DSN Flashcards
Supports general ideas of abnormality
A strength of the DSN definition is that it has face validity, supporting the general views that most people have of what abnormality is. Most
individuals diagnosed with having a mental disorder do show behaviours that deviate from
social norms. For example, social phobics have a great fear of social situations and so avoid social situations, which goes against the general norms of our society. Additionally, people with major depressive disorder gain very little enjoyment from most activities and so often become disengaged from many aspects of everyday life, and they may ‘cut themselves off’
from seeing other people, and again this deviates from social norms. The fact that it supports the general view of what abnormality means is easier for individuals to apply the criteria.
Social norms change over time
main difficulty with the deviation from social norms definition is that norms as defined by society, are not constant but often relate to moral standards that vary over time as social attitudes change. This means that this approach to defining abnormality is very much era-dependent – behaviours that are
considered abnormal now may not be considered abnormal in the future. For example, homosexuality was once considered abnormal behaviour because it broke the social norms of the day. Attitudes have changed considerably now, and homosexuality is no longer an
abnormal behaviour, yet homosexuality was only removed from Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual as a mental disorder in the 1970s. This suggests that we have to be careful when using Deviation from Social Norms as a way of defining abnormal behaviour because social norms change over time, and so this therefore challenges the validity of this definition.
