This is one of our species’ superpowers—that we’re occasionally able to turn wasteful competition into productive cooperation. Instead of always bull-rushing to the front of a line, for example, we can wait patiently and orderly. But as the occasional line-cutter reminds us, there’s always a temptation to cheat, and maintaining order isn’t always easy. For sociologists and anthropologists, conventions like queueing are known as norms. They’re the rules or standards about how members of a community should behave.
