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Breaking social norm examples and ideas
Breaking social norms examples
Breaking social norm examples and ideas
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Violating Social Norm Paper
1.) The social norm behavior violation that I engaged in was taking my dog, along with a stuffed animal dog on a walk around our neighborhood. I picked this particular social norm to violate because when walking my dog daily, many people ask to stop and pet my dog so I was curious how that would change if they saw me as well walking a stuffed animal. I also chose to violate this norm because every time I walk there are many people I encounter and I wanted to participate in something that involved many people to get a wide range of reactions.
2.) Initially, when I thought of the idea I was excited because I knew I would get some crazy looks, and it would be a funny experience. However, as I got closer to doing that
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In my head, I had imagined I would be ignored, get whispers behind my back, and never be able to show my face in the neighborhood again. I did get some whispers and comments made but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be. On the very beginning of my walk, my neighbor who normally always asks to pet my dog did not today which I attributed to me also walking a stuffed dog. He instead chuckled a little and say, “I hope you have a great day!”. I continued to walk and I came across a lady walking her two black labs, her dogs and my real dog started to sniff each other and her one dog went up to my other “dog” and the lady asked with a laugh, “are you walking your dog’s toy for him?” To that I responded, “No, I just wanted this dog to get some fresh air as well.” She raised then raised her eyebrow and continued to walk. As I continued my walk I approached the elementary school which had just gotten out and I noticed a lot of the children that normally come up and pet my real dog, Striker, did not come up to me today, and I also noticed a few comments such as, “she is walking a stuffed animal” , “honey, we have to go home we don’t have time to pet the dog”, and lastly, “do you see what i’m seeing? Is she walking a stuffed dog?” I laughed it off and continued my walk. My last encounter I experienced was from a man on a run, he stopped and said, “I’m sorry if I’m being rude but are you walking a …show more content…
The feeling of being accepted is a feeling that everyone wants to feel and everyone goes throughout life in order to feel accepted by others. Nobody wants to feel like they are “on the outs” in life and nobody wants to feel as if others don’t approve of them, as that can be extremely detrimental to anybody’s’ self-esteem. I learned from this assignment that in life people often conform their beliefs in order to seem consistent with social norms. As I experienced when I didn’t conform to the “acceptable” and “normal” behaviors in society, people were extremely quick to judge me and it was very easy to observe that I was viewed as “weird” and “crazy” simply because I broke what was expected of me in society. During a critical analysis of the treatment of people who are different, break social norms, or march to the beat of their own drummer I was able to discover that conformity, compliance, and obedience is almost expected in society. It is expected that our behavior, perception, and opinions conform to social norms and when someone’s behaviors or opinions don’t conform to what’s normal it makes others around them uncomfortable and causes them to view that person as an outcast or part of an outgroup simply because someone isn’t living up to society’s expectations. In order to stay “accepted” in society we believe that
In order for you to continue to stay accepted in the current social society you live in today you must follow a certain set of social norms throughout your life, most of the time you do without even realizing it. As well as be followed social norms are broken everyday all around you on all sorts of different levels some harmless and some more serious and punishable such as stealing. Since I have moved out to Santa Barbara and have been experiencing life here now in school and outside of class I have really come to love the beautiful scenic and friendly feel that is given off here with the excessive palm trees on the streets filled with young eager students adjusting to the new college feel and experience finally living away from home on their own. I have definitely been noticing many new changes compared to back at home in Berkeley California where I had grown up my whole life realizing that social norms seem to slightly change as I travel down south. A distinct difference I had noticed when first moving out here is the drop in disabled homeless around town asking for change or money which seemed like an ordinary social norm back home. In Berkeley I would take the bart track to San Francisco every week for school and would rarely go a day without encountering all types of people everywhere asking for help and offering something for sale. I have noticed here in Santa Barbara the community is much more wealthy and seems to not be exposed to as much poverty everyday like you may living in a big city. I began to wonder what the reaction would be if I chose to break the social norm loitering around campus and downtown Isle Vista asking around for money or help. I decided to try testing out this experiment with a few different types of ...
Furthermore, sometimes the desire to be accepted is stronger than prevailing conventions. This makes an individual to do things to make him feel accepted in the society. Krakauer compares the people in Alaska and McCandless. He writes, “And I’m sure there are plenty of other Alaskans who had a lot in common with McCandless when they first got here, too, including many of his critics. Which maybe why they’re so hard on him. Maybe McCandless reminds them a little too much of their former selves” (Krakauer 221). In today’s society, an individual confirms itself to what a society wants and expect him or her to be.
In the 1950s and 60s Harold Garfinkle developed a method for studying social interactions. He formed ethnomethodology, which is studying the methods of people. In other words, ethnomethodology is the study of social norms. (p. 139, Conley) Most of us follow social norms unconsciously. It can be difficult to go against a social norm. The purpose of the project was to conduct a breaching experiment against social normalities. For this experiment, I chose to go an entire day whispering every word I spoke. I chose to violate this norm because it is socially unacceptable to whisper in a normal conversation. Throughout this paper, I will explain the methods and the results of this breaching experiment
In society, it's difficult to go against the norm. Individuals are compelled to act a specific way, or look a specific way in order to be accepted. For instance, teenagers may encounter pressure from their peers to partake in specific exercises that may not be moral, since they feel the need to fit in. This weight of conformity isn't just present in reality; it can be found in literature as well. The story "St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell depicts that in order to conform to society, individuals abandon their selflessness and compassion and become selfish and apathetic.
