Breaking A Social Norm Research Paper

For this assignment, the norm that I will break is invading personal space. Having personal space is a norm because people do not like to have other people excessively close to them. It makes them uncomfortable. Most people consider someone that they don’t know walking or sitting very closely to them as very discomforting. It is essentially an unspoken rule that you must give people their personal space, at least around a foot. In order to violate this norm, I will get very close to everyone I encounter today, regardless of who they are.
I expect this to make those people very uncomfortable. I expect that all or nearly all of the reactions I will receive will be negative. For the people that I have never met, I expect them to possibly use