Кодекс вежливости и правила поведения в обществе.

Customary code of polite behaviour

Etiquette ('/ɛ//t//i//k//ɛ//t//, // //k//ᵻ//t/) is the set of norms of personal behaviour in polite society, usually occurring in the form of an ethical code of the expected and accepted social behaviours that accord with the conventions and norms observed and practised by a society, a social class, or a social group. In modern English usage, the French word étiquette (label and tag) dates from the year 1750.

In , the Ancient Egyptian vizier Ptahhotep wrote The Maxims of Ptahhotep , a didactic book of precepts extolling civil virtues, such as truthfulness, self control, and kindness towards other people. Recurrent thematic motifs in the maxims include learning by listening to other people, being mindful of the imperfection of human knowledge, that avoiding open conflict whenever possible should not be considered weakness, that the pursuit of justice should be foremost, yet, in human affairs, the command of a god ultimately prevails in all matters. Some of Ptahhotep's maxims indicate a person's correct behaviours in the presence of great personages (political, military, religious), and instructions on how to choose the right master and how to serve him. Other maxims teach the correct way to be a leader through openness and kindness, that greed is the base of all evil and should be guarded against, and that generosity towards family and friends is praiseworthy. Confucius was a Chinese intellectual and philosopher whose works emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, the pursuit of justice in personal dealings, and sincerity in all personal relations. Baldassare Castiglione , count of Casatico, was an Italian courtier and diplomat, soldier, and author of The Book of the Courtier (1528), an exemplar courtesy book dealing with questions of the etiquette and morality of the courtier during the Italian Renaissance. Louis XIV (1638–1715), King of France, used a codified etiquette to tame the French nobility and assert his supremacy as the absolute monarch of France. In consequence, the ceremonious royal court favourably impressed foreign dignitaries whom the king received at the seat of French government, the Palace of Versailles, to the south west of Paris.

In a society, manners are described as either good manners or as bad manners to indicate whether a person's behaviour is acceptable to the cultural group. As such, manners enable ultrasociality and are integral to the functioning of the social norms and conventions that are informally enforced through self regulation. The perspectives of sociology indicate that manners are a means for people to display their social status, and a means of demarcating, observing, and maintaining the boundaries of social identity and of social class. In The Civilizing Process (1939), sociologist Norbert Elias said that manners arose as a product of group living, and persist as a way of maintaining social order. Manners proliferated during the Renaissance in response to the development of the 'absolute state'—the progression from small group living to large group living characterised by the centralized power of the State. The rituals and manners associated with the royal court of England during that period were closely bound to a person's social status. Manners demonstrate a person's position within a social network, and a person's manners are a means of negotiation from that social position. From the perspective of public health, in The Healthy Citizen (1996), Alana R. Petersen and Deborah Lupton said that manners assisted the diminishment of the social boundaries that existed between the public sphere and the private sphere of a person's life, and so gave rise to "a highly reflective self, a self who monitors his or her behavior with due regard for others with whom he or she interacts, socially"; and that "the public behavior of individuals came to signify their social standing; a means of presenting the self and of evaluating others, and thus the control of the outward self was vital." Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu applied the concept of habitus to define the societal functions of manners. The habitus is the set of mental attitudes, personal habits, and skills that a person possesses—his or her dispositions of character that are neither self determined, nor pre determined by the external environment, but which are produced and reproduced by social interactions—and are "inculcated through experience and explicit teaching", yet tend to function at the subconscious level. Manners are likely to be a central part of the dispositions that guide a person's ability to decide upon socially compliant behaviours.

In Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (2003) the anthropologist Mary Douglas said that manners, social behaviors, and group rituals enable the local cosmology to remain ordered and free from those things that may pollute or defile the integrity of the culture. Ideas of pollution, defilement, and disgust are attached to the margins of socially acceptable behaviour in order to curtail unacceptable behaviour, and so maintain "the assumptions by which experience is controlled" within the culture.

In studying the expression of emotion by humans and animals, naturalist Charles Darwin noted the universality of facial expressions of disgust and shame among infants and blind people, and concluded that the emotional responses of shame and disgust are innate behaviours. Public health specialist Valerie Curtis said that the development of facial responses was concomitant with the development of manners, which are behaviours with an evolutionary role in preventing the transmission of diseases, thus, people who practise personal hygiene and politeness will most benefit from membership in their social group, and so stand the best chance of biological survival, by way of opportunities for reproduction. From the study of the evolutionary bases of prejudice, social psychologists Catherine Cottrell and Steven Neuberg said that human behavioural responses to 'otherness' might enable the preservation of manners and social norms. The feeling of "foreignness"—which people experience in their first social interaction with someone from another culture—might partly serve an evolutionary function: 'Group living surrounds one with individuals [who are] able to physically harm fellow group members, to spread contagious disease, or to "free ride" on their efforts'; therefore, a commitment to sociality is a risk: 'If threats, such as these, are left unchecked, the costs of sociality will quickly exceed its benefits. Thus, to maximize the returns on group "living", individual group members should be attuned to others' features or behaviors.'