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The Norm Of Reciprocity Is Explored By Female And Male Researchers

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Introduction:
Because humans are perceptive animals, people would mirror their reactions with people around them. These responses allow people to feel as if they are following a social norm by not doing anything different from others. In this experiment, the norm of reciprocity is explored by female and male researchers to not only investigate the truth of this theory, but also observe the between gender differences to various facial expressions.

Hypothesis:
According to the norm of reciprocity, people are more likely to put the same expression as they see on others because In terms of the difference between the reactions for female and male researchers, both genders will most likely receive a smile more from females and the other…show more content…
In the end, there were 257 students who completed the experiments, which means the results were concluded from a total of 1542 subjects and responses.

Results:
The overall results collected by 257 students for each of the expression is roughly 2.8 for frown, 3.2 for neutral, and 3.9 for smile, each data at a statistically significant p-value of 0.001. This result disproves the norm of reciprocity theory in the hypothesis since a frown received a response closer to neutral.
Amongst the statistically significant data, male researchers received more smiles from the opposite gender when making a neutral and a smile compared to its own gender at p<.01 for female researchers is receiving more smiles from the opposite gender when making a neutral face. In perspective of the difference between female and male researchers, females received more smiles from the same gender while male researchers received more smiles from the opposite gender. These data sets confirm the part in the hypothesis about men being less likely to offer a smile.

Discussion:
While conducting the experiment, there were still a few challenging factors. It was reported that making eye contact with passerbys was relatively difficult. Most people were either occupied by their phones or directly avoided eye contact. This makes the willing passersby a selective group of individuals who were comfortable in exposing themselves at a level of
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