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Manners

‘Manners’ is a term usually preceded by the word good or bad to indicate whether or not a behavior is socially acceptable. Every culture adheres to a different set of manners, although a lot of manners are cross‐culturally common.

Theoretical history:

Perspectives of Sociology

In his book The Civilizing Process, Norbert Elias argues that manners arose as a product of group living and persist as a way of maintaining social order. He theorized that manners proliferated during the Renaissance in response to the development of the ‘absolute state’ – the progression from small group living to the centralization of power by the state. Elias believed that the rituals associated with manners in the Court Society of England during this period were closely bound with social status. To him manners demonstrate an individual’s position within a social network and act as a means by which the individual can negotiate that position.

Petersen and Lupton argue that manners helped reduce the boundaries between the public sphere and the private sphere and gave rise to “a highly reflective self, a self who monitors his or her behavior with due regard for others with whom he or she interacts socially.” They explain that that; “The public behavior of individuals came to signify their social standing, a means of presenting the self and of evaluating others and thus the control of the outward self was vital.” From this perspective, manners are seen not just as a means of displaying one’s social status, but also as a means of maintaining social boundaries around class and identity.

Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of ‘habitus’ can also contribute to the understanding of manners. The habitus, he explains, is a set of ‘dispositions’ that are neither self‐determined, nor pre‐determined, by external environmental factors. They tend to operate at a subconscious level and are “inculcated through experience and explicit teaching” and produced and reproduced by social interactions. Manners, in this view, are likely to be a central part of the ‘dispositions’ which guide an individual’s ability to make socially compliant behavioral decisions.

Perspectives of Anthropology

Anthropologists concern themselves primarily with detailing cultural variances and differences in ‘ways of seeing’. Theorists such as Mary Douglas have claimed that each culture’s unique set of manners, behaviors and rituals enable the local cosmology to remain ordered and free from those things that may pollute or defile it. In particular, she suggests that ideas of pollution and disgust are attached to the margins of socially acceptable behavior to curtail such actions and maintain“ the assumptions by which experience is controlled.”

Perspectives of Evolutionary Biology

Evolutionary biology looks at the origin of behavior and the motivation behind it. Charles Darwin analyzed the remarkable universality of facial responses to disgust, shame and other complex emotions.   Having identified the same behavior in young infants and blind individuals he concluded that these responses are not learned but innate. According to Val Curtis, the development of these responses was concomitant with the development of manners behavior. For Curtis, manners play an evolutionary role in the prevention of disease. This assumes that those who were hygienic, polite to others and most able to benefit from their membership within a cultural group, stand the best chance of survival and reproduction.

Catherine Cottrell and Steven Neuberg explore how our behavioral responses to ‘otherness’ may enable the preservation of manners and norms. They suggest that the foreignness or unfamiliarity we experience when interacting with different cultural groups for the first time, may partly serve an evolutionary function: “Group living surrounds one with individuals able to physically harm fellow group members, to spread contagious disease, or to “free ride” on their efforts. A commitment to sociality thus carries a risk: If threats such as these are left unchecked, the costs of sociality will quickly exceed its benefits. Thus, to maximize the returns on group living, individual group members should be attuned to others’ features or behaviors.”

Thus, people who possess similar traits, common to the group, are to be trusted, whereas those who do not are to be considered as ‘others’ and treated with suspicion or even exclusion. Curtis argues that selective pressure borne out of a shift towards communal living would have resulted in individuals being shunned from the group for hygiene lapses or uncooperative behavior. This would have led to people avoiding actions that might result in embarrassment or others being disgusted. Joseph Henrich and Robert Boyd developed a model to demonstrate this process at work. They explain natural selection has favored the acquisition of genetically transmitted learning mechanisms that increase an individual’s chance of acquiring locally adaptive behavior. They hypothesize that: “Humans possess a reliably developing neural encoding that compels them both to punish individuals who violate group norms (common beliefs or practices) and punish individuals who do not punish norm violators.” From this approach, manners a are a means of mitigating undesirable behavior and fostering the benefits of in‐group cooperation.

Differentiation of manner types

Curtis’ also specifically outlines three manner categories; hygiene, courtesy and cultural norms, each of which help to account for the multifaceted role manners play in society. These categories are based on the outcome rather than the motivation of manners behavior and individual manner behaviors may fit in to 2 or more categories.

Hygiene Manners – are any manners which affect disease transmission. They are likely to be taught at an early age, primarily through parental discipline, positive behavioral enforcement around continence with bodily fluids (such as toilet training) and the avoidance or removal of items that pose a disease risk for children. It is expected that, by adulthood, hygiene manners are so entrenched in one’s behavior that they become second nature. Violations are likely to elicit disgust responses.

Courtesy Manners – demonstrate one’s ability to put the interests of others before oneself; to display self‐control and good intent for the purposes of being trusted in social interactions. Courtesy manners help to maximize the benefits of group living by regulating social interaction. Disease avoidance behavior can sometimes be compromised in the performance of courtesy manners. They may be taught in the same way as hygiene manners but are likely to also be learned through direct, indirect (ie observing the interactions of others) or imagined (ie through the executive functions of the brain) social interactions. The learning of courtesy manners may take place at an older age than hygiene manners, because individuals must have at least some means of communication and some awareness of self and social positioning. The violation of courtesy manners most commonly results in social disapproval from peers.

Cultural Norm Manners – typically demonstrate one’s identity within a specific socio‐cultural group. Adherence to cultural norm manners allows for the demarcation of socio‐cultural identities and the creation of boundaries which inform who is to be trusted or who is to be deemed as ‘other’. Cultural norm manners are learnt through the enculturation and routinisation of ‘the familiar’ and through exposure to ‘otherness’ or those who are identified as foreign or different. Transgressions and non‐adherence to cultural norm manners commonly result in alienation. Cultural norms, by their very nature, have a high level of between‐group variability but are likely to be common to all those who identify with a given group identity.

Characteristics of Manners

Manners are:

1. Rules which define and order human interactions

• Manners determine social interactions because of an individual’s awareness of their social roles and awareness of how others might perceive them.

2. Rules imposing some level of self‐restraint and compromise.
3. Performative

• Actions done in isolation cannot be considered manners unless they are witnessed by others.
• A person’s behavior is likely to vary depending on who is observing them.

4. Characterized by the consequence of their real or imagined violation, resulting in:

• The perpetrator of the manners violation feeling shame. 
• The witness of the manners violation feeling disgust, amusement or a desire to socially exclude the perpetrator. 

5. Characterised by the consequences of their real or imagined adherence, resulting in: 

• Improved social status. 
• Greater benefits from social relationships 
• Acceptance into a specific cultural group. 

6. Reliant on self‐regulation and social policing rather than formal law enforcement.  

7. Learnt through  

• Mimicry
• Repetition 
• Social reward and acceptance 
• Direct, indirect or imagined experiences of disgust and shame. 
• Discipline and punishment.