Norm Breaking

Norm Breaking
Name
Institution
Norm Breaking
Norms are basic rules or expected behavior within a social setting. Social norms are how we are expected to behave in the society. For instance, it is considered a norm to queue in the banking halls instead of ignoring the queue and moving directly to the count (Mondal, 2016). Another good example is how we are expected to respect other people’s personal space in public places such as parks and the waiting bays. Norms always vary from one society to another and one environment to another. Failure to uphold the norms is sometimes consequential as the people around you may be forced to react to your unbecoming behavior. To understand the norms, I decided to do research on a norm that is very observed and respected and decided to break it to see the reaction, respected personal privacy (Mondal, 2016).
On a one Sunday afternoon, I decided to go and sit at Hermann Park and observe the people’s behavior regarding their personal space. It was a nice sunny afternoon, and the park was a little crowded with people from different walks of life and different ages. The people in the park were either individuals who had come to relax alone or groups who had come to relax or were engaged in different activities such as meetings or games. The condition in the park and the crowd made it a perfect environment for my observation since everyone was occupied and they wouldn’t notice me staring at them.
After 25 minutes of my observation, it was clear that regardless of the age, gender, race, group or individual, each of the park occupants was very sensitive when it came to personal space.

This was mainly seen in the way they chose their sitting or standing position in the park. For instance, individuals tended to choose a space a bit distant from everyone else (Sloan and Gorman, 2003). Where there was not space vacant and had to sit next to someone, the individuals or groups always maintained a certain distance between them and original occupants.
During the study, I based my observation on some sociological concepts to be able to do my analysis. One of the concepts is accommodation. I treated demand for personal space as a conflict between individuals (Gailliot, Gitter, Baker, & Baumeister, 2012). Using this concept, I realized that the personal space between groups of individuals who seemed to know each other was a bit reduced compared to space kept between two individual strangers. The another concept was cooperation. This is a concept where social beings join in an attempt to achieve their individual or collective goal (Gailliot, Gitter, Baker, & Baumeister, 2012). This can be divided into direct or indirect cooperation. It can also be classified as primary, secondary or tertiary cooperation. In my case study, I decided to use primary cooperation since I assumed that there is a high probability that a group would walk in the park where family, friends, schoolmates, neighbors, etc.
For instance, my attempt to sit too close to a family that was enjoying time in the park almost turn violent as the family members chased me away to try and protect each other. On the other hand, when I invaded the privacy of two strangers at the same place, they either ignored me or each stood up and left without even trying to seek the cooperation of the other. The another concept was the social norm in itself. The idea that the norms are built on terms like should to define what the society expects to behave, ‘may’ in cases where you are provided with choices on how to behave, and ‘should not’ and ‘may not’ which is exactly opposite of ‘should’ and ‘may'(Gailliot, Gitter, Baker, & Baumeister, 2012). For instance, in the case of personal privacy, I observed that there is a proximity distance in which a strange is supposed to keep from each other and a number of activities that you are expected to avoid such a moving too close to someone’s belongings or even staring at them (Sloan and Gorman, 2003).
After a brief observation and understanding the norm of the personal space, I decided to do a few experiments. Therefore, I decided to break this norm by applying behaviors that would interfere with the personal space and see the reaction. I approached people of different ages, all genders both individual groups and applied some tactics such as maintaining eye contacts with strangers, sitting very close to a stranger or a group of strangers even if there was an empty available space else. It also tried to strike a conversation and see their response. In most cases, the stranger would feel uncomfortable and pack their stuff and leave in cases of aged people while in other cases, I would be ejected from the space. The case ejection mostly happened with the young generation (Gailliot, Gitter, Baker, & Baumeister, 2012). In other cases, would just ignore my presence but still act nervous by grabbing their luggage and keeping their belongings close to them.
In conclusion, social norms make a significant benefit to our everyday life, and they are incorporated everywhere from schools, workplace to our homes (Fransson and Beil, 2015). Additionally, they are transformative in appearance because they change from one society to another and between people of different gender, age, race, etc. they apply in our daily life and breaking them most of the times attracts some reaction (Fransson and Beil, 2015).
References
Fransson Niklass and Beil Anders.(2015). Morality and Norm Violation.
Retrieved from. http://psy.gu.se/digitalAssets/1272/1272526_gpr973.pdf
Gailliot, M. T., Gitter, S. A., Baker, M. D., & Baumeister, R. F. (2012). Breaking the rules: Low trait or state self-control increases social norm violations. Psychology, 3(12), 1074.
Mondal Puja.(2016). Social Norms: Meaning, Types and Functions of Socio Norms in Sociology.
Retrieved from.http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/sociology/social-norms-meaning-types-and-functions-of-socio-norms-in-sociology/35071/
Sloan David and Gorman O. Wilson.(2003). Emotions and Actions associated with Norm-Breaking events.
Retrieved from. http://evolution.binghamton.edu/dswilson/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/DSW15.pdf