Complete Name of Student
Norms, sanctions, and values play a pivotal role in the society—they are basically applied for social control to maintain the harmony in the society. Also, they are part of the culture in which they are agreed upon by a group of people. Norms, sanctions, and values differ from one society to another with respect to cultural and geographical differences. However, they serve the same functions in every society.
Norms are set of rules of behavior which are based on the values of a particular community. Examples of which are wearing clothes, obeying traffic signals, paying bills, and the likes. Basically, norms serve as guidelines on how to present yourself in a socially acceptable way in a given community as people are expected to behave in certain ways. This, however, is dependent on their roles in the community. For example, the doctors are expected to treat ill people; and the police are obliged to preserve law and order in the community. Those who break the norms and do not follow the rules, on the other hand, are called deviant.
Moreover, sanctions are the rewards or punishments given to individuals who follow or do not follow the norms. There are two kinds of sanctions: 1) formal sanctions which are enforced by the law organizations, institutions, and societies; and 2) informal sanctions which are usually unwritten which are based on personal relations, and sometimes it tends to be based on public opinion. Sanctions can either be positive or negative depending on the individual in a particular community.
Finally, values are shared assumptions about what is good, what is right, and what is important. These may differ from culture to culture—one society may consider a certain way of life as good, while another believes otherwise. Values may change from time to time depending on the status of a society. For example, in a complex society such as the United States of America, values may vary in a shorter period of time as compared to traditional societies due to the more complex social interactions.
