Practicing correct elevator etiquette is simple: allow people inside exit first before getting in, select the number of your floor and/or select it for others, face forward, make room for other people, respect people’s personal space and, wait silently. At the elevator it is strictly expected for individuals to face forward, thus, making eye contact and invading personal space for too long may be uncomfortable. Consequently, my partner and I decided to break this norm, but, not only that we went a little further; we stood in the middle of the elevator facing back and unexpectedly sat down on the floor.
To fully understand why breaking elevator norms, have a great impact on people it is necessary to study elevator ethics in depth. To ensure that elevator rides start as smooth as possible the correct thing to do is to stand away from the doors and let the other passengers exist first before proceeding to enter. A rule of thumb is to hold the doors open for anyone who is close enough to enter the elevator and/or if you have made eye contact. Another important point is to evade forcing your way into a crowded elevator. A key component for our experiment is the rule of
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Every individual wears a face in conjunction to the situation they are living. In this experiment we had to expose our backstage face to trigger a reaction on others around us. Thus, “to lose face is to publicly suffer a diminished self-image” (Goffman) is intentionally persuaded. The response of most individuals was the face work avoidance process and nonobservance, were they worked hard on ignoring my presence, so they were not at risk of losing their face. At times, this solution did not work, and they had to show to the public a face that is not congruent to the behavioral norms of an elevator. In my part I was giving the wrong face to the world, I acted completely opposite of what is expected of a person to behave in an
The concept of face is referring to the socially approved self-image. It is about honor and shame belief and value systems. Facework is the verbal and nonverbal interactions we use in regards to our own social self-image and the social image of others.
On the other hand, when I am outside of the classroom, I become this whole different person and start to talk more. I feel that I have gotten use to being quiet in the classroom and conformed to putting on my mask everyday that it is hard for me to not wear the mask in class because if I do not wear it, I feel that I am loosing a part of who I am. All in all, this shows how when we are not seeking approval, we are able to take off our masks and our “self-presentations [becomes] much different in character” (Gergen
‘On face-work’ is Goffman’s first essay from his book entitled ‘Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-face Behavior’ which was originally written in 1955. It considers the approaches to human interaction alongside five more essays featured in this book and focuses on the concept of the face. His essay on face-work offers an analytic study which explores interaction as a ritual process. It is instrumental in providing a sound understanding of the definition of face and is a comprehensive insight into basic kinds of face-work. Some of Goffman’s other works include ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’, ‘Asylums’, and ‘Stigma’, which are a series of books about social behaviour.
I did this by wearing athletic clothing, unrolling a yoga mat in the back of the elevator, and proceeding to sit on the floor (covered by the yoga mat) and go through a series basic stretches. I tried to make what I was doing seem as commonplace as possible by not explaining my presence or strange behavior to anyone who entered the elevator, but rather continuing as though they were not present. The seven people who used the elevator during the time I was in there, predominantly students who lived in my hall, observed my violation of social norms and helped to create the social setting. I did not encounter any personal acquaintances, so the experiment progressed as though I were an anonymous outsider in the situation. A large portion of students do not use the elevator too frequently as the residence hall only has five floors, so those observing me generally either lived on higher floors or held objects which they did not wish to carry up the
Adopted into sociology by Erving Goffman, he developed most terms and the idea behind dramaturgical analysis in his 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. This book lays out the process of human social interaction, sometimes called "impression management". Goffman makes the distinction between "front stage" and "back stage" behavior. “Front stage" actions are visible to the audience and are part of the performance. We change our hair color, eye color, complextion. Wearing make-up, the way our hair is styled, the clothes we wear. The demeanor we present to the world to the. All of these things lead to an outward appearance of what we want others to think we are. People engage in "back stage" behaviors when no audience is present. We whine and moan about the customers we deal with. Hair goes un-styled, make is wiped off. Clothing is comfortable and unrestricting. When a person conducts themselves in certain way not consistent with social expectations, it is often done secretly if this ...
It was 8:00 a.m. on April 9, 1999 and I was saying goodbye to my parents at the San Francisco Airport. While I was walking away from my parent’s gate I remembered the study for my Interpersonal Communication class, and decided that the airport was a perfect place to observe nonverbal behavior. I sat myself near the entrance of a gate so I could clearly focus on personal space and voice behaviors while people stood in line to board their plane. This location allowed me to observe some very distinct behaviors, and I was amazed at the many different ways people express their emotions and the many people that weren’t aware of these expressions.
The personal front refers to the “expressive equipment that the audience identifies with the performers and expects them to carry with them into the setting” (Pada, 2016). The personal front includes the performer’s clothing style, sex, age, and race, posture, manner of speaking, facial expressions, and gestures. This list refers to the two subcategories of the personal front: appearance and manners. The appearance involves everything that has to do with our appearance, and what we do with our bodies. Manners refer to how we carry ourselves. For example, a young doctor may not be taken very seriously by older patients because he or she is younger than them. However, by keeping his or her appearance and manners professional, he or she can gain the trust of older
To break this norm, I decided to allow my partner to sit down on the subway during rush hour when there was a seat available. Typically, while riding the subway home during the packed rush hour, there eventually becomes a seat where he insists that I sit down. For this violation, I did
our professor gave us an assignment that is really easy, but also difficult to do because we have to break a norm in from of people. Not following the social norms of society, individuals might think you deviant. Clarice and I decided that we were going to do our assignment on Hialeah campus on a Friday morning. The building on the Hialeah campus has four floors and it gets really busy when students get out of class to go to their next class. First, when we went to the elevator and practiced when it was not busy, we analyzed where we were going to stand when people came to the elevator, one of us was going to be in the corner and the other one in front of the door facing the people.
