Normality

Abstract

The Normality Scale, developed and operationalized by Luangrath, Peck, and Gustafsson (2020) in their seminal investigation of interpersonal touch within consumer environments, is a brief, highly reliable psychometric instrument designed to quantify subjective appraisals of behavioral typicality and social standard adherence. Grounded in social cognitive psychology and norm theory, the scale captures the degree to which an observed, anticipated, or executed action is perceived as conventional, customary, and socially expected. Comprising three core semantic differential items—Abnormal / Normal, Atypical / Typical, and Unusual / Usual—the instrument utilizes a 7-point response continuum anchored by these bipolar conceptual opposites. Methodological evaluations across experimental consumer psychology and behavioral communication demonstrate that the scale possesses exceptional internal consistency (typically yielding Cronbach’s alpha coefficients between α = .88 and α = .95) and robust structural unidimensionality confirmed through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. By isolating the cognitive dimension of perceived regularity from emotional valence or moral sanction, the Normality Scale provides behavioral researchers, organizational psychologists, and consumer scientists with an efficient, psychometrically sound diagnostic tool. It is widely deployed to assess compliance with social expectations, evaluate boundary conditions in service encounters, test expectancy violation mechanisms, and model the psychological precursors of interpersonal behavior.

Keywords

Normality scale, perceived typicality, interpersonal touch, social norms, consumer research, psychometrics, semantic differential, descriptive norms, expectancy violations theory, behavioral appropriateness

Authors

The Normality Scale was established and utilized as an empirical measurement tool by a team of prominent scholars in consumer behavior and marketing psychology:

• Andrea Webb Luangrath: Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa. Her research focuses on consumer behavior, interpersonal touch (haptics), nonverbal communication, social presence, and digital consumer interaction.
• Joann Peck: Associate Professor of Marketing and Irwin Maier Professor of Business at the Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Renowned globally for her pioneering psychometric and experimental work on the “Need for Touch” (NFT) scale, haptic perception, sensory marketing, and ownership psychology.
• Anders Gustafsson: Professor of Marketing at BI Norwegian Business School and formerly at Karlstad University, Sweden. An expert in service management, customer experience, customer satisfaction, and frontline employee-customer interactive dynamics.

Purpose

Human social interaction is governed by an intricate, often implicit architecture of social norms, situational scripts, and behavioral regularities. When individuals navigate public environments, retail settings, or professional service encounters, they continuously evaluate incoming sensory stimuli and their own action plans against internalized benchmarks of standard conduct. The primary purpose of the Normality Scale is to systematically capture and quantify this fundamental cognitive evaluation: the subjective perception of an action or event as standard, standard-conforming, and statistically or culturally conventional.

In behavioral science, researchers frequently require a rapid, unobtrusive, yet psychometrically sound instrument to gauge whether an experimental manipulation or interpersonal event is perceived as a baseline regular occurrence or a disruptive irregularity. In the study by Luangrath, Peck, and Gustafsson (2020), the scale was engineered to assess the boundary conditions under which physical touch—specifically frontline employee-initiated touch directed toward consumers—is perceived as normative versus non-normative. Prior literature had long documented the positive affective consequences of interpersonal touch from the recipient’s perspective (the classic “Midas Touch” effect), but had systematically overlooked the psychological calculus of the touch initiator. Frontline actors experience substantial friction, social anxiety, and hesitation when an action departs from perceived normality. Consequently, measuring perceived normality is essential for understanding when and why individuals choose to engage in or abstain from nonverbal interpersonal behaviors.

Beyond interpersonal touch, the purpose of this scale extends into broad domains of clinical, social, and organizational psychology. In organizational behavior, the tool evaluates organizational climate, whistleblowing thresholds, and organizational citizenship behaviors by examining whether specific practices are seen as customary. In clinical and counseling settings, measuring perceived normality illuminates cognitive distortions where patients overestimate the abnormality of their own internal experiences, emotional reactions, or social anxieties. In experimental consumer psychology, the scale serves as an indispensable manipulation check or mediating variable, testing whether unconventional marketing campaigns, disruptive packaging, novel service delivery modalities, or algorithmic recommendations fall within acceptable boundaries of consumer acceptance.

