[dudifordMann]

I would contend that you are a product of your experiences, and that you are a participant in society.

Unless you are alone on an island, one person is not a society. One's thoughts and actions are inputs into society. Society itself would then be comprised of an aggregate of everyone's thoughts and actions. There would then be some sort bell curve for thoughts and actions, leading to an accepted norm for the society within some sigma value. Holding a position significantly distance from that sigma does make it part of society, would make it absolutely on conflict with societal norms.

Holding to the emergent norm theory, i would think that, yes, there is not an evil society judging you, but rather the society you participate in itself that will emphasize your contrast to the norms allowing others to judge you. Even if people are egocentric, a visible contrast to norms would be noticed and at best avoided, or at worst confronted.

The social cost is the degree in the action of others impacts an individual. there is a cost in dealing with the resulting time/resource/emotional effort with what ever action or inaction the judgmental individual(s) takes to address/correct/ignore you, directly or indirectly.

and... as other posters stated, i believe you missed the purpose of the previous post.