56 I Can Read You Like a Book
Exercise
Make a short list of formal cultural norming practices
in place around you that affect how you behave. A
few examples are:
ƒ If you attend a church with services dominated by
ritual (the Catholic Mass, for instance), what behav-
iors are required of you? Do any of those behaviors
surface when you’re around the same people, even
in a setting outside of church?
ƒ The Medieval re-creations (in which I’m very involved)
require strict adherence to certain courtly and battle-
field practices. A deviation from that will likely get
you booted out of the group, or publicly chastised.
Here’s another thought to get you started: I know of a 30-person
company that adopted a no smoking policy in the workplace in the
early 1990s, before it was a common practice. All six smokers who
worked there eventually found themselves taking breaks about the
same time and hanging out at the same spot outside the building.
They grew into their own sub-culture within the organization and
established social norming practices such as when and where to
take breaks, body language to signal “it’s time to take a break,” or
“I wish it were time to take a break.”
If you’re part of five groups, you’ll have social mimicry in all
five of them, even ones as informal as the smokers’ group. By the