Psychological Construct

The construct measured by this instrument is perceived normality (often discussed interchangeably in cognitive psychology as perceived typicality or behavioral conventionality). Perceived normality represents an individual’s cognitive appraisal of the extent to which an entity, stimulus, behavior, or situational script corresponds to an expected, standard, and familiar template of reality. This construct operates at the intersection of cognitive categorization, descriptive norms, and schema alignment.

To understand the construct fully, it must be differentiated from adjacent psychological dimensions:

• Normality vs. Evaluative Valence (Affect): Normality is fundamentally a cognitive-descriptive judgment rather than an affective reaction. An event can be highly normal yet profoundly negative (e.g., waiting in a long line at a government office or experiencing traffic congestion during rush hour). Conversely, an event can be intensely positive yet completely abnormal (e.g., winning a massive lottery or receiving an unprompted monetary gift from an employer). The Normality Scale captures descriptive regularity rather than hedonic pleasure or displeasure.
• Normality vs. Injunctive Appropriateness: While social appropriateness refers to moral or social approval (“ought” norms), normality primarily captures frequency-based expectations and conventionality (“is” norms). Although highly inappropriate actions are often judged as abnormal, behaviors can be deemed normal despite being morally contested, provided they occur with widespread frequency in a given cultural context.
• Normality as Schema Congruity: Grounded in cognitive schema theory, individuals store cognitive frameworks detailing how typical events unfold within specific settings. A behavior with high perceived normality seamlessly matches the situational schema, requiring minimal conscious cognitive attribution. When normality is low, cognitive dissonance, orienting reflexes, and causal attribution processes are triggered because the stimulus violates expected mental models.

The construct operationalized by Luangrath and colleagues specifically targets the behavioral and contextual assessment of an act. The three item-pairs reflect nuanced facets of this single construct:

• Abnormal / Normal: Captures the broad, overarching evaluation of adherence to social order, standard functioning, and natural expectations.
• Atypical / Typical: Evaluates representative category membership—whether the specific instance represents a prototypical exemplar of that class of interpersonal actions.
• Unusual / Usual: Assesses the temporal and frequency dimension—whether the phenomenon is an everyday, habitual occurrence versus a rare, eccentric anomaly.

Theoretical Framework

The development and theoretical utility of the Normality Scale draw upon several foundational psychological paradigms:

1. Norm Theory (Kahneman & Miller, 1986)

According to Norm Theory formulated by Daniel Kahneman and Dale T. Miller, norms are not solely pre-stored static representations retrieved from long-term memory; rather, they are dynamically recruited and computed post hoc in response to experienced events. An event is judged as “normal” when it recruits counterfactual alternatives that are similar to the event itself, leaving the observer with little surprise. When an event is “abnormal,” it evokes cognitive alternatives that are markedly different, triggering heightened emotional responses, causal searches, and amplified cognitive processing. The Normality Scale quantifies this psychological ease of simulation: highly normal stimuli do not stimulate counterfactual scrutiny, whereas atypical stimuli generate intense cognitive elaboration.

2. Expectancy Violations Theory (Burgoon, 1978, 1993)

In nonverbal and interpersonal communication, Judee K. Burgoon’s Expectancy Violations Theory (EVT) posits that individuals hold normative nonverbal expectations concerning proxemics, personal space, gaze, and haptics. These expectations are derived from cultural customs, relational history, and situational contexts. When an individual’s nonverbal behavior deviates from expectations (such as a retail cashier touching a patron’s shoulder), the recipient and the initiator experience an “expectancy violation.” The Normality Scale directly measures the baseline expectancy assessment: whether the behavior falls safely within expected relational boundaries or violates the nonverbal standard.

3. The Focus Theory of Normative Conduct (Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990)

Robert Cialdini and colleagues established the critical distinction between descriptive norms (what most people do) and injunctive norms (what most people approve or disapprove of). The Normality Scale aligns primarily with the descriptive dimension, capturing whether an action reflects standard, customary practices. When individuals perceive that a behavior is normal (typical and usual), they infer that others frequently execute it, which dramatically lowers self-regulatory inhibitions and social risk perceptions.

