People ordinarily distinguish between ways of behaving that are "normal" and those that are "abnormal." But how exactly is this distinction to be understood? This talk will discuss a series of experimental studies designed to explore people's ordinary notion of normality. The key result is that people's ordinary notion of normality is not a purely statistical one (e.g., the type of behavior that is most frequent) or a purely prescriptive one (e.g., the type of behavior that is ideal). Instead, our ordinary notion of normality appears to mix together statistical and prescriptive considerations. I discuss implications of these findings for a variety of questions in cognitive science.
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