Impression management is a social phenomenon that occurs in our daily life both consciously and unconsciously. “It is the act of presenting a favorable public image of oneself so that others will form positive judgments.” (Newman 184) Our first impressions of a person are always based on physical appearance and we compare them to the norms of our society. We can all admit to the initial meeting of a person and first noticing their age, gender, race, or other ascribed characteristics. Our cultural norms are ideas such that fat is “ugly” which are very different across societies and time. Also, impression management is an idea of how individuals interact in different social situations. “Sociologists refer to dramaturgy as the study of social interactions as theater, in which people (“actors”) project images (“play roles”) in front of others (“the audience”).” (Newman 169) This is our human need for acceptance and way of managing the impressions we give others and perform what we think people want to see. Our social life is governed by this concept but it only works with effective front-stage and back-stage separation. Our front-stage is the visible part of ourselves that we allow others to see unlike our hidden back-stage self.
How we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. Throughout the interview I knew that the way I interacted within the group would determine whether or not I would be able to study as a student nurse. Subsequently, I wanted to appear socially desirable. Therefore, I believe there was a distortion of self-image because the interview was very important to me. Using Goffman 's theory of self (1959), the 'social mask ' I put on during the interview, could be seen as 'performance ', '...the term ‘performance’ refers to all activity of an individual in front of a particular set of observers, or audience... ' , I wasn 't my: bubbly, hyper self, I felt I had to keep this hidden as I was in a professional environment. Therefore, Johari 's window demonstrates mundane realism, because my self-image did change. My bubbly, hyper personality which is usually 'open/public ' was now 'Hidden/private '. However, Johari 's window see 's self-awareness constructed by the individual alone, which makes the theory over –simplified and not interactionist as it only considers 'nurture ' factors impacting on an individual’s self-awareness, when in reality it’s a combination of biological/genetic and social factors (nature nurture). Therefore the theory is reductionist as it over simplifies human behaviour. Although Johari 's window doesn 't give a holistic reflection for my own self-awareness and communication, the fact I can identify this as a result of using Gibb’s model means that I have a rounded analysis of my interviewing
Any communication interaction involves two major components in terms of how people are perceived: verbal, or what words are spoken and nonverbal, the cues such as facial expressions, posture, verbal intonations, and other body gestures. Many people believe it is their words that convey the primary messages but it is really their nonverbal cues. The hypothesis for this research paper was: facial expressions directly impact how a person is perceived. A brief literature search confirmed this hypothesis.
To further understand the spotlight effect two research articles will be summarized and analyzed. The first by Gilovish and Savisky (1999) titled The Spotlight Effect and the Illusion of Transparency: Egocentric Assessments of How We are Seen by Others is a review that focuses on the judgments people make about how they are seen by others. Gilovish and Savisky (1999) explain several studies that use the spotlight effect. In one study certain participants were asked to wear a Barry Manilow t-shirt and sit in a room with where several other participants were filling out paperwork. After some time, the participant wearing the shirt was escorted out of the room and asked how many people in the room would be able to recall who was on their t-shirt. The participants overestimated the accuracy of the observers and the participants wearing the t-shirt were noticed much less than they suspected (Gilovish & Savisky, 1999).
Erving Goffman uses a dramaturgical perspective in his discussion of impression management. Goffman’s analysis of the social world primarily centres around studies of the self and relationship to one’s identity created within a society. Through dramaturgy, Goffman uses the metaphor of performance theatre to convey the nature of human social interaction, drawing from the renowned quote “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players” from Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It.’ Much of our exploration of Goffman’s theories lies within the premise that individuals engage in impression management, and achieve a successful or unsuccessful performance. Impression management refers to the ways in which individuals attempt to control the impression that others have of them stemming from a basic human desire to be viewed by others in a favourable light. Goffman argues that our impressions are managed through a dramaturgical process whereby social life is played out like actors performing on a stage and our actions are dictated by the roles that we are playing in particular situations. In a social situation, the stage is where the encounter takes place, the actors are the people involved in the interaction, and the script is the set of social norms in which the actors must abide by. Just as plays have a front stage and back stage, this also applies in day-to-day interactions. Goffman’s theory of the front and back stage builds on Mead’s argument of the phases of the self. The front stage consists of all the public and social encounters with other people. It is similar to the ‘me’ which Mead talks about, as it involves public encounters as well as how others perceive you. Meanwhile the back stage, like the ‘I’, is the time spent with oneself reflecting on the interactions. Therefore, according to Goffman’s dramaturgical
How you present yourself in this situation has a direct reflection to the type of environment that you are in. Depending on the environment that you are in, this will reflect your actions, i...