Breaking A Social Norm

Social Norms... What are they? What are some examples of them? What purpose do they serve? Which one can I break, while attracting the least amount of attention to myself? Why am I so reluctant to do this? These are all questions I asked myself when I first got assigned this project. The first few had answers that I could look up in a textbook. Social Norms are rules that are set by society telling you what behavior is acceptable in a certain group. Let’s pretend that you are meeting someone for the first time. You might walk up to them, stopping at a certain distance that isn't too close or too far for comfort, say hello, and shake their hand. You do all of these things because society has told you that they are a normal thing to do. Social norms make sure that everyone is on the …show more content…
The last two questions were harder to answer. I knew right away that I wanted to do something that I could choose who noticed. I wanted as little people as possible to know that I was breaking a social norm. I could choose who saw me do it and when I did it. But why couldn’t I just embrace it? I think it was the combination of me being a shy person and the fact that our society has very strong social norms that made me not want to do this. However my perfectionist attitude and my fear of failing forced me to write something down on the permission slip and hand it in, attempting to change my mindset. I chosed to break the social norm of looking people in the eye when I talked to them. I decided to look over people's shoulder when I was talking to them. I chose five people and went out to see what would happen and if this task was as daunting as I thought it would be (spoiler alert: it wasn’t). I thought that people wouldn’t want to talk to me. I thought that they wouldn’t want to talk to me. I thought that everyone would think I wasn’t interested in what they had to say and I was being rude and disrespectful. However, things didn’t exactly go that