When, Why and How Might Deviance Affect Well-Being: Interactions Between Individual Belonging, Uniqueness and Flexibility of Norms

There are many proposed reasons for why people may not deviate from norms. They might fear rejection, feel social pressure or may simply want to feel like they belong. However, people may want to deviate to improve their feelings of distinctiveness. Deviance itself has been associated negatively and positively with well-being. This may be due to a combination of the flexibility of such norms and whether one is higher in their need for belonging or uniqueness. This study hypothesizes that there will be three-way interactions between deviance status, flexibility of norms and either belonging or uniqueness fulfillment when predicting life satisfaction. Through an experimental survey (N = 531), this study does not demonstrate three-way interactions as initially predicted, however, additional analyses demonstrated a three-way interaction between deviance, flexibility and severity of uniqueness need when predicting satisfaction with life scores. Overall, belonging need fulfillment may be the most important factor relating to life satisfaction, even when taking into account uniqueness, deviance and flexibility of norms. Future research should continue to investigate the potential effects the flexibility of norms may have on psychological mechanisms relating to deviance.