Breaking Social Norms: A Coffee Shop Observation

Introduction: The Self-Bussing Norm

A busy coffee shop I visit regularly has a self-bussing policy. Most patrons dutifully clean up after themselves, and I cannot recall ever seeing someone leave dirty dishes behind. For this exercise, I decided to violate that norm by leaving my dirty dishes on the table.

Because I did not want to make a bad impression on the staff of a place I enjoy visiting, I told the barista that I was going to leave without bussing my table. The look on her face told me that I was breaking a social norm simply by announcing my intention — which added an interesting dimension to the exercise. She seemed puzzled that I would state something so directly about something as seemingly trivial as not putting away a mug and a plate.

Carrying Out the Violation

I wanted to focus on the main norm violation to see whether other people in the coffee shop would say something to me if I got up without cleaning the table. When I reached the door, I looked back, and the next person who wanted to take my seat simply carried my dirty dishes to the bussing station. Essentially, that person had to clean up after me. I felt guilty.

Then I noticed something interesting: two other people got up to leave, and only one of them cleaned their table. It might have been a coincidence, but I could not help thinking about the fact that norms are created because we collectively agree to behave in a certain way. In the coffee shop, the policy exists so that all patrons can enjoy a clean table without overburdening the already busy staff. Norms are reinforced through verbal censure, shaming, or, in extreme cases, legal prosecution. Yet at other times, a norm violation is not considered serious enough to warrant a response — as was the case here.

Defining Social Norms

Norms are "standards of behavior that are based on widely held beliefs about how individual group members ought to behave in a given situation" (Bernhard, Fehr & Fischbacher, 2006, p. 217). Because many norms are arbitrary, what is normative in one setting may not be in another. I realized that an even bigger norm violation would have been to bus my own table at a fine-dining restaurant. Not cleaning up after myself at the coffee shop might come across as lazy, but bussing my own table at a restaurant with full table service would have seemed far stranger. I felt slightly guilty for not cleaning up at the coffee shop, but I would have felt deeply embarrassed to attempt the reverse — clearing my own dishes in a formal restaurant where staff are expected to do so.

Punishment, Compliance, and Machiavellian Behavior

One thing I considered at the coffee shop was how "norm obedience sometimes vanishes quickly in the absence of a credible punishment threat" (Spitzer, Fischbacher, Hermberger, et al., 2007). There is no credible punishment for leaving dirty dishes on the table, beyond the possibility that the staff might remember you and be less friendly on your next visit. Yet when I noticed another patron also leaving dirty dishes, I wondered whether people comply with the policy only because those around them are complying — that is, people are polite primarily because they do not want to look bad in front of others.

This may be why violating norms is sometimes associated with perceived power. Neuroscience research suggests that norm violators tend to exhibit Machiavellian traits (Spitzer, Fischbacher, Hermberger, et al., 2007). Likewise, Mu, Kitayama, Han & Gelfand (2015) used electroencephalography to examine subjects' brain activity during observed norm violations and identified "a culture-general neural marker of detecting norm violations" (p. 15348).