There are social norms about most aspects of life. Food, speech, clothes, and hygiene are just a few examples of important domains in which people have opinions on what is and isn’t appropriate and certain expectations about others’ behavior.
Global social norms studies aim at documenting how social norms vary across the globe and testing theories about why. In the international network for global social norms studies (GSN), researchers from many different countries collaborate on conducting such studies. A large focus has been placed on including countries in Africa and Asia in the network. A list of all countries and sites that are part of the network, along with links to studies already conducted by the network, can be found here.
The purpose of the network is to organize worldwide studies on social norms and metanorms, how they vary across societies, and how they change over time. GSN is inspired by the World Values Survey and the International Social Survey Programme, with the difference that each study is designed to address specific, theoretically motivated research questions while producing datasets that can be useful for studying other research questions.
More information about GSN and the studies conducted within the network can be found here: www.globalsocialnorms.org.
