Etiquette

In a society, manners are described as either good manners or as bad manners to indicate whether a person's behaviour is acceptable to the cultural group. As such, manners enable ultrasociality and are integral to the functioning of the social norms and conventions that are informally enforced through self-regulation. The perspectives of sociology indicate that manners are a means for people to display their social status, and a means of demarcating, observing, and maintaining the boundaries of social identity and of social class.[12]

In The Civilizing Process (1939), sociologist Norbert Elias said that manners arose as a product of group living, and persist as a way of maintaining social order. Manners proliferated during the Renaissance in response to the development of the 'absolute state'—the progression from small-group living to large-group living characterised by the centralized power of the State. The rituals and manners associated with the royal court of England during that period were closely bound to a person's social status. Manners demonstrate a person's position within a social network, and a person's manners are a means of negotiation from that social position.[13]

From the perspective of public health, in The Healthy Citizen (1996), Alana R. Petersen and Deborah Lupton said that manners assisted the diminishment of the social boundaries that existed between the public sphere and the private sphere of a person's life, and so 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"; and 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."[14]

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu applied the concept of habitus to define the societal functions of manners. The habitus is the set of mental attitudes, personal habits, and skills that a person possesses—his or her dispositions of character that are neither self-determined, nor pre-determined by the external environment, but which are produced and reproduced by social interactions—and are "inculcated through experience and explicit teaching", yet tend to function at the subconscious level.[15] Manners are likely to be a central part of the dispositions that guide a person's ability to decide upon socially-compliant behaviours.[16]

In Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (2003) the anthropologist Mary Douglas said that manners, social behaviors, and group rituals enable the local cosmology to remain ordered and free from those things that may pollute or defile the integrity of the culture. Ideas of pollution, defilement, and disgust are attached to the margins of socially acceptable behaviour in order to curtail unacceptable behaviour, and so maintain "the assumptions by which experience is controlled" within the culture.[17]

In studying the expression of emotion by humans and animals, naturalist Charles Darwin noted the universality of facial expressions of disgust and shame among infants and blind people, and concluded that the emotional responses of shame and disgust are innate behaviours.[18]

Public health specialist Valerie Curtis said that the development of facial responses was concomitant with the development of manners, which are behaviours with an evolutionary role in preventing the transmission of diseases, thus, people who practise personal hygiene and politeness will most benefit from membership in their social group, and so stand the best chance of biological survival, by way of opportunities for reproduction.[19][20]

From the study of the evolutionary bases of prejudice, social psychologists Catherine Cottrell and Steven Neuberg said that human behavioural responses to 'otherness' might enable the preservation of manners and social norms.[21] The feeling of "foreignness"—which people experience in their first social interaction with someone from another culture—might partly serve an evolutionary function: 'Group living surrounds one with individuals [who are] able to physically harm fellow group members, to spread contagious disease, or to "free ride" on their efforts'; therefore, a commitment to sociality is 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.'[21]

Therefore, people who possess the social traits common to the cultural group are to be trusted, and people without the common social traits are to be distrusted as 'others', and thus treated with suspicion or excluded from the group. That pressure of social exclusivity, born from the shift towards communal living, excluded uncooperative people and persons with poor personal hygiene. The threat of social exclusion led people to avoid personal behaviours that might embarrass the group or that might provoke revulsion among the group.[19]

To demonstrate the transmission of social conformity, anthropologists Joseph Henrich and Robert Boyd developed a behavioural model in which manners are a means of mitigating social differences, curbing undesirable personal behaviours, and fostering co-operation within the social group. Natural selection favoured the acquisition of genetically transmitted mechanisms for learning, thereby increasing a person's chances for acquiring locally adaptive behaviours: "Humans possess a reliably developing neural encoding that compels them both to punish individuals who violate group norms (common beliefs or practices) and [to] punish individuals who do not punish norm-violators."[22]

Social manners are in three categories: (i) manners of hygiene, (ii) manners of courtesy, and (iii) manners of cultural norm. Each category accounts for an aspect of the functional role that manners play in a society. The categories of manners are based upon the social outcome of behaviour, rather than upon the personal motivation of the behaviour. As a means of social management, the rules of etiquette encompass most aspects of human social interaction; thus, a rule of etiquette reflects an underlying ethical code and a person's fashion and social status.[19]

Manners of hygiene

concern avoiding the transmission of disease, and usually are taught by the parent to the child by way of parental discipline, positive behavioural enforcement of body-fluid continence (toilet training), and the avoidance of and removal of disease vectors that risk the health of children. Society expects that by adulthood the manners for personal hygiene have become a second-nature behaviour, violations of which shall provoke physical and moral disgust. Hygiene etiquette during the COVID-19 pandemic included social distancing and warnings against public spitting.[23]

