In a large college lecture hall, the level of anonymity of students is seemingly in accordance with their physical distance from the professor. The students that sit in the front rows establish their identities as academically driven while those who sit in the last row are seen as unmotivated. By choosing to sit in the back of the class, the students submerge themselves in obscurity; wholly secluding themselves from the classroom community. (line explaining what this means)). In “Shut Up, I Can’t Hear You…,” Tom Vanderbilt delves into a common phenomenon of traffic and explores the influence that anonymity, the condition of being nameless or unidentified, has over identity, the sense of self. Extending his argument to everyday life, anonymity …show more content…
Even if following the social norms means changing their values and behaviors, which make up their identities, they are likely to be influenced by their surroundings rather than their own judgments. Tom Vanderbilt is well aware of the power of public eyes over individuals. He examines that cars become safe havens where people can truly be themselves with freedom from the shackles of social expectations. He states that “because we feel that no one is watching, or that no one we know will see us, the inside of the car itself becomes a useful place for self-expression” (Vanderbilt 491), explaining the difference in people’s behaviors in public and private space. When unseen, people take actions that they would normally refrain from when they are around others – “nasal probing”, singing, or crying (491), for example. Anonymity is therefore beneficial to the development of identity in …show more content…
The sea of commuters, waiting for carpool to go across the George Washington Bridge to New York City, is a disorderly pack of strangers fighting to get picked up ahead of others. Among these strangers, there is no intimacy or understanding of each other, but just a common goal of getting to their destination as quickly as possible and for free. Since no one knows each other and there are no legal force to control, commuters engage in silent wars in which the most effective strategy is hiding themselves until cars come by and then quickly cutting the waiting line before others get to the doors. In a hurry, winners leave the battle ground with a smoke of exhaust, and the losers have to wait for another round of
Our society has institutionalized particular behaviors such as fixing our appearance, crying, belching, defecation, and flatulence deviant to perform in a public setting. Therefore, we rely on what Cahill terms as “performance regions” to relieve ourselves of these deviant behaviors. Public restrooms are performance regions that afford individuals the privacy (negative interpersonal rituals) to release bodily waste, cry, and discuss situations
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
Test video 1 & 2 confirmed the theory that by invading one’s personal comfort zone or the norm of society that it triggers an individual to react in a certain way. Our subjects confirmed this theory by staring at the individuals invading their space, leaning their leg away, shifting away, and even moving entirely in an attempt to regain their intimate space.
After watching the movie, Living Out Loud, I was fairly surprised about the sociological issues I found myself pointing out through out the whole film. Every since I have been a sociology major student I find myself pointing out these issues more often than ever before. The basic summary of plot of this film centers on the life of Judith Moore and he attempted at finding out who she is after a divorce from a 16 year old marriage. With the assistance of a club singer named Liz and the elevator operator man from her Fifth Avenue apartment, Patt, Judith tries to pick up the pieces of her life and to become something more in life. As Judith strives to find herself, she must adjust to her newly single lifestyle for being a middle-aged woman and overcome certain obstacles in order to be happy again. One of the problems in todays’ world is defining one’s self in our society without having to give some sort or explanation of why or who you’re with. How can you still be your own individualistic self
In many cases, people feel that they have a unique identity, but that they can’t express that identity, due to various pressures. There are many obstacles that could possibly prevent people from expressing their true selves. In modern society, conforming to the “norm” is a huge aspect of this and often causes problems. People are heavily influenced by external forces: their peers and family. These external aspects of peoples’ daily lives often become obstacles, preventing people from being their unique selves. People fear of being viewed poorly which causes conformity.
