Creeping normality (also called
gradualism, or landscape amnesia
) is a process by which a major change can be accepted as normal and acceptable if it happens slowly through small, often unnoticeable, increments of change. The change could otherwise be regarded as remarkable and objectionable if it took place in a single step or short period.
American scientist
Jared Diamond
Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American geographer, historian, ornithologist, and author best known for his popular science books '' The Third Chimpanzee'' (1991); ''Guns, Germs, and Steel'' (1997, awarded a Pulitzer Priz ...
used creeping normality in his 2005 book ''
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed''. Prior to releasing his book, Diamond explored this theory while attempting to explain why, in the course of long-term
environmental degradation,
Easter Island
Easter Island ( rap, Rapa Nui; es, Isla de Pascua) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is most famous for its ne ...
natives would, seemingly irrationally, chop down the last tree:
See also
There are a number of metaphors related to creeping normality, including:
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Boiling frog
The boiling frog is an apologue describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it wil ...
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Camel's nose
The camel's nose is a metaphor for a situation where the permitting of a small, seemingly innocuous act will open the door for larger, clearly undesirable actions.
History
The phrase is not commonly used in the 21st century. According to Geoffre ...
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Lingchi
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First they came ..."
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Habituation
Habituation is a form of non-associative learning in which an innate (non-reinforced) response to a stimulus decreases after repeated or prolonged presentations of that stimulus. Responses that habituate include those that involve the intact org ...
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If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
''If You Give a Mouse a Cookie'' is a children's book written by Laura Numeroff and illustrated by Felicia Bond, first published in 1985 by Harper and Row. Described as a "circular tale", illustrating a slippery slope, it is Numeroff and Bond ...
''
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Normalisation of deviance
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Overton window
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Principiis obsta (et respice finem)'' - 'resist the beginnings (and consider the end)'
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Salami tactics
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Shifting baseline
A shifting baseline (also known as a sliding baseline) is a type of change to how a system is measured, usually against previous reference points (baselines), which themselves may represent significant changes from an even earlier state of the syst ...
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Slippery slope
A slippery slope argument (SSA), in logic, critical thinking, political rhetoric, and caselaw, is an argument in which a party asserts that a relatively small first step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant (usually ...
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Technological change as a social process
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Tyranny of small decisions
The tyranny of small decisions is a phenomenon explored in an essay of the same name, published in 1966 by the American economist Alfred E. Kahn. The article describes a situation in which a number of decisions, individually small and insignifican ...
References
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Perception
Business terms
Technological change