Breaking A Social Norm: Violating Personal Space

Have you ever wondered why we hold the doors for those behind us? How about the reason we use utensils when we eat? What about why we always stand facing the doors in the elevator? These are all examples of what are known as social norms. According to Dr. Ward social norms are “basic rules of society that help people know what is and is not appropriate to do in any situation.” These basic rules of society are usually unwritten and unspoken and many of us pick up on them over time. Although, some social norms are very common throughout many cultures, there is a lot of them that vary depending on which culture you are apart of. For example, here in America, a major social norm that we have is when eating, the polite thing to do is to use spoons and forks, instead of digging in with your hands. For instance, we would not eat spaghetti with our hands but we would use a fork. In some Thiland cultures it is considered rude to put most foods in your mouth with a fork. Then there is also some cultures such as Chile in which it is impolite to use your hands for anything, even foods such as french fries, they use forks while eating.

I violated a social norm in my experiment by putting my phone on full volume in places where people normally have their

In our society we have a number of society norms that we abide by. For example, there is an unwritten rule of how one should behave in an elevator. For example, it is proper to face front, stand away from strangers, and not to look at others. When a social norm is broken people may respond with alarm, humor, fear, irritation, or an array of other emotions. When you think of a norm, you are probably thinking about being normal. But in psychology terms, norm means, a standard or representative value for a group. The norm that is more common to people is a social norm. Meaning expectations about what behavior, thoughts, or feelings are appropriate within a given group within a given context.

The title of this odd social experiment is Parental Permission. The title will make more sense once you become more familiar with the project. The aim of this project was to break an everyday social norm; a social norm is a set of rules or behaviors that are considered acceptable in society or among a group. As citizens of a society we all adhere to many social norms, a very common social norm is tipping a waiter or simply wearing clothes.

The objective of my experiment was to see how people reacted to a violation in the social norms of elevator etiquette. Generally in elevators, people are expected to fill in starting from the back, facing the elevator doors, rarely making verbal contact, with the possible exception of finding out which floor people are heading to. 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 were in place, such as the informal rule that individuals should stand (rather than sit) in an elevator, and violated those unspoken rules without actually doing anything that would not be perfectly acceptable in another social setting.

As stated earlier, this experiment completely proved my hypothesis wrong. Many of the people that rode the elevator with me stared at me as though there were something wrong with me. Most were uncomfortable and fidgety and kept looking over their shoulder at me as they rode forward, and me, backwards. More than a few asked if I was alright and even asked my friend, who was acting as if he did not know me, knew what was was wrong. I even conducted a few controlled experiments where I rode the elevator forward to see if people would react to me then, but not a single person outside of the experiment even acknowledged my existence. I would have thought that in a place like L.A. County, people would be too busy to notice others, or people would have been raised to mind their own business and keep to themselves, but apparently abiding my social standards and making sure that others do as well is a higher priority.

In preparation to starting our experiment it took my confidant Carla and I about an hour to finally initiate the first move. Before even holding hands with strangers my mind was swirling with multiple questions and thoughts, like “Why am I even doing this?”, “I don’t appreciate making people feel uncomfortable.”, “Why is Mrs.Henry torturing me!”, “Can I just not do it?”, and so on. In addition to my thoughts and questions, I felt myself sweating and my stomach felt as if it was in a twisted knot. While I approached my first victim I felt the temperature of my body raise up to boiling point and the color of my skin turn from snow white to lava red in a split second. To make things worse once I held onto the lady 's hand she was gripping onto mine and was holding on tight, and my reaction was to laugh because when you are in an uncomfortable situation you honestly don’t know how to react.

When I entered the men’s restroom, I acted as if I were using the bathroom in one of the stalls. Pretty soon I overheard two young men enter. After they shut their stalls, I “flushed” my toilet and started to rinse my hands. The men finished and came out of their stalls at the same time. They both froze and looked directly at me. They looked like UNC Charlotte students. One of them stated, “what the f*ck?” The other guy laughed, and asked me if I knew I was in the wrong restroom. I stated that I did know. His response was, “why would you come in here?” I told him, “I needed to use the restroom, is it wrong for a lady to use the men’s restroom?” They both laughed and the other guy asked if it was a prank. Right when that question was asked, an older man entered the restroom. When the man saw all of us in there, he looked confused and decided to walk right back out. At that point I told the two guys speaking to me that I did it for a school assignment. We all laughed again and then the young man I was speaking with mostly, asked for my number. I politely declined and left the restaurant afterwards.

For my breaching social norm experiment, I was determined to do something I would never do even if it was a dare, especially since my ability to interact with strangers is not what I consider advanced. So, I decided to make people feel uncomfortable by holding their hand. What I would do is walk up to the person from behind and slowly make my way to their hand to make them feel even more uncomfortable. People normally hold hands with their significant other, or with someone they know, like a friend or family member, so to be holding hands with a stranger is infrequent and abnormal.

According to the staff of History.com, Vietnam, a small Southeastern Asian nation, was controlled under French colonial rule since the 19th century. Following Japan’s defeat by the Viet Minh in World War II, there was a split in Vietnamese ideas. The nation as a whole wanted Vietnam to come together as a unified populace, but different regions had different ideas for how they wished to be governed. The northern region believed that the best idea for government would be that of one modeled after communism, but the southern region believed the exact

The social norm experiment that I performed consisted of me violating a social norm and observing people’s reactions for doing so. I did something that is deemed “not normal,” based off from societal standards. The norm I broke was an interesting one. Instead of respecting strangers’ personal space, I invaded their space. I stood in front of them as close as I could possibly get, without touching them. I choose to break this social norm because of how I am with people. Strangers or friends, it does not matter, I do not like when people stand close to me. I feel as if they are invading my personal space. When people stand too close to me, I tense up and feel very uncomfortable. In my eyes, this social norm is necessary, especially for people who are similar to me and need to have their distance from others.

For centuries Vietnam had been under Chinese rule. The Vietnamese people were an oppressed society and were exploited by the Chinese. Forced labour was brought upon the Vietnamese people, and there were many tyrannical Chinese governers along with constant demands of tribute for the Chinese rulers. There had been many revolts by

Vietnam is a feudal country, but has now changed to communism, where the government decides everything for the country. That is why Vietnamese people have not been free to talk about politics. If you mention anything related to politics and the police will come to arrest you right away, you may be beaten. That is my theme in this

The United States and Vietnam have almost opposite cultural systems under Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. There are four main categories which is a power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity or feminine, and individualism or collectivism. Vietnamese has a high power distance when the US have much lower power distance. For instance, they respect others by their ages because of their culture. Usually an elder man is the most powerful person in a family and a decision maker. Parents didn’t used to allow to speak up anything from their children and also some physical violence were accepted as discipline, but it’s been changing. Uncertainly avoidance is weak in a family situation, on the other hand, the US has weak uncertainly avoidance

At a very early age, children learn about social norms to help them become proper citizens in society. Examples of some social norms that students learn are: “do not yell in the library,” “do not speak unless spoken to,” “do not talk to strangers,” and “close the door when you use the restroom.” As you grow older, these rules become unspoken because everyone knows how to act like a proper individual in society. The textbook definition of a social norm is something that is a rule of behavior that society accepts. (Bicchieri) Since everyone knows these unsaid rules of society, what would happen when someone decides not to follow these rules? What would people think and react? In this paper, I discuss my violation of the social norm “don’t talk to strangers” and discuss what I learned from this experiment.