Breaching Exercise
Stephanie Winkler
Self & Society
Reaction Paper 1: Breaching Exercise
Due 2/12/15
As a sociology student I have some experience in the field of messing with social norms. When assigned to create a breaching exercise situation I can say I felt comfortable as opposed to the first time I was instructed to break a norm. Breaching experiments obtain to study people’s responses to disruptions of generally conventional social rules or norms. I will admit I had a few weird ideas that I have always been interested but had some difficulty finding the means to conduct these experiments. I narrowed down my options and came up with one that was more realistic and decided to purposely mistake shoppers for employees in department or grocery stores. I conducted this breaching exercise in three different places over the past week. The first place I went to was Target. Everyone pretty much knows that the standard Target outfit involves a red polo, however there weren’t any red polo’s walking around that were not actual employees. I came across a middle-aged man in a red t-shirt who was looking in the bath section and simply asked him, “Excuse me, could you direct me to the electronics section?” His reaction wasn’t anything to look into; he simply just laughed and explained that he doesn’t work there. He looked down at his red shirt and thought I just made an honest mistake. I gave a shy laugh; acting embarrassed, apologized and walked away. The second place I visited to try this experiment was Walmart. I walked into Walmart with a friend and went to the gardening section. I decided to come up with a little story rather than just asking a direct question. I found a man who looked like he was in his young 20s and started rambling, explaining that I had a big project I was working on for my outdoor patio and I wanted a specific look. He let me ramble on for about a minute and a half before he cut me off by explaining he was shopping for his own patio furniture and would be no
Self & Society
Reaction Paper 1: Breaching Exercise
Due 2/12/15
As a sociology student I have some experience in the field of messing with social norms. When assigned to create a breaching exercise situation I can say I felt comfortable as opposed to the first time I was instructed to break a norm. Breaching experiments obtain to study people’s responses to disruptions of generally conventional social rules or norms. I will admit I had a few weird ideas that I have always been interested but had some difficulty finding the means to conduct these experiments. I narrowed down my options and came up with one that was more realistic and decided to purposely mistake shoppers for employees in department or grocery stores. I conducted this breaching exercise in three different places over the past week. The first place I went to was Target. Everyone pretty much knows that the standard Target outfit involves a red polo, however there weren’t any red polo’s walking around that were not actual employees. I came across a middle-aged man in a red t-shirt who was looking in the bath section and simply asked him, “Excuse me, could you direct me to the electronics section?” His reaction wasn’t anything to look into; he simply just laughed and explained that he doesn’t work there. He looked down at his red shirt and thought I just made an honest mistake. I gave a shy laugh; acting embarrassed, apologized and walked away. The second place I visited to try this experiment was Walmart. I walked into Walmart with a friend and went to the gardening section. I decided to come up with a little story rather than just asking a direct question. I found a man who looked like he was in his young 20s and started rambling, explaining that I had a big project I was working on for my outdoor patio and I wanted a specific look. He let me ramble on for about a minute and a half before he cut me off by explaining he was shopping for his own patio furniture and would be no