The Impact Of Social Norms On Our Behavior

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

I wanted to choose a social setting and role that is common to most members of society throughout the course of the day. In one way or another, be it direct or indirect, most people in American society play the role of a consumer or customer. I also wanted the business to be a fairly common and causal, but also a place with frequent and busy customers. The social norm I chose to defy was simple, go through the drive thru and

Misfit. Rebel. Troublemaker. These are all names that may be given to people who go against the social norm. According to Andersen, Taylor, and Logio, the authors of Sociology: The Essentials, norms are defined as the specific cultural expectations for how to act in a given situation (2016). When someone disrupts the expectations, they commit a norm violation and may display deviant behavior. Since norms are so automatically built into our everyday lives, the rules of social interaction can be subtle and may be imperceptible to the people who participate in them. Therefore, sociologists often purposefully commit a norm violation in order to study what the rules or norms are. This approach, known as ethnomethodology, interprets society as being

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

My social norm that I broke consisted of me going into the bathroom stall and talking to the person next to me. This social norm was particularly easily

I had just left the MFA program at USF, I was 22, lost, highly discouraged and living with my parents. I had befriended Jerry Jackman the year before while working as a Weekend Interpreter, making minimum wage and learning everything I could about the museum industry. It was partially my nativity that led to my friendship with Jerry. At the time I did not know, (or maybe I knew and did not care) how walking into the Museum Director’s office uninvited to ask about his day, or to complain about some unsatisfactory ending to a book I was reading or to ask if he wanted to accompany me on a coffee break might be construed as inappropriate or unprofessional.

I figured I would get some strange and questioning looks, but I expected most people to just brush it off. Part of this was due to the fact that everyone else in Sociology 100 was also breaking a norm, so I think that by the time I did mine, people just assumed it was part of an assignment. I also expected this reaction because I really don’t know anyone well yet. I feel that we have come to a point in our society that we sometimes get so wrapped up in our own lives that we tend to ignore or brush off people we don’t know who appear or do things we consider strange. However, I was sure that if I ran into someone from home that I do know, that they would call me out on it.

The social norm I violated was leaning or being near the sides or corners of an elevator. I volunteered in a hospital during my spring break so I decided to violate the elevators social norm, because I have to constantly take the elevator. In my nature, I am very timid, so violating a social norm required guts and perseverance. When I entered the elevator, I stood in the middle of the elevator while everyone else were leaning on the sides or corners. After a quick few seconds of standing in the middle of the elevator, the nurses were not taking their eyes off of me and were murmuring. The doctor literally asked me if I was feeling okay and politely asked me to go to the volunteer office right away so I can be sent for a checkup with one of the doctors. The patient stared at me for a few moments and looked away because he looked really ill. While walking out of the elevator, the two nurses continued to murmur and constantly looked at me until I was gone from their vicinity.

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

When researching the topic of social norms and norm violations, there is an ongoing list. This is because almost everything we do in society is based on these social norms. If/when these are broken it can be punished as little as someone giving a dirty look, or as large as severe jail time. Social norms come into existence when a society does a specific task over and over until it becomes a normal occurrence. One of the biggest concerns is the war on drugs. Marijuana use is harshly punishments yet causes little to none negative effects. On the other hand, we have tobacco which there are barely any laws on yet it is killing thousands of Americans.

As we know, norms are social expectations that guide our behavior. In this paper, I will discuss norm violations that I’ve observed, and my own personal norm violation that I committed. I will describe what happened, what was done, and the reactions of the people around when these norms begat. I will also discuss the significance of folkways, mores, values, and sanctions to my observations.

Breaking social norms is something I shy away from. I refrain from breaking social norms because I know what it can do to a person’s reputation, but also because I was taught not to. Those are the reasons this assignment was particularly challenging for me, so I kept it small and just chose to sit next to people. To get various reactions I sat next to my family, friends, and finally strangers. Each group reacted differently to me sitting next to them and only the strangers reacted the way I thought they would. I started by first sitting next to family members as they were the easiest to reach.

I personally found trying to find a single “Social Norm” to break challenging so I chose to do two instead. The first was to end my phone calls with I love you, and to talk to a stranger in the bathroom stall next to my own. Which is how I confessed my undying love to a coworker. Working at a casino, employees have to call surveillance for anytime they move around with money or have to be escorted to the vault. I’m a pretty lively person but going into work, I started to get this bashful nature about myself especially the closer it came to performing both of the social norms I gave myself to break.

It had just hit eleven o’clock and an abundance of people were leaving out of each building surrounding the yard. I was very nervous when doing this project, because I feared embarrassment. It took me almost thirty minutes to muster up the courage to follow someone around, and by this time the crowd had dwindled down. This made my task harder to accomplish, in contrast to my initial thoughts. I was under the impression that I would not be as embarrassed if a large amount of people did not witness me breaking social norms, but I soon found out that the crowd would have worked to my advantage. More people mean the area is more crowded and it would have allowed me to get closer to more people

Proximity can be defined as nearness in space, time, or relationship. There are many terms and or phrases used to describe proximity such as personal space, soul space, bubble, comfort zone, too close for comfort, grill, invasion of privacy, etc. In this assignment we were asked to invade a stranger’s personal space and record their reaction to this event. I went to a neighborhood Starbucks and proceeded to invade the personal space of a stranger sitting at a table with his laptop. I also tried talking within close proximity of someone just to see their reaction, but the results of the Starbucks experiment brought about greater output. After church on Sunday, November 22, 2015 at 2:16pm I walked into the Starbucks located at 1830 N Federal Hwy, Boca Raton, FL 33432. I walked up to the counter and ordered a triple shot of espresso with 3 raw sugars, and a tall cup of ice with splash of soy milk. Once I received my order I walked to the condiments table near the door and began to mix my drink. I stirred the sugar into the espresso and then poured it over the cup of iced soy milk. There was a man who appeared to be of Caucasian decent sitting alone at one of the tables, he was on his laptop with his cup next to him and a notebook. He was so wrapped up in his work that he didn’t even notice me walking up. I pulled out the chair next to him and sat down. Prior to myself sitting down I privately hypothesized that it would take this man a couple seconds to realize what was going