Manners of courtesy

concern self-control and good-faith behaviour, by which a person gives priority to the interests of another person, and priority to the interests of a socio-cultural group, in order to be a trusted member of that group. Courtesy manners maximize the benefits of group-living by regulating the nature of social interactions; however, the performance of courtesy manners occasionally interferes with the avoidance of communicable disease. Generally, parents teach courtesy manners in the same way they teach hygiene manners, but the child also learns manners directly (by observing the behaviour of other people in their social interactions) and by imagined social interactions (through the executive functions of the brain). A child usually learns courtesy manners at an older age than when he or she was toilet trained (taught hygiene manners), because learning the manners of courtesy requires that the child be self-aware and conscious of social position, which then facilitate understanding that violations (accidental or deliberate) of social courtesy will provoke peer disapproval within the social group.

Manners of cultural norms

concern the social rules by which a person establishes his or her identity and membership in a given socio-cultural group. In abiding the manners of cultural norm, a person demarcates socio-cultural identity and establishes social boundaries, which then identify whom to trust and whom to distrust as 'the other'. Cultural norm manners are learnt through the enculturation with and the routinisation of 'the familiar', and through social exposure to the 'cultural otherness' of people identified as foreign to the group. Transgressions and flouting of the manners of cultural norm usually result in the social alienation of the transgressor. The nature of culture-norm manners allows a high level of intra-group variability, but the manners usually are common to the people who identify with the given socio-cultural group.[19]

16th century

The Book of the Courtier (1528), by Baldassare Castiglione, identified the manners and the morals required by socially ambitious men and women for success in a royal court of the Italian Renaissance (14th–17th c.); as an etiquette text, The Courtier was an influential courtesy book in 16th-century Europe.

On Civility in Children (1530), by Erasmus of Rotterdam, instructs boys in the means of becoming a young man; how to walk and talk, speak and act in the company of adults. The practical advice for acquiring adult self-awareness includes explanations of the symbolic meanings—for adults—of a boy's body language when he is fidgeting and yawning, scratching and bickering. On completing Erasmus's curriculum of etiquette, the boy has learnt that civility is the point of good manners: the adult ability to 'readily ignore the faults of others, but avoid falling short, yourself,' in being civilised.[24]

20th century

Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home (1922), by Emily Post documents the "trivialities" of desirable conduct in daily life, and provided pragmatic approaches to the practice of good manners—the social conduct expected and appropriate for the events of life, such as a baptism, a wedding, and a funeral.[25]

As didactic texts, books of etiquette (the conventional rules of personal behaviour in polite society) usually feature explanatory titles, such as The Ladies' Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness: A Complete Hand Book for the Use of the Lady in Polite Society (1860), by Florence Hartley;[26] Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette (1957);[27] Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior (1979), by Judith Martin;[28] and Peas & Queues: The Minefield of Modern Manners (2013), by Sandi Toksvig.[29] Such books present ranges of civility, socially acceptable behaviours for their respective times. Each author cautions the reader that to be a well-mannered person they must practise good manners in their public and private lives.

The How Rude! comic-book series addresses and discusses adolescent perspectives and questions of etiquette, social manners, and civility.[30]

In commerce, the purpose of etiquette is to facilitate the social relations necessary for realising business transactions; in particular, social interactions among workers, and between labour and management. Business etiquette varies by culture, such as the Chinese and Australian approaches to conflict resolution. The Chinese business philosophy is based upon guanxi (personal connections), whereby person-to-person negotiation resolves difficult matters, whereas Australian business philosophy relies upon attorneys-at-law to resolve business conflicts through legal mediation;[31] thus, adjusting to the etiquette and professional ethics of another culture is an element of culture shock for businesspeople.[32]

In 2011, etiquette trainers formed the Institute of Image Training and Testing International (IITTI) a non-profit organisation to train personnel departments in measuring and developing and teaching social skills to employees, by way of education in the rules of personal and business etiquette, in order to produce business workers who possess standardised manners for successfully conducting business with people from other cultures.[33]

In the retail branch of commerce, the saying "the customer is always right" summarises the profit-orientation of good manners, between the buyer and the seller of goods and services:

There are always two sides to the case, of course, and it is a credit to good manners that there is scarcely ever any friction in stores and shops of the first class. Salesmen and women are usually persons who are both patient and polite, and their customers are most often ladies in fact as well as "by courtesy." Between those before and those behind the counters, there has sprung up in many instances a relationship of mutual goodwill and friendliness. It is, in fact, only the woman who is afraid that someone may encroach upon her exceedingly insecure dignity, who shows neither courtesy nor consideration to any except those whom she considers it to her advantage to please.

— Emily Post Etiquette 1922