The daunting task of violating a social norm, something that I could be ostracized and ridiculed for, I still chose to do. Social norms are the rules of behavior that are considered acceptable in a group or society. Doing weird things in public while surrounded by strangers is a recipe for disaster, especially for somebody like myself. I am awkward and have plenty of trouble talking to new people. Most of us are told not to talk to strangers when we are younger because there are all sorts of crazy people out there. There could not be a better way to break out of my shell and violate a social norm than to sit down and talk to total strangers while they eat.
Everybody wants to be accepted, yet society is not so forgiving. It bends you and changes you until you are like everyone else. Society depends on conformity and it forces it upon people. In Emerson's Self Reliance, he says "Society is a joint stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater." People are willing to sacrifice their own hopes and freedoms just to get the bread to survive. Although the society that we are living in is different than the one the Emerson's essay, the idea of fitting in still exists today. Although society and our minds make us think a certain way, we should always trust our better judgment instead of just conforming to society.
There are many things that influence our behavior from internal influences to social norms. Social norms are implicit or explicit rules that govern how we behave in society (Maluso, class notes). Social norms influence our behavior more than any of us realize but we all notice when a norm has been broken. Breaking a social norm is not an easy task and often leads us feeling uncomfortable whether we broke the norm ourselves or witnessed someone else breaking it. Sometimes however, you just have to break a norm to see what happens.
I chose to break a social norm by sitting/ laying on the floor of an aisle in a grocery store, engaging in deviant behavior, instead of shopping for groceries. Sitting on the floor of a grocery store is a case of deviant behavior because it goes against society by breaking the norm. Because the standard behavior of people in a grocery store is to walk and look around, with usually a basket or cart, shopping for desired items, the expected response of others would be feeling uncomfortable, awkward, and confused. Upon performing my act of social deviance, numerous people demonstrated the anticipated reaction. As people turned down the aisle, I occupied, conversations died down to whispers or stopped altogether. Of the people who questioned me on my
Conformity, or going along with the crowd, is a unique phenomenon that manifests itself in our thoughts and behaviors. It’s quite simple to identify countless examples of the power of conformity in virtually all aspects of social life. Conformity influences our opinions and relationships with others, often to a higher extent than we realize. It is posited that people generally conform to the group in order to fit in and avoid rejection or because they truly believe the group is more knowledgeable than they are. After analyzing numerous studies and experiments on the nature of conformity, one will find that the motive of social acceptance is the greatest driver of conformity.
American literature often examines people and motives. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, and in Arthur Miller’s dramatic classic, The Crucible, people and motives often depict patterns of Puritans struggling for life during a precarious time.
Deviance is any behavior, belief, or condition that violates significant social norms in the society or group in which it occurs (Kendall, 2012). Our experiment will study the behavioral deviance of a social norm. Sociologists use symbolic interactionism to study face-to-face interactions. We are expected to follow these certain unwritten rules of behavior telling us the way that we should act in certain situations. The social norm or folkway I chose to break was that of invading an individual’s personal space. See Figure 1.0 showing the proximity generally utilized by Americans, according to Edward T.Hall. Personal space is the region surrounding a person, approximately 18 inches, which they regard as psychologically theirs. People value their personal space, and feel discomfort, anger, or anxiety when their personal space is encroached (Personal space, n.d.). We walked around to find the best scenario and individuals to interject our teammate in purposefully invading their comfort zone.
I violated a social norm by refusing to “mirror” the nonverbal display of one of my best friends. Her name is Hailyn and we have been best friends since middle school. Because we go to the same church, I met her on Sunday and she told me that she needed to talk to me. She explained to me that she was asked out by a man that she has been dating for two weeks now. I already knew that she was dating this person and that she was interested in him. Yet, she was never in a committed relationship so she told me that she wants to go out on a few more dates with the person before deciding to actually go out with him. To violate the social norm, I responded to her without empathizing. I tried my best not to create any chameleon effect of any unconscious nodding or gasp. My responses were very simple and straight forward. When she told me that the man that she’s been dating, I literally told her, “good for you,” without any facial expressions. She seemed to be a bit disappointed by my reaction but she still went on and told me that she wants to date
While trying to break the movie theater norm, it was difficult for me to pick movies with a different variety of people and movies that were a little older so less people would be attending them. I also had a little trouble when it came to answering the phone and waiting for the other person to talk first. The problem with this one was that I had to wait for people to actually call me, which doesn't happen that often in this day and age anymore. To conclude, these social norms forced people to be in uncomfortable situations and make a decision as to how they would react to it.
Every living thing has this comfort zone they force themselves to conform to. It’s a safe place, a home, a shield, and a cage. You give yourself the invincibility of social acceptance, but at the same time you hurt your personal individuality. you can lose imagination, creativity, and the ability to form new ideas. For years i tried to fit in with people whose opinions i thought would make me happy. i would dress, act, and conform my entire being in order to try and find acceptance. I somehow tricked myself into believing that the empty opinions of my peers would supply me with all the happiness and comfort i would ever want. This being my first mistake, it took me years to realize just how miserable i was making myself.
I drove us to Minneapolis and parked at a parking meter, then we walked into a store because I needed to use the bathroom. While we were in there I continued to get weird looks. I wish I had asked more people how they felt, but it’s Minneapolis I don’t trust anyone. The cashier there was nice, but I could tell he was curious about my outfit, but I didn’t ask him anything because he looked rather tired, maybe it was the end of his shift. After being in there we walked along a really long bridge. Bikers looked at me weird and other people walking along the path were as well. One instance, we found a really interesting drawing that was giving a hand signal to be quiet. So, I decided to say, “shh-shh”, turns out some lady was walking towards us and she seemed a little worried and sped out of