How To Break A Norm

For example, in my household, on Thanksgiving day, my mom cooks various of traditional Thanksgiving meals early in the morning. The meal consist of turkey, mashed potatoes, sauteed string beans dressed in shredded garlic and butter. While she is cooking, I sit down in front of the T.V. to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. When my mom is done, which is about 6 p.m., every single guest stands in front of the highly decorated table filled with scorching hot meals waiting to be devoured, and serve themselves. We follow the traditions every

During the social norm violation experiment, my partner and I found that by violating simple social norms people can react either calmly or highly confused. The social norm we chose to violate was asking for someone else’s seat in class and at lunch. My partner and I believed that most of the participants would react either confused or just give up their seat to be nice. To follow through with the experiment, my partner went up to ten different students while either in lunch or in class and politely asked to switch seats. I observed the whole situation, I watched the difference in each person’s body language, tone, attitude, and their answer. Most of the time, whenever my partner asked a student for their seat, they looked at her confused at

In my Norm Violation assignment I chose to break the common dining etiquette norm of eating with your hands. Since eating with your hands is only deviant behavior in certain dining situations, I chose to break this norm at a local sit-down restaurant in Eugene, Café Soriah. I went to the downtown restaurant with a group of friends for an afternoon meal without telling them of my Norm Violation assignment. Being the only informed one in the experiment seemed like the best way to get the most candid reactions from my peers.

In this paper I will explain my process of breaking a norm. I picked what I consider to be a most modern American societal norm. In my personal opinion economic issues are predominantly prevalent currently. The opinions range, but the strength of each conviction seems to hold considerable weight. As a slight Segway, I feel it is important to emphasize the strength of American norms throughout the history of our country.

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.

For my nonconformity/compliance assignment I chose to violate a social norm. I felt that doing it only once would not suffice, so I tried it a few times to see if the results varied from person to person. I went ahead and started with refusing a handshake. The first instance was a friend introducing me to a friend of theirs. He reached his hand out and I just looked at it and shook my head. I must admit it was hard to keep a straight face, but I managed. Concerning my personal feelings, I was surprised at how uncomfortable I was, considering that I was aware that it was an experiment. Despite this knowledge, I still felt a mild rush of embarrassment. His reaction was what I had

During my childhood my mother and father expected me, my brother and two sisters to be respectful, obedient and polite. They set a conservative tone for our house that was not as strict as a boarding school, but there were similarities. Now that is not to say they beat us, or were mean, in fact they loved us very much but the love was shown from a specific distance. We talked, we laughed, but we never talked loudly, and we never laughed too much. I can remember hugging my dad, but it was when I was pretty little. I guess he felt that I was a boy, and as such I had to stand on my own. My only problem was he worked so much I never really learned how to stand on my own as a man. He never taught me how to defend myself. My mom always told me to walk away from a fight, problem is kids don’t view the world as adults, and the kid looking to avoid a fight probably didn’t know how to fight, and that was just too tempting a target to pass up. After we mover to Cerritos it was different, my relationship with my dad changed. He was getting home after work on time, he was around in the evenings and on weekends. I could see he was more relaxed, under less stress than he had been before and it was great! We started doing things together more regularly. We went deep sea fishing 4 or 5 times a year, we went to science fairs, hobby shops and down to the local harbors and checked out sail boats. I was getting to know him, where he came from,

He didn’t talk to me for days until my mom convinced him to. My mom told me stay quiet, listen and apologize while my dad expressed his feelings and opinions towards my previous behavior. During this “discussion,” I found out that my dad was really hurt at some of the things that I said about him. He didn’t even bother to consider some of the issues that I brought up because of that. I went too far while voicing my concerns on an issue which caused my dad to be against everything I’ve advocated for. My punishment for this was to discontinue debating because my dad thought that was the reason why I started to voice my opinions more often. Debate has been an amazing platform for me to develop many necessary skills, but my passion for social justice has mainly come from reading books and listening to what oppressed and marginalized people have to say. But I didn’t say anything to my dad about this. At the time, I just silently listened to everything he said and apologized at the

My “breaking a norm” project was an interesting experience. For my assignment, I went to Walmart and engaged in conversations with random people. I would ask them about their day and ask them a simple question about themselves. Normally people keep to themselves while shopping, or they engage with people that they are familiar with. I figured that this would be a good option for the assignment because people would not expect it. The experience was a little hard for me because I am not a social person.

For the breaking norm experiment I wanted to create an awkward encounter with a stranger. Once the encounter takes place I would try to start a conversation and hold it for at least five minute. There is many was I could of done this experiment, but I wanted it to be executed in a way were it didn’t give an uncomfortable vide to the individual. Some ideas that had were going up to random strangers while their walking to class or lifting at the gym. At the end I choosed none of theses ideas because I felt like the result would be bias if it was done this way. The reason for this is because I wouldn’t have a long enough encounter with the test subject. Most people at the gym or walking to class have are restricted by time. So I design my experiment

It was around 6pm when I received the call from my dad saying he needed to see my brother and I at his office within the hour. After I heard the words, “I need to talk to you guys,” I was not in the mood to chit chat. I told him what he wanted

Breaking the Norms     When each of us was conceived, we did not have anything influencing our perception of the world. While we were growing up and still do this day, our surroundings influenced the way we think and the how we behave in our daily lives. We get ideas about gender roles from our parents, our teachers, television, books and even subconsciously. As part of a project to break the norms of society and push past peoples thresholds, I needed to figure out what made people feel uncomfortable. I thought for a moment and decided to tackle homophobia. I choose this topic because very few men are comfortable talking about the subject of gay men. It is my objective to better understand why men think the way we

Considering social norms are defined as common expectations that rule people’s behavior, social control is used by people in society to ensure others follow these expectations. As seen in the experiments, my friends’ reactions show me that the social norm of eye contact is significant because they tried to socially control my behavior to make me look them in the eyes. These forms of informal punishment include, my friend in the first experiment who moved in closer, my friend in the second experiment who moved his head around, and my roommate in the third experiment who asked me how I was doing; all in an effort to get my attention through eye contact. Additionally, while I was breaking the social norm, I felt uncomfortable since it was difficult for me to not make eye contact with them, even when they attempted to socially control me.

When you think about your family when you were growing up do you remember being together at mealtime or going off doing your own thing? Where these experiences you would like to carry onto your family or change them. As the years pass we as a society become busier and busier with work obligations, our and our children’s extra curricular activities and trying to keep with the everyday things that need to be done. Sometimes it feels as if there is not enough time to cook a meal and sit down together, or is this something that we have just become accustom to saying? It has also been mentioned that eating out or getting take out saves time and money, but even then are we getting the quality time we need with our families? Does it benefit our families to skip this quality time together?