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The coercive force of norms serves positive and constructive purposes.

1. Social norms make it possible for the human organism to survive. The newborn infant does not enter the world with the full equipment and capacity to respond appropriately to everything it will encounter in its environment. It would not survive without the social norms that influence adults to take care of it.

2. Social norms are the means by which society is maintained and the needs of its members are fulfilled. Unrestrained, our biological needs and inclinations would encourage or perhaps guarantee anarchy. When norms control behavior, individual participants in a culture are constrained to fulfill societal needs, sometimes at the expense of their nature drives. Our culture demands that every newborn infant have a personal and family identity, hence we do not tolerate indiscriminate procreation. We require registration of births by personal and family names. We also require adherence to a sociological system of rules setting forth the rights and obligations of parents and the duties and privileges of their children.

3. Social norms make it possible for much of individual behavior to become automatic, greatly reducing the number of personal decisions to be made. In the process of internalizing the norms of his society, an individual learns countless time-tested procedures for the maintenance fo life, health, comfort, and propriety. Once learned, they can be applied automatically in appropriate situations. You do not reflect, each time you wish to greet a friend, on whether to extend your right or left hand. When driving a car, you no longer stop to consider whether to stay in the right or left traffic lane. These procedures were decided for you and you are habituated to them. As Cooley (1964) remarks:

The standards which conformity presses upon the individual are often elaborate and valuable products of cumulative thought and experience, and whatever imperfection they may have they are, as a whole, an indispensable foundation for life; it is inconceivable that any one should dispense with them. If I imitate the dress, the manners, the household arrangement of other people, I save so much mental energy for other purposes. (pp. 296-297).

We would not want all our procedures predetermined for us, but a great deal of time and energy are conserved when routine behavior becomes automatic, leaving us freer than we would otherwise be to decide on a number of other procedures calling for individual thought and choice. By accepting and following a cultural pattern, Cooley (1964) says, we get "The selected and systematized outcome of the past" (p. 297).

The strain for conformity, then, is frequently accompanied by no real feeling of strain. The coercion is not felt in many instances because the person is fully accustomed to responding to it. A man who does not want to contribute to charity may feel coerced when a persistent canvasser presses him for a donation. However, if he is someone who has fully internalized his culture's standard concerning donating to charities, he does not feel under duress, for he genuinely would like to contribute and will do so to the extent he considers within his means. 

Short Lecture: The Functions of Social Norms According to Charles Horton Cooley

PowerPoint Version of "The Functions of Social Norms According to Charles Horton Cooley" (PowerPoint format)