Social Norms Experiment Research Paper

Introduction

For this social experiment, I violated social norms by walking around with an open umbrella in an indoor area, specifically down the halls of the residence halls. Typically, umbrellas are apparatuses associated with outdoor areas on days with precipitation, most of the times that being rain. In most cases in our society, umbrellas are given the role of protecting our hair, skin, clothes,
and body from unruly and unfavorable weather. Thus it is expected that umbrellas are solely used for outdoor purposes. Umbrellas also enlarge your personal bubble, so carrying them around outdoors is more acceptable and easier to execute because there is more space, and people would not feel as comfortable walking very close to another person with a large umbrella in an enclosed space. Also often times for rainy weather, when carrying an umbrella, there are common types of clothing that are associated with it. For example, a person may wear rain boots or a raincoat when walking with an umbrella in rainy weather. For these reasons, society has constructed umbrellas to be only used in outdoor settings.

Methods

            My experiment of violating social norms by carrying an umbrella indoors took place in my residence hall on each different floor. I chose to go to different floors because I am friends with most of the people on my floor. Thus I chose to observe two groups of people: friends and strangers. I chose to do this because I thought that the responses between people I know and did not know would be different, considering that degrees of relation impact interactions. I also made sure to carry the umbrella on a day where it was actually sunny outside so that carrying an umbrella seemed very random. Moreover, I wore clothes that were not associated with rainy weather; I wore blue jeans, white sneakers, and a plain t-shirt. I walked down halls in normal behavior with an opened medium sized black umbrella. As a result, carrying an umbrella indoors is a violation of norms because the roof/ceiling of the building protected me from any sort of adverse weather, and my umbrella broke other people’s personal bubbles due to the narrow spaces.

Results

As I was performing the social norms violations at first, I felt awkward and embarrassed. Carrying an umbrella indoors is not a common behavior people see often, so I felt as if people would be judgmental of me for carrying out an activity that is considered socially unacceptable or view me as flat out weird. Also I was scared that people would view me as a socially incompetent person. Moreover, I felt awkward when having to walk past someone with my umbrella because I was violating their personal space, and they often had to move as far away and as close to the wall as possible to avoid my umbrella. Thus I felt like a nuisance because people had to go out of their ways to avoid me. However, the more I walked with the umbrella, it became easier, and at times it was amusing to see people’s reactions.

            The two groups of people I observed, friends and strangers, reacted differently. The people acquainted with me were much more brave in verbally voicing their thoughts and confusion. At first, they would crinkle their forehead and eyebrows or make a confused face with a slight twist of the head and ask me, “Why are you holding an umbrella?”, and they would do so in conjunction with laughter. Those who were closer to me would even go as far as adding curse words to their question to me. Furthermore, my friends would take pictures of me and post them on their snapchat story because they thought it was funny and silly; it was an event that was unordinary and interesting enough for the humor of current college students. The Sophomore and Residence Advisors that I am acquainted with would laugh and ask the same questions my friends asked, and then after explaining the parameters of my project, they would go on to say good luck, you can do it, or have fun. One specific African American janitor whom I am well acquainted called Ms. Cynthia gave me the wild eyes, asking me, “Baby, what are you doing?” I noticed that their words reflect their higher statuses in terms of position and greater age.

            The other group that was observed was strangers, and they were not as insistent on voicing their opinions to me. Some strangers would look at me and smile in confusion and then break their eye contact with me and simply walk away. One girl tried her best to make it less obvious that she was trying to look at me by keeping her head straight and only moving her eyes quickly to the right. At times I would continue to stare at these strangers on purpose to make them feel uncomfortable and draw more attention to myself and the umbrella. However, some people would not even try to look at me and avoid any type of contact or acknowledgment of me. They would have a straight face and would try their best to not take a glance at me. Also I noticed that people were more likely to raise questions and verbally voice their confusion when they were with at least one other person. Two girl strangers I walked past by talked to themselves saying, “What, why does she have an umbrella?” Another instance was when a co-ed group that was sitting at the open lounge area looked at me in confusion and even went as far as to ask me why I was carrying an umbrella.

