Norms_Breaching_Paper

Norms Breach Paper Quick question! Do you like when someone stares at you, and not someone you know, a total stranger' If you said no, well then your not alone, in fact more than half the people I did my test on had a negative sanction. Now the norm I chose to break was staring at random people. The way I would do this was I would go to a random place, preferably with a lot of people and just stare at random strangers and I would see how they reacted. Being a easy folkway to break and simple to experiment I was able to try several different locations but the best ones were a Mall, Park, and a Restaurant. The majority of most of the people I experimented on had a negative sanction toward me staring at them. The first staring test took place in the morning at a Denny’s which only had senior citizens in it at the time, and they did not take kindly to me staring at them what so ever. Every single senior citizen I tested at Denny’s gave me a dirty stare, or they would gossip/talk about me amongst themselves. Also this one old lady actually confronted me for staring and in her own words she said, “you’re being a disrespectful young man…and didn’t your mother teach you not to stare”. The next place I tried my experimenting at was a local park. The park was pretty much the same as Denny’s, I had gotten negative reactions from everyone I had stared at. However there were some slight differences, for instance, at the park it was mainly children and their parents. I still had negative reaction but they didn’t seem as harsh or severe, when I stared at some of the parents I was ignored and when I tried some of the children they either ran in fear to there mom or dad or they would just stare right back at me which was amusing at times, but when they ran away that made me feel weird, It made me feel like a stalker. Now the mall was the most intense but it was also the best place I went because it was the only place to give me a negative and a positive sanction toward me staring. The reason it was so intense was I started to stare at this guy who was probably around my age. And as soon as he saw me staring at him he go pissed off and kept asking me what I was looking at and that I need to quit “mugging him” which is slang meaning to stop staring at him. I thought this guy was going to hit me but luckily he calmed down after I explained to him what I was actually doing. At the mall there were a couple people that had a positive reaction to me staring, which shocked me since they were the first people to give me a positive reaction. I met these guys who after staring at them for a bit came up to me and started a friendly conversation with me, and this also happened once again with a small group of girls. I even ended up becoming friends with a few of those people. When doing this experiment I really didn’t have any hard evidence on how my test subjects reacted. The only thing I could go off of was facial expressions. Although their facial expressions told me a lot, like how most people who I would stare I would give a dirty stare, and I could just tell when someone was mad at me for staring because they would just have a more hostile or negative attitude toward me. I was able to learn quite a bit from breaking a norm. It gave me a real close look on how culture pretty much controls and shapes everything we do. No matter who you are culture shapes you. I never noticed how it shaped me until I did this test. My folkway that I broke just involved staring, nothing else, I didn’t hurt anyone in anyway or cause any disturbance by staring, but since we were born in our culture we’ve been taught not to stare at people because it is rude. Now there is no law saying that staring is rude, and if you look at some other cultures it’s the opposite, it can be disrespectful when you don’t stare at them, but in our culture it is frowned upon. However culture impacts everyone lives differently depending on where you live, who raised you, your status, or even social class. ----------------------- Trevor Johnston-Lake Soc 300 12:00-1:20 T/Th