Being a Deviant for a Day

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Recommended: Violate a social norm

I choose project 1a: Being a Deviant for a day because I was interested in the reaction of others post to my deviant action in attempting to violate a social norm. One social norm that I observed while I was grocery shopping one day was people automatically claim the items belong to them once it is placed in their basket. Even though technically it is not it still belongs to the store until purchased.

As planned, I violated a social norm by going into a grocery store to pick up a few groceries at local Super Target store. While picking them out, instead of selecting items from the shelves or the store main floor I got them from another customer’s shopping cart acting like nothing is out of the ordinary, shuffling through their shopping carts for things I like then carry on as normal.

Before, taking action I had looked around to see the people in the store and predicted who would be more angered by my deviant action by making assumptions based on their facial expressions or attitudes at scene. I expect this because I assume it is more based on behavioral aspects that influences people’s actions most. Therefore, I assumed if they were already having a bad day, they might react in an even more nasty way compared to someone who is jolly, who might even welcome me to pick out from their shopping carts. I also originally expected the reactions in a same-sex situation to occur immediately right after I grab things from people’s grocery cart and possibly see them react in a more negative way compared to a situation of the opposite sex where I expect them to react positively. Simply assuming that there may be some type of gender prejudice that people have about others. Primarily on gender roles of what is expected and not expected of ...

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...ting him to say “I think you have the wrong cart.” Here the situational influence of approaching a same-sex versus opposite sex scheme did not create a distinctive difference compared to the expected behavior I had about the person I was going to approach and the impact I made to obtained a varied reactions to my deviant violation.

According to the essay entitled How Expectation Affects Behavior which states and also concludes my gained knowledge of this project is that without the knowledge to be able to process and attain a cognitive framed structure to process future social information with those schemas serving as memory guides. Social norms are established as a rule, and it continues in force because people prefer to conform to the rule given and expect highly of others to conform even in a simple normal every day activity because people obey fairness norms.

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