In public there is an unspoken rule of thumb to behave a certain way. this can be referred to a social norm, or rule. We all follow these rules, such as leaving respectful space between persons or chewing with your mouth closed. Social norms comes from a person’s perception and culture of the situation, meaning when social norms are violated everyone reacts differently to the situation. For this experiment we were asked to break a social norm and record our findings on how people reacted and how we felt in the situation. For my experiment, I chose breaking the social norm of sitting at your own table. To perform this experiment I went to the food court in the mall with my two friends. They would pick out people that looked to be in there …show more content…
I was raised to always respect one’s personal space, as well as never intrude on someone’s conversation, both in which, I took part in. At first I had to force myself to walk over to the tables and then force myself to take a seat next to them. I was fighting against my inner conscience to make my body do the experiment for the sake of the experiment. The friends who were with me had to reassure me that it would be fine and to go ahead and follow through on the experiment, knowing that I needed to get people’s reactions to the situation. I was experiencing anxiety over what I knew I needed to …show more content…
No one has the same perception of a situation or a thought. When placed into an uncomfortable event we all have a different response and tacked to how we handle it. With this class I have begun to realize how our verbal message is not the only thing that is perceived from us, before we even begin talking there is already a perception made about us, a percentage of the conversation or act is already determined. The experiment was put in place to show how some actions are already instinctive and prearranged. Perception is as great of the condition as the verbal language or body
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.
There are many things that influence our behavior from internal influences to social norms. Social norms are implicit or explicit rules that govern how we behave in society (Maluso, class notes). 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.
By interacting with people throughout our lifetime we develop these ideas or rules that we follow. These rule are known as social norms and they are what we follow in day to day life sometimes with not even realizing it. With the elevator example we can see a situation that has rules, but maybe some people view them differently. Some people feel open and free to talk with a stranger as the ride together, others believe that the only communication should be tell someone what floor you need. These are rules that you learn for observation, but can be changed and modified through other interactions. I learned that you are supposed to be quiet and respectful on an elevator by seeing my parents act that way, but also because they would ask me to be quiet when I was younger when we would ride in
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
In our society, there are several unspoken rules in regards to social norms. It is thought that “no human group can exist without norms: norms make social life possible by making behavior predictable (Henslin, 2012, pg. 159). Going against such behaviors is known as deviance. Deviance is defined as any violation of social norms, or rules/expectations. “Deviance undermines predictability, the foundation of social life” (Henslin, 2012, pg. 159). My assignment was to design and carry out an experiment in which I demonstrated deviance and elicited responses from others.
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
I thought it would be funny and wanted to test the theory that they would stare at or slide away in order to maintain and take back their comfort zone. I did not expect that anyone would start a conversation with him or her or tell him or her to move out of the typical norm of courtesy. Getting video was a bit more of a challenge than I anticipated. My daughter is the bold one, however, because it is not the “norm” of society to sit with someone that closely given the other seating available she found it uncomfortable breaking the norm and making the initial approach. This is where bringing the boyfriend came in helpful as he had to lead the approach and sitting next to a stranger in an “out of norm” way. We selected two of our vid...
For our class project, each student was asked to break a norm that exists in our society and record the reactions of observers and results of the experiment. The norm I chose to break was the idea of driving normally-the belief that cars should be driven by pushing the gas pedal and moving in a forward motion, not a...
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
... 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.
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
In this day and age we like to say that we thrive on being ourselves and embracing our individuality, while this may be true in my social experiment I found that more often than not we tend to keep to ourselves and follow the social norms of day to day life. Social norms are behaviors and cues most everyone learns throughout their lives. These norms teach us what is and is not acceptable. To fully understand and analyze how norms serve to regulate behavior in our social world, I decided to breach a social norm of my own.
Norms are a part of everyday life. Without norms the world would be in total chaos. Norms by definition are rules of behavior shared by members of a society and rooted in the value system. ( ) Norms are held at a high standard in a society and are valued by its members. Norms vary from society to society. What is considered normal in one society may not be acceptable in another society. Norms are a societies way of living if a member of society breaks that norm they may be looked at as strange or even penalized depending on what kind of norm is broken. Norms are broken into three categories which are folkways, mores, and laws. Folkways are customs or desirable behaviors that are not strictly enforced. Violating a folkway is not criminal, but violating a folkway may have you looked at as weird. Mores are the strongest form of norms they have great moral significance in a society. Violating a more is considered immoral or borderline criminal. The strongest form of mores are taboos which are unthinkable action within a society. Laws are the third category of norms that a...
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.
Dressed in unisex clothing, no makeup or hair done,like usual. I browsed the makeup section, and men’s clothing section. Some men's clothing was in the cart and I held a beige purse. During broking the norm, many people starred at me as I grabbed the men’s clothing and held it up to myself. I tried not to communicate with my friend as she observed the others watching me. I believe that some children, girls were affected the most. One little girl said to her mom “ why is that girl dressed as a boy? I want to dress like that!” I feel as if many children looked at me and wondered why I looked like I was dressed more masculine, rather than more feminine. The children also probably wondered why I was in the men's section instead of the women's section. I do not believe males were affected in the process of conducting the social experiment unless they felt uncomfortable that I was shopping in their section of clothing. My target was to influence women who do not like dressing feminine to dress how they want and not let anyone bother them. I kind of felt awkward making the changes to myself because usually I wear a lot of makeup and a v neck type of shirt with skinny jeans or sometimes a dress. So it dress out of my comfort zone was a little odd. Breaking the norms I felt nervous and a little unsteady. I second guessed myself multiple times while walking into the men’s section. My friend kept laughing at me and at first I couldn’t make it look like I was seriously shopping for men’s clothing. Soon I got over it and just broke the norm. It was pretty difficult to break the norm, as many people I knew were walking past and saying hi and I did not look like my normal self. It was very difficult for me not to talk to others about what I was doing. Mostly because I knew some of the people and they asked why I was not dressed like myself. It was hard to keep character or what I was trying to portray when