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EXTENDED ABSTRACT
Widespread material and cultural changes, from worsening droughts and rising temperatures to economic recessions and shifting gender roles, create real and perceived disruptions to social norms and taken-for-granted practices. However, the existing literature on norms lacks an understanding of how norms develop and change over time (van Kleef, Gelfand, and Jetten 2019). Using mask-wearing behavior during COVID-19 as a context and building on prior models of norm change in cultural psychology (Oyserman 2017; Oyserman and Van 2019) and cultural sociology (Swidler 1986, 2001), we explore mask wearing norms and behaviors of consumers through field observation and in-depth interviews during 2020 and 2021 in China and the USA. Based on our analysis, we develop a new model of how norms are adopted and rejected during times of social upheaval. We find evidence of processes identified in prior literature, but also identify a new state in which consumers partially adopt new norms in some contexts while continuing to seek contexts where old norms can be enacted.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Theorists generally agree that social norms (or simply "norms") are rules and principles that (1) are shared and understood by the members of a group, (2) represent the group-level approval or disapproval of behaviors, and (3) serve to guide and/or constrain the actions of individual group members (e.g., Bicchieri 2005; Cialdini and Trost 1998; Horne and Molbom 2020; Legros and Cislaghi 2020). Norms are an integral component of any culture, in that they set up collective understandings and expectations of what behaviors are acceptable and unacceptable in a given occasion. In so doing, norms help facilitate and regulate social interactions, establish social cohesion and organic solidarity, and hence keep a society together and functioning (Durkheim 1933; Home and Molbom 2020; van Kleef, et al. 2019).
While norms have been shown to impact a variety of behaviors, their use and impact is highly dependent on context, as "understandings that are recognized in situ" (Fine 2001, 145). Norms offer culturally predesignated courses of actions to help people navigate the contexts of their social lives, such that when certain social situations occur, individuals naturally know how to act (Morris et al. 2015; Oyserman 2017; Swidler 1986). People fall back on norms to guide behavior especially in new or uncertain...