted he wanted to own nothing at all. "If Mr. Chrysler tried to make me a present of the Chrysler Building," he told a reporter, " I would near break my neck fleeing from him. I would not own it; it would own me." 

Gould said he was devoting his life to writing An Oral History of Our Times, a book that would  contain reports on what he had personally seen and heard. "What we used to think was history," he said, "all that chitty-chat about Caesar, Napoleon, treaties, inventions, big battles, is only formal history and largely false. I will put down the informal history of the shirt-sleeved multitude--what they had to say about jobs, love affairs, vittles, sprees, scrapes, and sorrows." Part of his Oral History, he claimed would contain remarks scribbled on the walls of public washrooms. Other chapters would carry essays on such subjects as the flophouse flea, spaghetti, the zipper as a symbol of the decay of civilization, remorse, false teeth, and the jury system.

Supposedly in pursuit of data, and also because he enjoyed it, he consorted with drunks, narcotic addicts, brother keepers, prostitutes, artists, novelists, poets, bums, and free-love advocates.

He was indeed an extreme nonconformist in numerous respects, and yet his action responses demonstrated that in many other ways he abided by the norms of society. Ragged and eccentric as was his garb, he did wear some kind of clothing in public--he did nto stroll the streets in the nude. He spoke a conventional American language, heavily laced with equally conventional slang. Although he subsisted on handouts, he was not known to steal, and if he ever assaulted a human being, no such charge was ever laid against him. He often went hungry, but he did not eat human flesh. He derided many of the customs of more conventional people, yet he ceremoniously kissed the hand of beautiful women when they met. In much of his behavior he followed the standards of social norms. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of a human being long surviving in any society if he totally rejects all of its norms.

2. Some people see themselves as conformists on the whole; they choose to carry out the dictates of a particular norm most of the time; but under pressure they violate the norm. A man who is a courageous comrade-in-arms throughout most engagements in a battle zone may panic and desert his buddies when the stress of bombardment and fatigue destroys his self-discipline and morale for the time being. A professor who fully subscribes to the principle of academic freedom and time and time again stands staunchly with her/his colleagues against invasion of this freedom may on one occasion, when faced with the possibility of punitive action, capitulate to forces opposed to the principle she/he holds dear.

3. Some people violate the norms of their society out of loyalty to the behavior standards of a subcultural group to which they belong. For example, consider common behavior of many high school student in the United States of America. In their desire to establish their own identify apart from their parents, they create a subculture of dress, speech, language, etc. that is different from their parents and the general norms of society. In that way they are nonconformist. However, they are conformist to the norms of the subculture of high school students.

4. Some nonconformity occurs when organic drives are in conflict with social regulation. All human beings have biological urges, some of which the norms inhibit in the interest of group welfare. The norms allow for behavior  to satisfy sexual appetites, but going beyond what is within these norms is not culturally tolerated. In society there are norms for behavior calculated to allay hunger, but they do not provide for doing so under any and all circumstances. Theft of food, for example, is disapproved (in most cultures). These are injunctions of the culture, but some individuals are unable or unwilling to curb their biological inclinations in favor of conformity to social norms.

5. Some individuals either have not internalized certain norms of the culture that most other members of the society have assimilated and accepted or have rejected them after internalizing them. Therefore, they feel no great compulsion to conform. Some musicians furnish an example of rejections of conventional norms. The serious jazz artist voluntarily insolates herself/himself from "squares." Sociologist Howard S. Becker (1963), himself a parttime professional musician, writes that in the musician's subculture the term "square" refers to "the kind of person who is the opposite of all the musician is, or should be, and a way of thinking, feeling, and behaving...which is the opposite of that valued by musicians" (pp. 85-86).  All nonmusicians are "squares," outsiders. The musician sees himself as having an artistic gift that sets him apart from all other people. "Possessing this gift, he should be free from control by outsiders who lack it. The gift is something which cannot be acquired through education; the outsider, therefore, can never become a member of the group" (Becker, 1963, pp. 85-86).

