Social Norm Experiment

People expect others to remain a certain distance away depending on the relationship they have with someone. The closer a person is to another relationship wise (friends, relatives, partners) the more acceptable it is to be physically closer to them. The opposite can be said when strangers invade one’s personal boundaries at times it can be more than just uncomfortable having someone stand too close can also be seen as threatening. In an individualistic society, such as the one in the United States, being independent is highly encouraged. Rather than “all for one and one for all” people are told to work hard for themselves not for society as a whole. By sitting next to strangers not only did I infiltrate their boundaries but I also distracted them from their work by putting them in an uncomfortable situation. Since most subjects continued to do their work and mind their own business they held their needs as more important than interacting with me. When those two girls had an actual conversation with me and saw me as a friendly stranger rather than threatening they did not necessarily consider my needs but they did acknowledge my presence enough to set aside their work even if just for a moment. Being the social creatures that we are talking to others can put people at ease seeing that the people I sat next to took out their phones I saw that even though they did

The way I violated this norm was for the entirety of a day I would either look straight down or straight up when talking to someone. By doing this it would prevent me from making eye contact thus breaking the norm.

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 the best. 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 out of the ordinary and awkward.

When people are being watched they tend to behave in a different manner, and they usually act to the best

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.

For our Social Norm Project Caitlin Avery and I decided that we would get onto an elevator and press all of the buttons. We choose this experiment because we both are a little bit shy and felt that this experiment would be stepping out of our comfort zone without making either of us feel too uncomfortable. When we conducted this experiment we made sure to get on the elevator when there was a good crowd of people riding (around 10-15 people) and then the two of us pressed all of the buttons until they were all lit. As we rode the elevator we watched to see what the other passenger’s reactions were. Most people did in fact notice that we had pressed every button and had a puzzled expression on their face, but you could tell that they didn’t think much about it and went back to looking at their phone. I did notice a few people who had

Before I broke the norm, I was actually extremely nervous. I had lots of thoughts going through my mind. I had feelings of nervousness that were similar to a strange form of anxiety. More so than that, I had this nagging fear in the back of my mind about being judged for doing something that was so abnormal. Right from the start those feelings made this project particularly overwhelming, and I think that's why. Everybody has an overpowering urge to be completely normal or to be accepted and violating social norms such as the proximity norm, makes it feel impossible to be accepted at all.

My experiment consisted of me asking strangers, on the streets of Downtown Grand Rapids, for directions to Rosa Park’s Circle, and invading their personal space. To start, I would approach a stranger; tell them that I am lost, and that I am in need of directions to the Rosa Park’s Circle. As strangers began giving directions to me, I inched closer and closer to them. In addition to invading their personal space, I also held intense eye contact with them, trying my best not to blink. The whole time, although it was difficult, I kept a straight face while I performed my experiment. To make sure that I gathered enough information, and a variety of results, I tested my

In society, we are accustomed to the normative social influence of rules for us to follow, from how we act in public to what we wear. Whether it was visible to us at the time or not the general public does follow this social norm that governs us for one simplistic reason, we don’t want to be embarrassed for being out of the social norm. The need for social acceptance is presented in our everyday behaviors, actions, and reactions to social normalities. Even with the acceptation of the many people who pretend not to notice a change in a person social norm, when a social norm is broken, the majority will notice it. However I did learn something during the time I was the social norms breaker, “individuals will tend to either fully conform to the

So I decided to break this control. After putting my things away in my car outside I went and refilled my coffee and then found a seat next to a younger couple around my age or maybe younger. As I sat down next to them I was immediately given glares of dissatisfaction with my presence from both the male and female as their loud chatter dwindled down to silence. No words were spoken to me but the male subject looked at the female subject and they both got up and left the restaurant. I attempted this with a few more people and got similar results of silence and then moving away from my

While communication across cultures relies on speech to convey the messages of those living in the same society, usually the unspoken language has a larger role to play in delivering these messages. Similar to the country’s language being specific to the region it surfaces from, body language and facial expressions also have individual characteristics within a particular region. There are shared attributes of nonverbal communication across the world but these are commonly divided into high and low context cultures. This results from different cultural beliefs and attitudes within such societies and impact on the social norms of communication. In Japan, the citizens communicate with actions and gestures to a larger percent in comparison to their speech, as they are able to understand each other’s meaning without additional words. Due to it being a high context culture Japan relies heavily on its nonverbal communication for its society to function efficiently and for adequate comprehension to be achieved.

Social norms are behaviors that are deemed acceptable by our society. An example of a social norm is when you are at a signal light, you mind your own business and don’t communicate with neighboring cars. For my project I broke this social norm. Every time I was at a signal light, I would wave at neighboring car like a friendly person and see how they would respond. Majority of the participants conformed to my behavior and waved back because there wasn’t a group present, so conformity to the social norm wasn’t prevalent. If there was more pressure from a group of random people who could be judging the person then maybe they wouldn’t have conformed to my behavior. I got variance in people’s reaction even though majority

With Herb, I was momentarily nervous regarding his potential reaction. But when I realized Herb was trying to conduct a meeting while simultaneously attempting to figure out what was going on was rather humorous. Herb was definitely off compared to how he usually acted during meetings, so I decided to have fun with it. I became more relaxed in my posture and attitude while watching him. I would change my facial expressions, casually raise one eyebrow, or tilt my head as if in deep thought over what he was saying. It was almost a predator-prey type relationship, but my prey was unable to escape as he was leading the meeting.

For instance, they would look away from me or down at the ground or any other way they could think of to avoid direct eye contact with me. I found this to be both humorous and amusing because I did not expect it to be so easy to make a group of people, who obviously out numbered me, get so uncomfortable and somewhat clumsy. When I gave them a smile they then seemed to calm down and seem less bothered by me. Although they seemed less uncomfortable, they still refrained from turning around after they passed me. I then shifted my gaze across the parking lot where a woman who seemed to be scanning the area was located. After she seemed to be content that no one was watching her she then pulled out a wedgie. I honestly was not expecting her to have performed such an action and did not know what to think. My attention then shifted to a group three Asian males who had just begun to walk down the same sidewalk I had been standing on. They were all communicating with each other and did not seem to think anything of it. However when one of the males had realized I was watching them he immediately stopped smiling and the darted his eyes away from

I got varying reactions depending on where I was: at Calhoun, I got a few disgruntled looks, but most people paid no mind to it - students are generally too tired to care and have places to be. At bridge street, however, I got a quite a few angry looks and exclamations of annoyance. Most of the people would be walking towards me, look confused, and then just move to the side. Some people would walk past, then look back with a baffled look on their faces as if to accuse me of something much more significant than just walking. Overall, the reactions I got varied from place to place but were