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Social norms and their consequences on society
Ethnology observation
A thesis statement on social conformity
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Introduction 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 Methods and results Whispering
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.
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 ...
... 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
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
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
We live our lives following a set of steps and the majority of the time we do not even notice we doing such things. We have learn through society how to dress, how to eat, what to do and when to do it. The problem is that, when one these things are not the way they are supposed to be, we immediately noticed there is something wrong. We understand that the person is not doing what is “right” in other word, that person is breaking a social norm. For the purpose of this paper, the social norm I decided to break was wearing my clothes the right way. In order to break the norm, I decided to wear my clothes inside out. The idea to wear my clothes inside out came about as a result of one my roommates accidently wearing her gym clothes inside out in a couple of occasions when we went to the gym. At least twice my roommate wore her gym pants inside out
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
Social norms are really important to our society’s functioning. If certain norms were not followed it is almost certain chaos would ensue. Not only do we follow social norms in order to prevent chaos, we also follow them to avoid the consequences of not following them, especially if the functional perspective is accurate. On occasion though, breaking subtle norms that we may not think about often can prove to have interesting results.
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
In this paper I will analyze my own behavior, behaviors of others, and interactions I have noticed pertaining to social penetration theory. Social penetration theory provided me with insight on my daily communication practices. It brings light to the reasons as to why we feel comfortable, and uncomfortable in our ongoing experiences.
My social experiment, took way too much thought to complete. I could not think about what I should do for this project until about noon on that beautiful Sunday. I invited a couple of friends to go with me to Walmart, but I was unsuccessful and I only got one friend to accompany me. Even so, we had fun.
The theory studies the manner individuals are able to understand their everyday situations. People come from different backgrounds and they tend to view their surroundings differently from those around them. Their background provides them with basic assumptions about everyday life such as values and beliefs. Ethnomethodology investigates what those background assumptions are, how we came to that assumption and how do they affect our perception of reality. For example a background assumption is that Policemen wear their respective uniforms when on duty. A policeman at a crime scene, wearing citizen clothes, would have difficulty controlling a crowd because they don’t obey due to the fact that he claims to be a policeman but isn’t wearing a uniform. When the background assumption is not fulfilled, onlookers will not respond respectfully as they would if the policeman was wearing his uniform. Therefore one can assume that people have a predisposed idea that they must respect authority figures as a result of the symbols associated with their