I think the “real norms” are awfully complicated and depend of gender (not only of people, but of whether the present company is all-male, all-female or mixed), status and subtle cues; whereas the “spoken norms” are simpler and give more lip service to our far values by being gender-neutral and not referring to status.
You can probably get along with the simpler spoken rules, but you will miss some opportunities, and may occasionally break an unspoken rule and look bad. How big of a difference it will make will depend of the gap between the spoken and unspoken rules (a small gap for nerds; a larger gap for say European aristocracy).
The articles in the OP seem to try to address this problem mostly by making the “spoken norms” restrictive enough so that you won’t screw up following them, you’ll “only” miss opportunities that would be allowed by the unspoken norms (like hugging given the right cues). Another approach is to close the gap in the other directions by allowing more things to get closer to the spoken norms, e.g. Crocker’s Rules.
I think the “real norms” are awfully complicated and depend of gender (not only of people, but of whether the present company is all-male, all-female or mixed), status and subtle cues; whereas the “spoken norms” are simpler and give more lip service to our far values by being gender-neutral and not referring to status.
You can probably get along with the simpler spoken rules, but you will miss some opportunities, and may occasionally break an unspoken rule and look bad. How big of a difference it will make will depend of the gap between the spoken and unspoken rules (a small gap for nerds; a larger gap for say European aristocracy).
The articles in the OP seem to try to address this problem mostly by making the “spoken norms” restrictive enough so that you won’t screw up following them, you’ll “only” miss opportunities that would be allowed by the unspoken norms (like hugging given the right cues). Another approach is to close the gap in the other directions by allowing more things to get closer to the spoken norms, e.g. Crocker’s Rules.