Social_Norms_Case_Study_-_Analysis_of_$500_Wedding_Cash_Gift_Bride

Analysis of $500 wedding cash gift bride Recently, a bride-to-be 23 years old girl wrote in her facebook that she does not welcome guests who are going to paid HKD500 or less cash wedding gift to her wedding banquet. The screen capture of her facebook had been widely forwarded in facebook and what's app chat rooms. In several discussion forums, there were over 20,000 replies for the posts discussing this topic within 3 days. This issue had unexpectedly become the news of over 9 local newspapers too. We are going to analyses this incident from both bride's side and internet discussion forum users' side. From Bride's view A. Social norms In the modern society, there are spoken or unspoken rules indicating how we should behave. These rules are known as social norms, which tell us what most people do in a given situation, and inform us about what is generally seen as appropriate or adaptive behavior in that situation. How would social norms apply in a wedding situation' In Hong Kong, the form of wedding is divided into two extremes - either very simple or very gorgeous. For couples who like simple wedding, they may arrange overseas wedding without holding wedding banquet in Hong Kong, or only have a dinner with the direct family members. In contrast, many couples either wish to hold wedding banquet by their own desire or under the stress of their parents to hold wedding banquets. Why wedding in Hong Kong are in two extremes but seldom in the middle' It is because in the social norms in Hong Kong, there are some "basic requirements" for a wedding banquet, which are all very expensive, gorgeous and luxurious. For the venue has to be grand, and hotel is regarded to be better than Chinese restaurant. Food in the banquet has to include 8 certain dishes, plus rice, noodles and dessert. Pre-wedding photos taken by professionals have to be shown. Professional make up artist, video takers and photographers have to be hired. Bride has to change her dresses at least 3 times during her banquet. Anyone who cannot fulfill these basic requirements but hold a wedding banquet would be regarded as lack of money and poor organization. As wedding banquet is also regarded as an event for people to show off their wealth, people who cannot fulfill the basic requirements of a banquet would likely lead to the shame of both groom's and bride's families. B. Conformity People are likely to change or adopt their behavior or their attitude in order to be consistent with the social norms of a group or the expectations of other people, this is known as conformity. The best-known experiment on conformity was conducted by Asch (1951, 1955). The experiment was simple, lines with obvious different length were shown to participants, and participants were asked which line matched the length of a standard line. The results shown that over 70% of the participants were at least sometimes conformed to the incorrect answer provided by the confederates who gave the answer before their turn. This shows that people are affected by the pressure given by the others around them even if they do not think in that way at the beginning. When it is in a social wide scale, people are likely to conform to the social norms. Whatever form social norms take place, no matter they are explicit or implicit, most social norms are obeyed by most persons most of the time (Cialdini, 1994). In the case mentioned in the beginning, the bride is conforming the social norm to hold a gorgeous wedding banquet. Most of the couples in Hong Kong try their very best to hold a gorgeous wedding banquet which at least meets the "basic requirement" in the social norm even if they do not have enough financial basis. Some of the couples may borrow money from parents, some may borrow money from financial institutes. Thus, the cash wedding gifts from the guests of the wedding banquet are regarded as an important source of money to pay the bill of the banquet. Implicit norm is guests should give cash wedding gift at least the same cost of the food they have. That is, if the cost of a 12-seats table cost HKD6,000, each guest should at least give HKD500 cash wedding gift. Social norms for gorgeous wedding explains why the bride in this case holds a gorgeous wedding banquet - buffet in hotel which costs HKD9000 or above for a 12 person table; and explains why she expects her guest should give HKD800 each for the cash wedding gift. (HKD800 x 12 = HKD9,600) C. Social comparison According to Festinger (1954), individuals are motivated to gain accurate evaluations of themselves by examining their abilities in comparison to others. For the bride in our case, she compares herself with her colleague who held wedding banquet in Chinese Restaurant. The bride regards herself is more superior than her colleague. In the word of Wills (1981), this is a kind of downward social comparison, which make herself feel better about her personal situation. So she thinks if the guest going to the wedding banquet of her colleague paid HKD500, the guests who go to her wedding banquet should pay more, since she is holding the wedding banquet in hotel and is more superior than her colleague. From internet discussion forum users' view I. Social norm In Hong Kong, there is an implicit rule that people should not proactively ask the guests for any gift. What is even worse for the bride in our case is, she publicly requests her guest for a certain amount of the cash wedding gift. This seriously break the rule in the social norm. Thus she has become the blaming target of the forum ursers. II. Anonymous weaken the struggle between ID and Superego The forum users strongly blame the bride because she has broken the social rule which does not allow explicit request of the amount of cash wedding gift. They search all her personal information and widely post/ forward in the internet, these include the bride's age, place of work, love experiences, photos with her ex-boyfriends, photos in swimming suit, the date of wedding, and even her mobile phone number. On top of that, they used a lot of extreme words to criticize the bride. This has made the bride deeply depressed and her daily life is affected. Actually discussion forum users do not know the bride, that is, the bride is a stranger for them. Why they have such large reaction' Here we try to analysis their reaction by using Freud's theory. According to Freud (1933/ 1965), people's personality consists largely of three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id consists of all our primitive, innate urges, including bodily needs, sexual desire, aggressive and destructive impulses. This id operates in pleasure principle, it demands immediate, total gratification and is not capable of considering the potential costs of seeking this goal. The ego operates in accordance with the reality principle: It takes into account external conditions and the consequences of various actions and directs behavior so as to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Superego concerned with morality - judge right or wrong. The superego permits us to gratify such impulses only when it is morally correct to do so - not simply when it is safe and feasible. In normal situation, superego controls the impulse from id morally, with the consideration of right or wrong and consequences. However, in the cyber situation on internet, people can be anonymous. This makes people think that they do not have to think too much about the consequences and responsibility. Thus, the control of the superego becomes loose and people are more likely to satisfy the urge from their id. This turn into internet bullying to satisfy their pleasure needs without thinking morally that is not correct or not, whether that will hurt the bride, the groom and the family members around them. Conclusion Nearly all of us cannot be escape from the power of social norms and conformity The bride in this case conforms to the social norms to hold a gorgeous wedding banquet but she also break the social norms to explicitly request for a certain amount of cash wedding gift, this causes her has become a target to be criticized. What make the situation worse is, the internet in the modern world makes people can do whatever they like in the cyber world with anonymous, people's superego then have less moral control over the id. This turns into a large scale internet bullying which surprises the real world, and has become the news of local newspapers. From here, we can see that internet change the way of thinking and moral standard of people when they express their opinions on the internet, which then will affect the life in our reality. References Asch, S.E. (1951), Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgements. In H. Guetzkow (Ed.), Groups, leadership, and men. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Press. Asch, S.E. (1955), Opinions and social pressure. Scientific American, 193, 31-35 Cialdini, R.B.(1994), Interpersonal influence. In S. Shavitt & T.C. Brock (Eds). Persuasion (pp. 195-218), Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2) 117-140. Freud (1933/ 1965), New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis (J. Strachey, Trans). New York: W.W. Norton. (Original work published 1930) Lahey, PSYCHOLOGY An Introduction. McGraw-Hill Internation Edition. Wills, T. A. (1981). Downward comparison principles in social psychology. Psychological Bulletin, 90, 245-271. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.90.2.245