Social Norms are the specific cultural expectations in a given situation and when these norms are violated people may act in a variety of ways. Some may be surprise and not know how to react while others may want to enforce the social norms. When the social norm of walking down the sidewalk on the opposite side, people reacted in absurd ways. As I walked back on “wrong” side of the side walk I received many different reactions from people as I passed by. One girl gave me the dirtiest look, she seemed disgusted in the fact that I was getting in her way. She showed a negative sanction with the dirty look. She was showing that it was wrong for me to walk on that side of the sidewalk going in the directions I was heading. I also came across a group of three students. I was walking on the very …show more content…
They would of rather walked into the grass then break the social norm of walking on the right side of me as I walked passed. The harshest reaction that I got was when I was shouldered from a guy that did not agree with the way I was breaking the social norms. I was walking and he was not going to walk around me as I walked passed him. He lowered his shoulder and let me have it. It was a more aggressive sanction but still a sanction that I got the message from. His mechanics of social control were more violent than expected but he did get is point across. He was proving that walking on that side of the side walk was wrong and not to do it. Other people that I walked past seemed to not know how to react. They were very surprised and tripped all over themselves as I walked by. They did not expect someone to be walking on that side of the sidewalk, by them not knowing how to react reinforced the idea that few people walked on that side of the sidewalk facing that direction. My favorite reaction that I got was when someone followed me onto the opposite side of the sidewalk, they seemed to agree
... you see someone. But having a few laughs about what you just did because you looked ridiculous doing it, is all apart of life! I live by the motto that life is suppose to be fun. It shouldn’t be all serious and work. You need to have a little time for adventure as well. Some things can be a little strange, such as eating with your hands, but hopefully that person you are with has a good attitude about it and will just go along with it all. Social norms can be a good and bad thing. They are good, because the keep everything in line and makes sure that humans are acting accordingly in their daily activities. But they also can be bad because it puts pressure on everyone's perception of what freedom is and what is acceptable or not. Social norms will always have a controlling impact on the behavior of individuals, occasionally developing them into a new form of person.
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
I carried out each violation of nonverbal norms five times with five different people, all within five different places. First violation took place at my local supermarket. I was in line with my shopping cart ready to check out. In front of me was an individual also checking out. I decided to bring my shopping cart as close to them as I can without touching them. Every time I did that, they would move further away from the cart. I did it at least three times before the individual turned around and gave me a firm look with their eyes as I looked down.
I crawled in the store Walmart on a busy Sunday like if I was a baby or even a toddler. This I would consider to be a norm violation because normally a young teen is not seen walking and crawling like a little baby. Immediately I had many people including teenagers and adults looking at me as if I had a mental illness. There were various times when I would wobble like if I was learning how to walk and then I would fall. A worker at the store came over to see if I needed help, but the way she was speaking to me was very slow and sounded out most words. I denied help and continued to do my norm violation. To me it was absolutely astonishing how many time I got criticized. I did not get to hear all the criticism, but the ones I did hear were harsh. The comments went from just stating if I was dumb to stating that I was a “stupid retarded kid on drugs”. However, when I was doing this act I also seen a couple of little toddlers doing almost the same crawl and wobble but the difference was that many parents thought it was a “cute” act. While my walk and wobble was just despicable and unacceptable. I cannot deny that I never thought the same about a person committing a norm
... day. The hardest part of the experiment was going against social psychology; it was very uncomfortable going against the social norms. We also found that it was difficult to match all of our schedules to be able to do the experiment all together when the gym was full. Overall the experiment taught us that social norms have molded society to believe that they should restrain their original thoughts and actions when in a public place. Lastly, individuals should not disturb other social norms that occur within the range of accepted actions, especially in the area of clothing.
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
They tried to keep telling me the directions, even as I walked away. I expected from the people that know me to walk with me as I walked away, which they did. I figured strangers would just stop talking. The only sanction I received was a shocked/disgusted face from my boss’s son. I only felt somewhat rude. The one Walmart employee that followed me down the aisle made me feel the worse because she just looked at me like where am I going. I have never been to another country and I have not experienced very many other cultures. I would imagine that that the norms I violated would be the same in most cultures. I feel like the norms I violated were simple ones and are not odd or weird. I makes sense that you would let someone finish talking before you walk
Breaking those norms made me feel extremely out of place and rude. They made me feel that way because I knew what I was doing wasn't socially right and people would get mad or be rude to me with their reactions. For the most part throughout my experiment, most people reacted the way I thought they would. You could tell that most people felt awkward or uncomfortable while breaking the norm. I faced a couple of difficulties during my assignment when it came to violating the social norms.
There are many different things that influence our behavior from internal influences to social norms. Social norms are explicit rules that govern how we behave in our society. 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 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. We had two choices, choice number one, facing people while standing in an elevator, and the other choice
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.
The reactions of people when you break a social norm can vary quite drastically. Sometimes the reactions are quite large and other times they are rather subtle. The reactions typically vary based on what norm you break and how strong of a norm it is. In the case of invading people’s personal space, I did not receive and intense reactions. All of the reactions I received were subtle. Not ma...
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.
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
Perhaps they didn 't like the way this person was dressed or maybe they thought that maybe the strangeness of this person was threatening. While these may be some valid reasons, the root of the issue with street harassment is misogyny. That is defined as the hatred of women. In this video, specifically, the problem is trans misogyny. Trans misogyny means the negative attitudes towards trans women and trans and gender non-conforming people on the feminine end of the gender spectrum (CITE). Simply put, trans misogyny is the hatred of the feminine ,which is not experienced, only by women. In "America Reflexx", people were not sure of the gender of the person walking the street, but knew this person identified with feminine traits. They knew this because this person wore a dress and heels. This elicited an extreme amount of hatred by these people. While many of these harassers were women, the issue is still trans misogyny. Women can be as guilty as men when it comes to misogyny of trans misogyny. If a woman has a hatred for specific women or those acting in a feminine role due to them not behaving in a certain way then they too are a misogynist. For example, if these women attacking this person attacked him or her because they believe women or anyone identifying as feminine must dress and behave in a certain way, they are misogynists. The reason behind this line of thought is that these same women would not have
A norm is “an accepted standard for how people should behave that is usually unwritten and learned unconsciously through socialization”. Every society in the entire world has norms. An example of these norms are “the expectation that children should follow their parents’ advice, that people standing in line should be orderly, and that an individual should accept an offer of a handshake when meeting someone for the first time”. These are things that everybody in this world does every single day.