Modesty is a norm, and it changes
What it is proper to show, to whom and where, is neither universal nor stable. Historians have traced its shifts since the Middle Ages.
Display rules
Since 1969, psychology has called display rules the social conventions that determine what must be shown, softened, intensified or masked. They vary by culture, but also by the status of the interlocutors, the place and the type of state concerned.
The reference experiment compares Japanese and American viewers watching a distressing film, alone and then in the presence of an authority figure. The social context alters what is seen, without allowing any inference about what is experienced.
What historians have documented
Work in the history of sensibilities describes, from the Middle Ages to the classical age, a progressive tightening of what it is proper to display in public: the anger of the powerful, a man's tears, the noisy manifestations of mourning, tolerated or even expected in certain periods, become incongruous in others.
This movement is neither linear nor universal, and historians dispute its extent. What they establish without difficulty, on the other hand, is that the current norm is not the natural norm: it is dated, and it has already changed several times.
The case of tears
Tears offer the best observatory. Crying in public has been, depending on the period and the milieu, a sign of piety, a valued mark of sensibility, a weakness to hide, a proof of political sincerity, then once again a professional impropriety.
Even today, the same tear does not have the same meaning depending on who sheds it and where. The variation is not residual: it is the main phenomenon, and any reading that neglects it has the wrong object.
A variation between countries
A study published in 2015 proposed an explanation for the variation in smiling norms between countries: where the population results from a long and diverse migratory history, the smile would be more valued as a signal of connection, for lack of shared codes; where it is historically homogeneous, it would more often be read as a marker of hierarchy or intention.
The hypothesis rests on correlations at country level, with all the caution that imposes. It has the merit of recalling that an expression as elementary as a smile is not read the same way everywhere.
Why this concerns everyone
A little-expressive person in a demonstrative milieu passes for cold; the same person, in a reserved milieu, passes for normal. It is not they who change, it is the reference norm, and the judgement in fact bears on the gap.
The same is true of questionnaires: answering that one is rather reserved presupposes an implicit comparison with those around one, who are not the same for everyone. This bias, known as the reference group effect, distorts part of the comparisons between populations.
Key points
Display rules determine what it is proper to show, and they vary by culture, status and place.
The history of sensibilities shows that the current norm is dated and has already changed several times.
A judgement about someone's expressiveness in fact bears on their gap from a local norm.
This article describes documented mechanisms and disagreements. It recommends no position, no party and no vote, and commits to no reading other than that of the work it cites.
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