For my research methods exercise I decided to go with Exercise 4: Breaching a Social Norm. To do this I went to the Woodland Hills Mall in Tulsa, Oklahoma located on 71st Street. I decided to find out if people would willing enter a small area with someone they did not know who was also breaking a societal norm. For my observation I was in the Mall elevator. However, instead of facing the door which is the societal norm, I stood facing away from the door looking out the window. I also did not speak unless the Mall visitors expressed concerned for me, such as “Are you alright?” and “Miss are you ok?” I wanted to see what people would do if someone was not facing the ‘correct’ direction as well as not answering normal questions, such as “Going …show more content…
Instead of people expressing overt concern, i.e. asking what I was doing/if I was okay, all but 4 people expressed covert concern or no concern at all – that I could detect from a two story elevator ride. The covert concern I noticed was people would whisper, stay on the other side of the elevator, and get out of the elevator as soon as the doors where open. One shocking result was the lack of parents sequestering their children from me. All but two mothers put their children in between their selves and I. The two mothers did what I expected and put their selves in between children and I. I predicted that the parents of children would want to keep their children away from an individual that was not obeying societal norms especially in small, confined areas like the elevator. Another prediction I had that was proven wrong was only 3 people expressed overt concern. Three women –on separate elevator rides – asked if I was okay, to which I answered that I was conducting a social experiment to see what people’s reactions where to my ‘peculiar’ behavior. I predicted that most if not all people would ask if I was okay or something along that line to serve as a gauge to discover if I was any type of threat to them. My main prediction was people would refuse to ride the elevator, yet again I was proven wrong. All but one family rode the elevator with me. This shocked me because I believed that people would not want to be in a small confide area with a person they did not know, who was not doing what was
Social interaction is the foundation upon which humanity has built our language, politics, and each and every relationship we have with another being. Our communication with the world is the building block of society and has controlled the way we interact with others from the beginning of humankind. It is a straight forward psychological path that is seemingly irrelevant to the mundanity of everyday life until that path is interrupted. To do so is considered a Social Violation of the Norm, or, put simply, a Norm Violation. In this experiment, I was asked to come up with a social faux pas that was both within the guidelines of the law and generally safe for the person in violation of the norm. For my norm violation I chose to upon entering
When this idea for extra credit came up it really caused some mixed thoughts for me on the subject of social norms. The reason for these thoughts were the reactions of other students in class as to what societal norms they would break, and the amusement or satisfaction they would have in breaking those norms. For the most part, it appeared that the consensus was to, in some way, break a social norm that would reveal them as a nonconformist, or as an individual. With that it mind, I really began to reflect on why it is so important for people to be noticed, and how especially in the individualistic culture of the United States, it is celebrated to be a “breaker of the rules” or a nonconformist.
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...
...viour is less with friends, though the people felt they weren’t highly influenced by the others in the room. In 2009 Bill Statham conducted an experiment in which he acted with a small girl like he was going to abduct her. They continuously acted out their scenario while people walked by. Only after several hours did 3 guys chase them down and help the girl, they said they listened to the situation and then took action.
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
When someone goes against something that everyone around expects he or she to act, it’s called norms violations. In other words, that person is doing something which is unacceptable to society or culture. In this sociology breaching experiment, I chose to violate a social norm in public areas – cutting a line without asking, so to observe what people acted and how they responded. I decided to go to Safeway and tried being a line cutter without asking anybody. If they asked me why I did it, I simply replied to them that I did not feel like either wanting to wait or getting in a line. By acknowledging that norms are quite essential in our society, I was aware that our society will have no foundation to stand if there is no norm. Cutting a line while others are queuing is a part of our social routine; even though I was kind of embarrassed, I got a chance to learn different kinds of
The objective of my experiment was to observe how people reacted to a violation in the social norms of elevator etiquette. Generally in elevators, people fill in starting from the back, face the elevator doors, and rarely make verbal contact with others. Unless the passengers of the elevator know each other, conversation is sparse and often limited to small-talk. As a result of this, my goal in the experiment was to introduce a foreign behavior to the elevator, something that nobody would expect while going about their day. Thus, I entered a situation where a certain set of expectations was in place, such as the informal rule that individuals should stand (rather than sit) in an elevator, and violated those unspoken rules without acting in
For my breaching experiment, I decided to break the social norm of looking at someone while engaged in conversation with them. Today, it is socially unacceptable and impolite to avoid looking at someone when talking to them. The background assumption for a typical conversation is that direct eye contact will be made more often than not; otherwise social norms are being violated. Avoiding eye contact during an exchange tends to dehumanize the person that is not receiving the eye contact. It is impolite and offensive, not looking at someone who is talking makes it seem as though the topic being discussed is unimportant. For my research experiment I would constantly talk to someone without initiating eye contact, or with my back facing toward the subject, not turning around or making eye contact until I had to ring up their order or make the drink for them. This research is important because it uncovers what happens when the social norm of
While breaking the three social norms there was one feeling that I felt was mutual throughout. Breaking those norms made me felt 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 I was breaking the norm. I faced a couple of difficulties through my assignment when it came to violating the social norms. While trying to break the movie theater norm, it was difficult for me to pick movies with 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
The social norm I chose to break was eating with my mouth open. I wanted to do something that I know wouldn't be too out of the ordinary but would still receive good responses. I spent time eating with my mouth open for two days, both in public places on campus and at meals in my fraternity house. The observations I made were very interesting and helped me gain a better understanding of how others react when someone breaks a social norm.
I expressed joy, friendliness, and openness. As I performed this social norm violation, I had one of my trusty coworkers help me by taking down notes on what she observed overall. Through her observations, I was able to recognize that through my experiment I was more prone to approach women than men. The observations also exposed that women were more uncomfortable with the idea of someone getting too close to their personal space and the inappropriate physical contact. Many of the women felt awkwardness and discomfort as they were being caressed by a complete stranger.
The social norm investigated was privacy and personal space. This was done by a way of following someone in a store and invading their space. This may have caused the people to feel paranoid, and suspicious as they looked back and tried to investigate the situation carefully. However, the situation turned for the worst, when the people became ferocious and began to yell out inappropriate words. The circumstances was corrected in the end by speaking to the people about the experiment. This experiment proved what the standards society holds are for certain reasons. We are taught that when someone is following us, or invading our personal space, it isn’t okay, and that you must be cautious. That is the same reaction that I was given. Social norms allow society to regulate their behaviors and allow us to function properly.
Bystander effect refers to the instance in which there is an emergency and people witnessing don’t respond when there are others around witnessing the same event. This happens because of pluralistic ignorance which is when people assume that there is nothing wrong because others surrounding them don’t look concerned. Two researchers, Latan and Darley, conducted an experiment to further study the bystander effect. In this experiment, Latan and Darley took multiple college students and one at a time, put them into cubicles. In a cubicle next to them there would be a recording device producing noises emulating distress noises in the form of choking. Eighty five percent of the students went to help; this is not an alarming number. The surprising
What is your reaction when people stare or look at you in elevator? People normally avoid facing others when they are in elevator, and it has been a norm that most people follow. The reason of doing this project is to see people’s reaction when others are breaking the norm of riding elevator. By doing this project we developed three steps of observations in elevator, which were examining people who follow the norm without violation, being an observer and a violator to watch the rider’s reaction when the norm is violated. Also, we would discuss about two main parts of the norm violation such as the process during the violation and the personal difficulties of breaking the norm.
Goar, H. (2009). Personal Space. (pp. 1-7). Great Neck Publishing. Retrieved from Research Starters - Sociology database