And the musician who adopts this view feels justified in not conforming to norms he considers inappropriate to a person of his artistic attainments. For instance, he believes he has a right to his pattern of sexual behavior, whether or not it runs counter to "square" conventions. In general he tends t admire behavior that flouts conventional norms. In the musician subculture the highly individualistic, devil-may-care person is admired as a "character." One member of the band told Becker: "You know, the biggest heroes in the music business are the biggest characters. The crazier a guy acts, the greater he is, the more everybody likes him." Another musician told about the time that a band finished playing a dance and got into its bus for the ride back to the city. The bus would not start, no matter what was tried. Suddenly, one member said, "Let's set it on fire!" They did. "What an experience!" said the musician who was telling the story. "The car burning up and all these guys standing around hollering and clapping their hands. It was really something" (Becker, 1963, p. 87). It was indeed, but "squares" would very likely have considered it something worthy not of admiration but of stern disapproval.

6. Nonconformity to a give social norm may be the result of adhering to another, also approved, norm. A youth of twenty-two set himself on fire in front of the United Nations building in New York City, proclaiming he was doing so as a protest against "war, all war," including the one in Vietnam. Although suicide is proscribed under the normative system of the United States, we also value teh person who upholds his convictions against all odds. This young man, who claimed to be a pacifist, violated one social norm while conforming to another.

Sometimes what may be conceived of as nonconformity derives from the fact that norms are arrayed at different levels of generalization and are applicable in different contexts within the same society. This helps account for a certain amount of seeming normative conflict. Thus children learn to "tell the truth." At the same time they learn that to be truthful under all circumstances is "bad." It is "good" for a child to admit he was responsible of a baseball crashing through a neighbor's window. It is "bad" if, when Grandma asks how he likes the cake she baked for him, he tells her it tastes awful--even if it does. We learn to "handle" seemingly conflictive norms, at least to a degree. And actually there is, in examples like those just mentioned, less conflict than might appear to be the case.

7. Some individuals have internalized part of two or more different cultures and are thus oriented to conflicting cultural values. Cultural hybrids, they conform only partially to the normative system of any one culture. As an example of one such individual in the United States we might cite a person who has one white parent and one black parent. The late sociologist Robert E. Parks applied the term "marginal man" to such a person asserting that he "lives in two worlds, in both of which he is more or less a stranger" (Park, 1928, pp. 881-893).

Persons not born of intermarriages may also become marginal men. This frequently occurs when a person from one culture settles among individuals from another culture. To some extent, Puerto Rican migrants to the United States mainland fall into this category. Note: Puerto Rico is part of the United States. They retain some of their original values and give up others in favor of those in their new society. They often strive to hold on to certain earlier values even though these values conflict with the beliefs of the new society. During this transition period some of their old habits are discarded when new ones are not yet formed.

8. Nonconformity may be a consequence of normative confusion. An individual cannot fail to recognize that there are contradictions between one value and another in the same society. He is expected to support law and order and to do his part in combating crime. Yet he will be regarded with some hostility and contempt if he informs the police that his good friend has committed a crime, for members of his society consider loyalty to friends a virtue. "Honesty is the best policy," but caveat emptor ("let the buyer beware").

It is not always clear under what conditions a given norm applies. A many may vehemently declare that juvenile delinquents should be handled with severity. But if his son gets into trouble with the law, the same man may plead for gentle treatment of his child. If the son is confused by what appear to be contradictory norms, it would not be surprising.

Certain norms are behavior standards in theory but in practice are so often violated as to lead to confusion in the mind of the person who would like to conform. He may not understand how inflexibly or under precisely what conditions a standard is to be followed. A child is taught to be honest but may become confused when he discovers that his parents claimed income tax deductions for expenses they did not actually incur.

Having touched on reasons behind nonconformity, let us again emphasis that not all such deviation from social norms is regarded with equal disapproval. Moreover, some nonconformity carries with it a certain prestige. We look upon it as a mark of laudable individuality.

Whether or not it is entirely a fact that no one in the Unites States defends conformity, it can scarcely be questioned that some nonconformity is defended. We may not admire the Skid Row drunk, but we do tend to respect the painter who lives in poverty nd squalor and expresses his creativity without being dependent upon what the world will think of his art.