What is normal?

Psychology tends to focus a lot on abnormal psychology. Further, life in general tends to place more emphasis on what's wrong with society. One debate I see is people arguing over what defines normal. Is there such a thing? We focus so much on listing abnormalities that it seems as if we forgot to define what exactly normal was.

~M

Normal is compliance with the social etiquette and moral laws, and furthermore, the embracing of such things as one's centralized point for understanding oneself, and the society around them. It is a generally agreed upon set and series of actions and behaviours, to which the majority (typically the vast majority) follow.

To be abnormal is to express behaviours, opinions, or actions, which contrast to the generally agreed upon social norms of the society in question. I am relatively normal within the confines of where I live, but if you were to put me in China, or Iran, I would be committing social faux pas left and right.

To be deviant is to express behaviours, opinions, or actions, which the majority of people (or at least those who are in power over the society) consider to be illegitimate or immoral. An example of this in Western Civilization would be wanting to marry your sister. Some of these behaviours are accordingly punished determined by whether or not the society (or the people who are in power over society) decide if such behaviours cause damage of some discernible form.

Normal is a constantly evolving and changing state. Specific aspects of society are fluid, culture adapts and changes with technology, resources, politics, immigration, social trends, media, et cetera. Broad scopes of society do not change without extreme, sweeping mentality changes both on the part of the common person, and the government. (Ex: Women gaining the right to work and vote was one of the consequences of World War 1 & World War 2--when women were required to work in both wars to produce munitions for the front lines, thus ejecting tens of thousands of them from their social norms and forcing government to adapt to new norms itself.)

In terms of defining what is normal, that is not a particularly difficult task. You need only narrow the question to within reasonable guidelines, then within the frame of those guidelines, start asking questions.

For example: What is a normal set of behaviours, actions, and expectations for an adult male who grew up within Western Society in the modern era?
#1: They will get a job.
#2: They will pay taxes.
#3: They will be more likely than women to be the main breadwinner, and to feel compelled to be the main breadwinner should it come down to a choice between them.
#4: They are more competitive than their female counterparts.
#5: They are more likely to die in workplace accidents or wartime fatalities.
#6: They will generally abide by empathetic laws, so long as they are not greatly intoxicated or mentally unstable. (Ex: They will not murder, they will not commit grand theft auto, et cetera.)

Those are six off the top of my head. You can then further extrapolate and attempt to explore the root cause for why these are normal behaviours and actions and expectations, in contrast to what would then be considered abnormal behaviours, actions, and expectations. For example...

"Why do men get jobs?"
A. To be self-sufficient, which is an aspect of masculinity--culture.
B. To be able to acquire goods and services which they desire--ego, survivalist.
C. Because society looks down upon men who do not attempt to earn their keep--social pressure.

Et cetera.

tl;dr: Occam's Razor and the Scientific Method are your friends in the quest to understanding anything in the universe.

Nillum pretty well hit on my thoughts on the matter. It really just comes down to social expectations and percentages. However it IS a combination of the two. The former, can influence the latter, and vice verse.

For example, most people develop heterosexual. Thus we could say that homosexuality is an abnormal development. It's not the development that most humans follow. HOWEVER, on a societal level we can come to understand that a small percentage of humans have always, and will likely always, find themselves attracted to people of the same sex.

We can then as a society come to understand that this small percentage is normal. We can begin as a society to accept that it's normal, and things like legalizing gay marriages begins to influence societal views and it becomes normal to see same-sex couples getting together.

By homosexuality maintaining a consistent but low level of presentation into human development it becomes normal for it to occur within that percentage.

However if that small percentage raised or dropped drastically out of nowhere, then we might assume that something abnormal happened that influenced human development. If that change was permanent and consistent over time, then what is considered normal would in turn adapt and change to reflect that.

It is truly… interesting to me that science seems to put very little into defining this themselves. I could be wrong in saying that. My text for a class I am taking right now discusses that many attempts have been made at defining abnormality, but thus far, none have truly been satisfactory enough. The reason for this, in my own opinion, is because it is really hard to define normal. As you two put, the word normal is… a subject which is constantly evolving based on a myriad of factors from psychology, to sociology, culture and gender norms, etc. Studying psychology, which is technically a science (debatable), it is hard sometimes to look at things from a scientific lens because science is really invested in theory and facts (which also change, and usually do over the course of many years). But, there really appears to be so… little reinforcement behind abnormal behavior in general. We really are just scratching the surface in terms of defining abnormal or even figuring out its etiology (cause).

Occam’s Razor is a great point in terms of taking the simplest explanation as for the answer for most things. Sadly, I love to complicate everything. As a society in general, we really seem to love categorizing everything and have an exact definition for things. I don’t think we will ever really be able to 100% define abnormal or normal behavior because it is constantly changing based on our perspective and needs as a society.

I'm not sure what my goal with this question was, but these are the kinds of question that stem from discussions in class that interests me a bit. We are always going to continue experimenting and viewing things empirically. I almost feel that the word normal or abnormal is almost unneeded because it will always evolve based on society. Already I am seeing that abnormal behavior is slowly going mainstream in terms of being accepted, so, how abnormal is it when most people in their lifetime face things like depression at some point? Is that considered normal?

~M

Essentially, to sum up everything in it's entirety, normalcy, or normality as it were, is a perceived notion of regular, stable awareness. Perception of self determines normalcy, so being 'normal' is subjective to one's culture, background, and the surrounding social constructs that control the state of what is 'normal' in said person's society.

Perception is everything.

adjective

1. 1.
   conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected
   
   noun
   1. 1.
      the usual, typical, or expected state or condition.
      
      Pick one.

Well, it depends on who's looking, you can look at two cats and say they're normal, now bring in eight dogs. Who's more normal? The dogs. This can also apply to humans, most of us (NOT EVERYONE) wants to fit in and wear the "mask" that society molded for us. Some are cats, some are dogs.

Normal is just a label it never exists within human beings because we aren't perfect.

Normal is a point of view.

Normal doesn't exist. Similar to time it is a concept created by humanity.

Comply with the beliefs of humanity: your normal

Don't comply: your not normal. You might even be killed, tortured, or chased by angry mobs depending on the time period.