            One difficulty I encountered was having to explain myself every time someone asked me the “why?” question because carrying an umbrella indoors is so unusual and random that it does not make sense to people living in our society. Another difficulty I encountered was coping with the fear that people would see me as an unintelligent person, unfit for a prestigious school like Emory University. Also it was slightly physically straining on the arms to keep carrying an umbrella around when I knew it was serving no purpose and was not protecting me from any sort of belligerent weather. This difficulty I noticed is different in the normal situation. For instance, when actually using an umbrella in raining weather, my mind is thinking about how I need to quickly enter a building or how I need to avoid puddles and wet areas, so there is less room for my mind to think about how heavy or tiring holding up the umbrella is.

Interpretation & Discussion

            Norms are defined to be the shared rules of behavior that reflect the culture’s values and social controls are defined to be the ways that society reacts in response to following or breaking social norms (Henslin 46). The reactions of others showed how carrying an umbrella indoors was a violation of social norms, and they implemented social controls in the scenarios I created. The typical norm of carrying an umbrella would be to carry it in rainy weather outside on the sidewalks or crosswalks in rainy weather appropriate attire, and the anticipated reaction of other pedestrians would be either a nod or a smile or to simply pass by with no thoughts or acknowledgment because of the normal behavior, and this is known as a positive sanction or a rewards for a positive sanction (Henslin 46). However, the experiment I carried out did the complete opposite of what was expected, and this thus prompted people to show negative sanctions or punishments for disapproved behavior (Hensiln 46). The reactions specific to my experiment that exemplified negative sanctions include the question, “Why do you have an umbrella?”, glaring, ignoring, turning to others to exchange glances of confusion or disapproval, crinkled foreheads, raised eyebrows, and slight laughter or smiling in response to the stupidity of my behavior.

            The high degree of uneasiness and embarrassment I felt showed that carrying an umbrella indoors was indeed a violation of norms. I went against the expectations of what an umbrella carrier encompasses. The intensity of my experiment was low because of the social controls I received. I received light negative sanctions instead of extreme ones such as execution or imprisonment. This then told me that my experiment was a “Folkways” norm which is a norm “that is not strictly enforced and more for casual interaction” (Henslin 47). However, I still received negative sanctions which made me feel more self-conscious about the huge apparent inappropriate device I was holding. Because I contrasted so greatly with the norms of this behavior, the norms of an umbrella carrier were then reinforced in my head and also to the people observing me. 

            The results of this experiment showed how influential the social structure is and how strongly people in our society abide by the expected set of standards and behaviors. Social structure is defined to be the relationships/interactions between people around us that sets predictable rules or patterns, and within social structures exist status and role (Henslin 97). The status, or “the social positions people occupy”, for a typical umbrella holder would be a pedestrian, and the role a pedestrian would play in a rainy outdoor setting would be to use an open umbrella to avoid getting soaked, to respect the rules of the crosswalk, watch out for cars, and to respect other people’s personal bubble when walking next to others (Henslin 99). If applying Goffman’s idea that life is like a stage performance, the status corresponds to the pedestrian character and the role or the script of this character corresponds to the expected actions and behavior of the pedestrian (Henslin 111). The performance of this character on a rainy day outside or the set would include rain clothes or the costume and the umbrella which would be the prop. However, for this experiment, with solely the prop and no proper set or costume, the status and role of a typical pedestrian could not be established, confusing all the observers that I encountered. My behaviors could possibly be seen as normal only if I were able to change the definition of the usages of an umbrella in an indoor situation. For example, in “Eating Your Friends is the Hardest: The Survivors of the F-227”, the definition of the human body was changed; the dead body was simply seen as dead meat because there was no soul in the body (Henslin 277). Similarly, I could change the definition of using an umbrella to mean that umbrellas serve as a necessary protection against ceiling lights because looking directly into them could damage your eyes. However, like the situation with the remaining Andes survivors, this would only work if there was a working consensus among the people in my residence building, and everyone would have to agree to honor my definition of the situation.

Work Cited

Henslin, James M. 2007. Sociology: A Down to Earth Approach, 8th ed. Boston: Pearson