They put five people working for them in a room with one civilian to take a verbal test. The five would purposefully answer the questions incorrectly and the individual that was unaware of the situation would go against their own beliefs and answer the same incorrect answer as everyone else. The subject felt that if his answer differed from the entire group’s, he would be seen as an outsider. This further exhibits the influence the opinions of others have on us. We generally follow the status quo and strive not to diverge from the norms previously set. When entering a quiet room, our brain immediately assumes that everyone is quiet for a reason. If a group of people in the room began whispering, the majority may assume that they are free to do the same and that becomes the norm. If a perfect society is what we aim for, individuality is a
By attempting to imitate the expected forms of expression of mainstream identities, the person is choosing to diminish part of their self. While Blackmore suggests that, “What makes us different is our ability to imitate (Blackmore p. 3),” covering can have strongly negative effects upon an individual and ostracized groups. By choosing to cover, an individual internalizes and upholds the ideology that some identities are better than others. Some people argue against a negative view of covering, suggesting that it is product of nurture and not fully a person’s conscious decision. Excusing covering by simply explaining it as a byproduct of a person’s upbringing is harmful because it does not hold the person accountable for their own actions. However, once the excuse behind explaining covering as an unconscious decision, the factor of consciousness is important to consider. Due to the
As Sarah enters her high school dance wearing pants rather than a fancy dress, there are many eyes judging her. Sarah doesn’t follow the typical high school girl norm, and although it may not be a big deal to her, she is giving another girl just like her the confidence to rock her own style. In a time like high school, it is easy to want to fit in, but those who stand out make huge impacts on the community around them. While society is always changing, it is evident that peer pressure is always constant. The nonconformists in life are the people that make a change to society’s negative routine.
The automobile, in all its luxury, is a desirable expense to almost everyone who travels. Along with it comes new-found freedoms, faster means of travel, excitement, and many other beneficial qualities to one’s everyday life. There are high-end pricey cars that people of high social status and wealth can afford, and the lower-end average priced cars that the average American can afford. Its very power is one wanted by all and many use the automobile to show off its glory and the sense of entitlement it gives them. In the 1920s, the automobile had been a new invention that was advertised only to the wealthy, but as it became more popular, it also became more affordable to lower class people. The presence of mindless carelessness, recklessness,
For this assignment, I have chosen to review the paper called “Silence on the BART Train: The Urban Passenger as a Situational Identity”. This student was looking into why people tend not to talk to each other or doing any form of socializations when taking the BART. The study venue was the BART, and the identities that were studied were normal people taking the BART, who were called “urban passengers” who abstains from any social interaction.
Every encounter we have with each other alters our identities, sometimes in large ways. A person’s identity is the mixture between their opinions, expectations, and perseverance. These three components create the perfect formula for a being’s personality. However, when they collide with another identity, they create an impact on each other. This is called social interaction, which occurs throughout a society’s people. People and their identities influencing each other has been commonly seen within films and contemporary American literature, for instance, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and American Denial, following the story of Gunnar Myrdal. From these sources, I often find the narrative and
Breaching the norms of society is an experimental activity done to imbue participants with slight discomfort and unease. In this experiment, one of the subtleties on a college campus was shattered by entering a casual and predictable environment in an unpredictable way. Essentially, the norm being focused on was the way people function in public environments. People generally go about their own business in public, trying not to deviate from what everyone else is doing. Thus, they say things that are expected of them, gesticulate the same way as everyone else, and sit in the same places as everyone else. Straying from these formalities tends to upset people, generally because one tends to appear ostentatious or insecure if they
Julia Freud, a scientist who conducted an experiment on mice, explained that the, “ways in which we live our lives may make us who we are,” and also who we will become in the future (qtd in Castro). We live our lives focused on pleasing others by doing what society considers “acceptable”. Someone who is a vegetarian might eat meat at a business meeting, because they don’t want to be weird, or force the server to find you something else because of your own values. The term “roaming entropy” coined by Freud captures the importance of our actions in defining identity, the more social you are, the more your identity will be focused on pleasing others (Castro). Feud found that there is a correlation between how much time you spend out of the house, and what your personality is. Someone who spends their time at home eating popcorn and watching netflix will have a different identity than someone who spends everyday partying. Also an important part of the people around us is that way they influence our decisions. As kids, we know a small amount of knowledge that the world has to offer, and as we hear others stories, beliefs, and ideas we grow to shape our own opinions. The opinions that we have about people, places, and events shapes how we act, and show ourselves to
“One of my neighbors in the apartment building across the street spends a lot of time at her mirror examining her pores, and I can see her doing it, just as she can undoubtedly see me sometimes. But our respective privacies remain intact as long as neither of us feels seen.”
We reject labels that people put on us and use different techniques of neutralization to deflect the norms of society. By neutralizing the moral demands of society we are able to justify our behaviors so we don’t have to feel bad about our actions. Labels also impact how we views others and define what kind of people they are. Some individuals enjoy having a deviant identity such as bikers, body art, or hairstyles that reject adult norms. This theory focuses on how our definitions of situations influence whether we deviate or conform to social