Social Norm Violating Behavior

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Norm violating behavior is behavior that is not considered appropriate within society. For this study, the social behavior that was carried out was having an animated conversation with oneself while in a public place. This is considered norm violating because people do not engage in this activity due to the rules of what society deems as acceptable. This leads to the hypothesis: If a person begins to have an animated conversation with themselves in a public setting then those around will become uncomfortable. Further, individuals have the preconceived idea that those who talk to themselves are “abnormal” because societal expectations have been established and hold a consistency within the culture. In addition, as humans privacy plays a significant …show more content…

The study was conducted in a number of different locations in order to gain reactions from a multitude of different people. Further, six trials were conducted in total where each subject was assigned to have an animated conversation with themselves, which was either friendly, aggressive or loud to ensure reactions from the audience were measured. The comparison behavior was implied and was the opposite of the social norm as in having a regular conversation with other people or on the phone. In addition, the overall reaction time as well as the interaction depended on when an audience or individual responded to the subject by expressing facial emotions, body movements or physically going up to interact with the subject. Lastly, the participants within the study consisted of both females and males all current college students and the reason we had different gender participants was to see if any differences occurred within the reactions from the …show more content…

In the fifth trial, conducted in engineering 2, the subject sat adjacent to a study group and began the animation. Initially there didn’t seem to be much of a reaction, but after disengaging as the subject was walking away it was observed that the group stared at the subject with curiosity. Finally, in the sixth and final experiment, the subject immersed in between a female studying and a group of 2 males. Proceeding, the female became clearly agitated and the two males got up and moved away. Overall, our data did match the initial prediction. Nevertheless, the diversity in the reactions was more than we anticipated, such as one of the participants leaving the area with the subject present or how other participants stopped mid-conversation. One of the alternative hypotheses could be that the use of profanity can catch people by surprise and attract their attention. This is believed to be plausible as during the trials with the use of profanity, a stronger reaction (stopping conversations, glancing over)

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