Breaking the Social Norms
Social norms are the unwritten rules of how to behave. There are many different social norms that we are expected to follow on a daily basis such as, chewing with your mouth closed, holding the door for people, and saying “please” and “thank you.” Human beings need these social norms to guide their behavior and in understanding other’s actions. Social norms are an expectation that everyone follows for the most part.
Personal space is a pretty common social norm known to almost everyone except for a few. For the few who don’t know what personal space is, it’s the space surrounding someone to where invasion feels threatening or uncomfortable. We’ve all been there, someone sitting right next to you at the movie theatre even though it’s completely empty or when someone stands too close to you on an elevator. It creates a sense of uneasy and awkwardness within the person.
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This social norm is very interesting because while some people respect people’s personal space, there are others who absolutely have no concept of it.
I first learned of personal space at a young age from my parents and teachers. I chose personal space because like most people, I enjoy having my personal space. I don’t like when people invade my personal bubble. It puts me slightly on edge and makes me slightly uncomfortable. One distinct memory I have from elementary school was when I was kindergarten. I was just sitting on the carpet, minding my own business, when suddenly this kid just started playing with my hair. I honestly didn’t know what to do I felt so uncomfortable that I just sat there and pretended I didn’t notice. Even though personal space is something I value, I decided to break the social norm by invading people’s
space. How would you feel if a complete stronger walked up and held your hand? Weirded out, uncomfortable, awkward. That was the kinda reaction I wanted out of people. To break the social norm I simply walked around campus for an hour and walked up to complete strangers and held their hand. I stayed predominantly on the mall, since that was the most heavily populated area. I completely pop their bubble of personal space by holding their hand. Usually the act of holding someones hand is viewed by society as something that only people who are very close or intimate, such as a couple, do. The common reaction was a surprised and confused face, followed by a quick movement of their hands away from the contact of my hand. None of the people actually walked with me. I tried to make its equal by attempting to hold hands with both genders, but I only walked up to five people because I felt very awkward on my end of things. One interesting thing however, that surprised me was that. no one stopped to ask me what I was doing, as I imagine others felt just as awkward. I know I had a had a hard time attempting to break the social norm because I felt so awkward and embarrassed to do it. The major think I learned from this is that handholding is only for couple or people who know each other well. Otherwise, it is as awkward as can be.
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.
There are two important areas in this research- territoriality and use of personal space, all while each have an important bearing on the kinds of messages we send as we use space. Standing at least three feet apart from someone is a norm for personal space.
Space can be defined as the zone between people (citation: tcn). Different cultures have different zone preferences. It’s important to realize that comfort levels can vary depending on those zone preferences (citation: tcn). Space can be intimate, personal, consultative, and public (citation: tcn). First, intimate space is within touching distance. Then, personal space is the area around an individual that is considered theirs. Next, consultative space is being at a distance that is appropriate for social interaction. Finally, public space is a zone that is open to all people (citation: psych).
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
A social norm is classified as a standard expectation of what is the correct or deemed acceptable conduct that a member of a society has. The social norm that I chose to violate is the one where as I describe, you evade people’s personal space. What defines giving people their personal space and not getting too close, is that out of respect in my opinion, people need to have space to breathe and to move. If you get too close to people, either the person is going to think you are sexually intimidating him or she, you are just creepy, or even worse think you are rude for intimidating a right people have to be inches away from you. As I was getting ready to do the assignment of monitoring the reactions I would get for violating any social norm of my choice, I had a hard time thinking about which social norm I was going to
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.
Little (as cited in Guardo, 1969) defines personal space as "the area immediately surrounding the individual in which the majority of his interactions with others takes place."
One big implicit social norm involves personal space. In our society it is implicitly know that you give people enough space when waiting in line or when sitting next to them as not to invade their personal bubble. I thought it would be particularly interesting to see what people did the moment you crossed that “bubble line.” Periodically throughout the day I would intrude upon people’s bubbles. For varied results, this occurred in classrooms, the elevator, the lunch line, the lunch table, and at work. During classes and at lunch I would move my chair really close to that of the person next to me. While in the lunch line and in the elevator I would stand really close to the person, even if there was plenty of space to spread out. At work, again I stood really close to the person when talking to them.
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 breaking a social norm, or even behaving in a way that goes against what is expected, the relationship between the people involved may be impacted. In the experience I had breaking a social norm, there was no preexisting relationship that could have been impacted. Nevertheless, a relationship was briefly built and my unexpected behavior had a drastic impact on the new relationship. The lack of relationship prior to this experience results in her only judging me based on my intrusion of personal space. If this person were to see me again they most likely would recall the previous encounter we had and perhaps anticipate a similar unexpected
space could be your own personal life, your vocational life or cultural interaction within the community.
Personal space has many factors that affect how different people react such as their culture, gender, race, age, etc. (The Development of Personal Space in Primary School Children - Springer 195). Personal space is when someone feels uncomfortable in his or her own space or bubble (Personal Space 1). People call their space a bubble so when someone gets to close it might pop (Wells 1). One-person controls how big or small the bubble is (Wells 1). There are four areas that break down space (Igarashi, Stade, and Vriens 4). Internal, mental, physical, and spiritual are the four boundaries that de...
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.
Instead, it is the individual’s cultural environment that determines the appropriate personal space necessary to feel comfortable. Indeed, research on personal space is an excellent example of how a biological factor is influenced by social-environmental factors. There are various perceptions of what constitutes personal space in different countries and cultures around the world. Personal space is the means of a man’s affiliation with other people, society, and the surrounding culture. Personal space refers to the bubble, or appropriate distance, around a human being that determines how close individuals stand together during interactions without being offensive.