Normalization of Deviance

The term “Normalization of Deviance” was coined by a sociologist named Diane Vaughan in reference to mistakes made by NASA officials in the lead up to the Challenger disaster.

This term refers to a culture’s shift away from hard-fast norms, rules, and systems so that they eventually seem like suggestions, rather than something closer to physical laws of nature.

In the case of the Challenger disaster, NASA officials repeatedly okayed space shuttle flights, despite a known issue with the vehicle’s O-rings. This eventually led to the destruction of the shuttle—the vehicle exploding 73 seconds into its flight, all seven crew members dying—and this repeated okaying of those flights, despite those and other known issues, is thought to have been the result of a progressive insensitivity to norm-violations within an organization that was previously very rules focused, and thus (considering the risks associated with everything space-related) relatively safe.