Construction of Meaning during a Pandemic: The Forgotten Role of Social Norms

Abstract

How social norms are formed likely has a bearing on the mechanisms underlying their effects on behavioral outcomes. We propose three mechanisms of norms formation - through direct experience, symbolically through media, or imaginatively - and introduce ideas about normative durability, normative subscription, normative volume, personal agency, and polarization of norms - that likely have a bearing on how norms affect behaviors. The COVID-19 pandemic has important implications for how norms are formed, which in turn invoke different underlying mechanisms in the relationship between social norms and behaviors. We propose a number of hypotheses for future studies to test.

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