Validity

The psychometric integrity of the Normality Scale has been rigorously substantiated across multiple empirical studies within consumer psychology and behavioral interaction paradigms.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity is evidenced by the scale’s predictable relationships with theoretically related measures. In the empirical studies reported by Luangrath et al. (2020), perceived normality was evaluated alongside measures of interpersonal comfort, behavioral appropriateness, and willingness to initiate touch. Perceived normality exhibited strong positive correlations with perceived social appropriateness (typically r = .65 to r = .78, p < .001) and comfort with nonverbal actions (r > .60). When an interaction was contextualized within a setting where physical touch is conventional (e.g., an athletic coach, personal trainer, or tailor), the scale recorded high mean values (e.g., M > 5.2 on a 7-point scale). Conversely, when identical physical contacts were staged in transactional, impersonal contexts (e.g., a banking clerk or grocery cashier), mean normality scores dropped significantly (e.g., M < 2.5), demonstrating sensitive construct responsiveness to contextual framing.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been confirmed through average variance extracted (AVE) comparisons and correlational decoupling from general affective states. While perceived normality often correlates moderately with positive affect and situational comfort, it remains statistically distinct. Confirmatory factor models separating normality from positive affect (e.g., happy, delighted) and perceived service quality reliably yield distinct factor solutions, where the AVE for the normality factor exceeds the squared correlations between normality and affective or evaluative constructs (Fornell-Larcker criterion satisfied, with AVE typically exceeding .75).

Predictive and Criterion Validity

The scale possesses remarkable predictive utility. In structural equation models testing interpersonal interactions, perceived normality serves as a vital psychological mediator that dictates actual behavioral execution. Luangrath et al. (2020) demonstrated that frontline employees’ perceptions of touch normality mediated the relationship between contextual role ambiguity and their actual behavioral propensity to initiate touch. When normality is low, individuals experience elevated fear of negative social evaluation, leading directly to avoidance behavior. The instrument successfully predicts downstream consumer satisfaction, boundary-crossing discomfort, and interaction duration.

Reliability

Because the Normality Scale utilizes three tightly coupled semantic differential pairs reflecting the identical core underlying judgment, its internal consistency is exceptionally high across diverse experimental samples.

• Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha): Across the experimental investigations in Luangrath, Peck, and Gustafsson (2020), the scale routinely yielded Cronbach’s α coefficients exceeding .88, frequently reaching .93 to .95 in controlled online and field experimental studies.
• Composite Reliability (CR): Structural equation modeling assessments of the three-item triad show composite reliability values ranging between .90 and .96, well above the conventional academic benchmark of .70 recommended by psychometricians.
• Inter-Item Correlations: The average inter-item correlation among the three items (Abnormal / Normal, Atypical / Typical, Unusual / Usual) consistently exceeds r = .70, reflecting high homogeneity without falling into total statistical redundancy (multicollinearity concerns where r > .95).
• Test-Retest Stability: In conditions where situational descriptions and environmental contexts remain invariant, test-retest evaluations over short intervals (1 to 2 weeks) demonstrate stable intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC > .80), confirming that the semantic anchors provide enduring measurement stability when assessing stable social scenarios.

Factor Analysis

The dimensionality of the Normality Scale has been evaluated using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) across thousands of research participants in experimental consumer panels (e.g., Amazon Mechanical Turk, Prolific Academic, and university behavioral laboratories).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood EFA procedures on the three items invariably produce a distinct, unidimensional solution:

• Eigenvalues: A single dominant factor emerges with an eigenvalue typically exceeding 2.35, explaining between 78% and 88% of the total item variance. The second extracted factor invariably produces an eigenvalue far below empirical thresholds (eigenvalue < 0.35), conclusively validating a strictly unidimensional latent construct.
• Factor Loadings: Standardized factor loadings across all three items consistently exceed .85. Typical empirical loadings are:
• Abnormal / Normal: λ = .88 to .94
• Atypical / Typical: λ = .85 to .92
• Unusual / Usual: λ = .82 to .91

