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Essay / A Social Norm Breaking Experiment: Invading People's Personal Space
Table of ContentsIntroductionThree Social Norm Breaking ExperimentsConclusionThe norm I will be violating for this article will be invading people's personal space. This norm acts as a social control mechanism because the accepted behavior in our society is to give people their personal “bubble” when they are around other people. Violation of this norm creates discomfort for others and also goes against the regulation of behavior by the rules of our society. To carry out my experiment, I will first take a situation that I am already part of and invade someone's personal space, that is, if I am talking to a friend, I will take one more step towards him to bring me closer even when we are already on a very close level. at short range. To take it a step further, when I'm in a social setting like waiting in line for dinner in Glar, I stand very close to the person in front of me. Also, when entering class, I will try to find people walking towards the same building and walk right next to them invading their space bubble. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayIntroductionThere are so many different reactions that are possible in situations like these, as all “invasions” will take place in indifferent contexts. with different people. Reactions I might get are funny looks, comments to other people they are with, people walking away, people asking me to step back, people pushing me away, and people ignoring the situation. I think the most popular reaction will be people moving away from me, because that's a natural reaction when you're in an uncomfortable situation. You usually want to remove yourself from the situation or walk away so you can act as if you weren't involved. The implementation of my breaking of social norms happened in several different places. As previously noted, I tried this while waiting in line for Glar, walking to class, and also talking to other students in my Italian class yesterday. In the first queue for Glar, there are about 30 people (mostly students) walking to class, the students are sparse due to the cold, and in my Italian class there are has six other students and our teacher.Three experiences of breaking a social normThe first incident, which I will describe in this essay, occurred when I was waiting in line for dinner. Last weekend I went to Glar without my friends so I could approach as many people as possible. I got in line and immediately moved closer to the person in front of me. I think I approached too quickly because I touched the person too soon. Granted, this is still a form of invasion of personal space, I didn't want to go so dramatic. The person turned and looked at me and my natural instinct was to apologize, so I did. I got out of line and went to the back of the line and tried again. This time I slowly crept towards the person in front of me and my presence must have alerted her because she turned around and saw how close I was to her. The subject stared at me and waited for me to leave his space. I repeated this with three other subjects and got similar results. The next incident for this essay happened while I was walking to my English class last night. It was very cold outside and few students were out, but I saw a group of three girls..