Social Rule Research Paper

The social rule that I chose to break was the one in the elevator where you face forward and stare at the floor numbers. Every time I got on an elevator I faced the wall. My friends knew that I was doing this experiment, so when they would get on the elevator with me they would just continue our conversations as if nothing was wrong with the situation.This rule was not very hard to break, especially since I never take elevators by myself. I always had a friend with me who was able to keep me from just going back to following the rule. While doing this experiment, I felt slightly strange, but at the same time it was actually fun to watch people's reactions. The majority of people just gave me a weird look for the duration of the ride, but no one ever commented on the fact the fact that I was facing the wall. …show more content…
I never explained to anyone that the reason I was doing this was for a psychology project. I just let them assume that this was something that I did on a regular basis. Most of them probably did think that this was just what I did on elevators. This means that the attributions would be dispositional. These people have no way of knowing whether or not that is how I ride the elevator, unless they take it with me again. From this experiment I learned that people are quick to judge, but will most likely never comment about the behavior that they are judging. Moving forward this experiment will help me to realize that I shouldn't just assume that a person is acting a specific way because of their disposition, but instead I should look and see if it is situational