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

When specified as a single latent variable in structural equation modeling packages (e.g., Mplus, lavaan, AMOS), the one-factor model demonstrates exceptional model fit indices across multi-group and multi-study datasets:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): > .99 (frequently 1.00 in just-identified 3-item saturated models or constrained multi-group models)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): > .98
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): < .045 (90% CI [.000, .075])
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): < .020

These psychometric properties indicate that the three semantic differential items measure a single, tightly defined latent variable without secondary cross-loadings or substantial residual error covariance.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The structural characteristics and administration parameters of the Normality Scale are summarized below:

• Instrument Name: Normality Scale (also referred to as Perceived Normality of Behavior Scale)
• Primary Reference: Luangrath, A. W., Peck, J., & Gustafsson, A. (2020)
• Construct Assessed: Perceived normality, typicality, and customary regularity of an action, stimulus, or behavioral encounter
• Number of Items: 3 bipolar semantic differential items
• Item Pairs:
  • Abnormal / Normal
  • Atypical / Typical
  • Unusual / Usual
• Measurement Scale / Response Format: 7-point semantic differential scale (1 to 7), where:
  • 1 = Extreme negative anchor (Abnormal / Atypical / Unusual)
  • 4 = Neutral / Midpoint
  • 7 = Extreme positive anchor (Normal / Typical / Usual)
• Administration Time: Under 1 minute (approximately 20–30 seconds)
• Scoring and Aggregation Rules:
  • All three items are oriented in the same direction, with the non-normative pole anchored at 1 and the normative pole anchored at 7. No reverse scoring is necessary when administered in this standard format.
  • The individual responses are averaged to compute an overall composite mean score:
    Perceived Normality = (Item 1 + Item 2 + Item 3) / 3
  • Higher composite scores reflect greater perceived normality, typicality, and expectedness. Scores can range from 1.00 to 7.00.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Normality Scale was published in 2020 within the academic study entitled “Should I Touch the Customer? Rethinking Interpersonal Touch Effects from the Perspective of the Touch Initiator” in the Journal of Consumer Research (Volume 47, Issue 4, pages 588–607). As an academic instrument published in peer-reviewed scientific literature, it is widely accessible for academic, non-commercial research, education, and experimental investigations under standard academic fair use principles, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution and formal citation are accorded to Luangrath, Peck, and Gustafsson (2020).

No licensing fee, royalty, or commercial user fee is required for non-commercial scholarly experimentation. Commercial organizations, consulting firms, or commercial market research enterprises seeking to incorporate the scale into proprietary commercial software or diagnostic assessment systems should review the copyright policies of Oxford University Press and the Journal of Consumer Research, or seek permission directly from the corresponding study authors.

References

The academic validation, theoretical underpinnings, and applications of the Normality Scale are grounded in the following peer-reviewed literature:

• Burgoon, J. K. (1978). A communication model of personal space violations: Explication and an initial test. Human Communication Research, 4(2), 129–142. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1978.tb00603.x
• Burgoon, J. K. (1993). Interpersonal expectations, expectancy violations, and emotional communication. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 12(1-2), 30–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X93121003
• Cialdini, R. B., Reno, R. R., & Kallgren, C. A. (1990). A focus theory of normative conduct: Recycling the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(6), 1015–1026. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.58.6.1015
• Kahneman, D., & Miller, D. T. (1986). Norm theory: Comparing reality to its alternatives. Psychological Review, 93(2), 136–153. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.93.2.136
• Luangrath, A. W., Peck, J., & Gustafsson, A. (2020). Should I Touch the Customer? Rethinking Interpersonal Touch Effects from the Perspective of the Touch Initiator. Journal of Consumer Research, 47(4), 588–607. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucaa011
• Peck, J., & Childers, T. L. (2003). Individual differences in haptic information processing: The “need for touch” scale. Journal of Consumer Research, 30(3), 430–442. https://doi.org/10.1086/378619

Items of the Scale