I have earlier written about how people criticise when i wear my fur coat when it’s spring or summer when you are supposed to Finnish norms, wear summer clothes EVEN if it’s cold. I have had my suspicions why this happens, but I have not had real facts to back it up and I have not realised what the harsh truth about it is, when looking into psychological behaviour of humans.
I wanted to understand more, because it happened today again. Someone disguising a “funny question” even it it’s straight out is an “attack” and between the lines I can read how they want to ask what is wrong with me when I wear a fur coat in the spring. And even if today the sun was shining from a clear blue sky, it was cold, about 4-5 degrees.
So I have dug deep in psychology and human behaviour about why people do this. Of course some people have the courage to come and say “you have a nice coat”. But most times people either criticise by saying something like the man at the car wash today, or just silently criticise, look and roll their eyes or similar.
The truth? My coat is a status-quo bomb. People attack because I expose their blind obedience to arbitrary rules. In Finland you are supposed to wear spring or summer clothes in May because it’s spring, even if it’s cold. And if you don’t do it, like me, you break the unwritten rules of dress codes. In Finland, seasonal dress codes are like tribal markers. Wearing fur in spring isn’t just ‘weird’—it’s rejecting shared suffering (‘We freeze together, so we belong’).”
But why are these rules so important for people?
Because it’s a status threat to people when I break the norms. But how can I be a threat to status of people by wearing a fur coat? It can be broken down into a couple of things:
Evolutionary psychology
System justification
Fear of change
And what wearing my fur coat does in times when you are supposed to wear summer clothes?
It forces people to confront that they are wearing summer clothes even if it’s cold just to fit in and my freedom of wearing what I want and not caring about the norms mirrors their own fear of not fitting in and possibly creating shame, which again might lead to an attack towards me.
Here’s the brutal math:
Their compliance = social safety.
My defiance = a mirror showing their fear.
Result: Hostility.
(source, Festinger, 1956)
Neuroscience of Threat Response
Going a bit deeper:
The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) detects “rule violations”
Triggers amygdala-driven fear (like seeing a predator)(source Klucharev et al. 2009)
Physical reaction = primal danger response
The physical reaction is similar to when you experience danger.
So me breaking the norms by wearing a fur coat during spring or summer doesn’t just annoy people, it triggers a primal alarm in their brain.
I originally thought maybe it’s just weakness of people why people see me as a threat, but I learned that it’s not about weakness it’s about hierarchy preservation.
Basically I’m disrupting the hierarchy of society and I’m a threat to the pecking order. For example if I gain respect without fitting in the norms (just by being different) it devalues their compliance.
Another example: One employee starts working from home without permission, it makes others wonder:
Why am I still coming to the office?.
My fur coat does the same thing for seasonal dress codes.
(source Social Dominance Theory Sidanius & Pratto, 1999)
While I’m happy breaking the rules, others might ask “why am I suffering from the unwritten rules of dress codes in Finland?”. And again as a result, people attack to restore the justification of their own sacrifices of obeying the norms. (source Fear of Relative Deprivation, Walker & Pettigrew, 1984)
The tall poppy syndrome.
In Finnish culture standing out from a crowd get you “cut down”. My fur coat signals that I don’t need approval, which undermines the “social contract”. And this is not a personal thing, it’s cultural and biological programming. (source Feather, 1994)
But I have always thought that should our culture not evolve? The answer is yes, but it’s very slow. It takes 1-3% of a group to break the rules before the majority starts “following” and eventually the group starts chasing into a “new norm”. For example, me wearing my fur coat, eventually others stop noticing it, and some might even join and also wear a fur coat. And within my friends, many have stopped “noticing” it in a big way, and many friends seem to see my fur coat as a positive thing, so I guess I have managed to create a minor shift in thinking. (source Centola, 2018)
Summary:
I disrupt → They panic.
I refuse to blindly obey rules → They see their own chains.
I stretch culture -> norms adapt, but if I push too hard, the system pushes back.
