Haley: Understanding Social Norms
After graduating college, I applied for a teaching program in Thailand on a whim and moved to Asia for a year. As I immersed myself in a culture so different from my own, I attempted to understand new behaviors, utilizing my knowledge of social psychology to understand these differences. One thing I noticed was a big difference in cultural norms. For example, differences in the prevalence of one major worldview influenced how teachers are treated. In Thailand, teachers are treated with far more respect than in Western countries due to the importance of Buddhist customs and norms, which are accepted by a large majority of the country. On the other hand, the many varying belief systems in Western cultures lead to a variety of norms for the treatment of teachers, causing a greater variability in how students treat teachers. Analyzing these types of differences gave me a firsthand look at applying social psychology to a world beyond my own.