Worksheet
Introduction:
What is your paper about? What will you say?
Theory: Discuss in detail the theoretical issues that are related to social norms in general and to the one you chose to break in particular.
Where do social norms come from?
What is the social norm that you chose and how and why did it evolve?
How does your behavior break the social norm?
Why is the social norm you broke a social norm?
How might normative and informational social influence relate to obedience to this norm?
Is it a descriptive or an injunctive norm (what are those and why)?
What predictions did you have about how you would feel or how people would react?
Tell everything you know about social norms and why it relates to the theory. Make sure to address each of these questions at some point in your paper or you will lose points.
Your experience:
Describe how your behavior breaks the social norm. What did you do?
Describe the reactions of the people when you broke the social norm. Did they get angry? Did they give you weird looks? Did anyone say anything? Did different types of people react in different ways? Why did they react this way? Did they react how you predicted?
You will also want to talk about how you felt. Did you feel embarrassed? Sick to your stomach? Liberated from society? Discuss any reactions or feelings in terms of the relevant theories and studies.
It might be also fun to speculate about how someone else might have felt if they were in your position.
Integration:
How does your experience relate to the theories?
Do different theories of conformity predict the reactions you got when you broke the norm?
There are many other interesting questions and issues that you might choose to raise when thinking theoretically about the experience of breaking a norm.
Conclusion: Take a step back to look at the big picture of social norms. Evaluate your feelings and the behavior you observed in the context of the theories. What does your experience have to add to the theory?
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
In order to understand and experience the impact of social norm in our society,one has…
- 783 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
This assignment is designed to have you become more familiar with the concept of a social norm. A social norm often involves a tacit rule of expected or appropriate behavior that is agreed upon by a group of people, yet is not always clearly verbalized. For this assignment, you will violate a social norm. Remember as per our discussion of this assignment, you are not to violate a law or a regulation, both of which are clearly articulated and are not considered social norms. Also, in choosing the social norm you plan to violate, do not do anything potentially harmful to yourself or to anyone else. For the purposes of this assignment, if you violated a social norm in the past (whether intentionally or accidentally), you may choose to relate that experience.…
- 788 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Norms are made by historical ideals that have gained power once becoming part of the society. They continue to grow in strength, due to society’s belief that they cannot change what has been made in the past. All norms have a positive and negative impact; they are…
- 1513 Words
- 7 Pages
Better Essays -
A more is also breaking of a norm, but breaking a more is considered to be significantly unacceptable. Most more that are broken are judge by religious doctrines. For example, followers of Islamic religion are forbidden from eating pork. Breaking of such norm could cause the person to be stigmatized by members of the Islamic society. Other instances of breaking mores could be more severe such as receiving threats or punishment. Breaking of folkways and mores are treated differently, however,…
- 1031 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
I choose this norm because I always see the difficulty people have when they are new to this country and have problems with communication.…
- 438 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
The purpose of this norm violation activity is for you to explore the power of social norms (prescriptions for accepted or expected behaviors in your culture). Your task is to violate ten (10) of the social norms from the list below and record the reactions. The following norm violations are harmless and should not be carried out in a manner that would change the intent of the task. You will be responsible for your actions! You MAY NOT do anything that will get you or anyone else into trouble (ex. Disrupts a class, breaks a law, frightens anyone, doing something harmful, obscene, prejudiced, or negative).…
- 1168 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
In today’s society, social norm violations are what hold American culture, while separating us as distinct individuals. We have unwritten rules of how we are expected to behave in a certain way whether it’s in a public or private gatherings. They can change throughout time “Norms are transmitted through a process of socialization, by which every member of society is subtly trained to appreciate and follow these norms.”(Williams,2011) because of these unwritten rules we have a different minds set as time passes, if we travel a few decades back in time, the way we dress or behave can all be violations. By observing and committing a norm I have realized that the power of society pressures us to behave in a certain matter for…
- 1145 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
I didn’t really learn about the norm. Personal space is something that everybody has. When this personal space is broken we start to feel very uncomfortable. So picking this social norm was just something that I thought of that would put people in an awkward situation.…
- 557 Words
- 3 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
Breaking a norm is like an experiment. You are never going to know what the outcome is going to be. A lot of sociologist like to see it as a social experiment, and the reason is because people are living their life what is considered the right way. It’s a mimicry, everyone doing the same thing, following the same rules, avoiding everything that is not considered normal, usual, typical, and even standard. For my social experiment, I decided that my norm violation would be saying “I love you” when ending a conversation. The objective of my experiment was to break a norm that would help me study how people would react to something that is not usually said is being said to them. I knew it would not only make people uncomfortable, but I think this…
- 2131 Words
- 9 Pages
Better Essays -
In order to understand our adherence to social norms we must understand what they are and the various ways in which they can be broken and violated. These violations can vary greatly and be anywhere between quirky and frightening. The intensity of discomfort associated with these violations depends not only on the violation itself but on the individual performing, experiencing, or witnessing it making the spectrum of reactions widespread and interesting. There are two ways to truly explore norm violations, to observe others both performing and reacting to violations and to perform them yourself and observe the reactions of others.…
- 1324 Words
- 6 Pages
Powerful Essays -
A social norm is something that is considered by the vast majority of people to be ordinary or status quo. In this exercise, each of us arrived at school portraying different personas through our dress as well as our actions. I decided to dress as a rugged motorcycle rider, otherwise known as a biker. I wore a large scraggly beard, some fake tattoo sleeves on each arm, a black tee shirt with black work boots, and aviator sunglasses. I chose these items to wear because I saw it to represent society’s general vision of what a stereotypical biker would look like. Dressing the part was only half of the assignment however, the second part was dealt with through our actions.…
- 591 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
A norm is a set of rules based on socially or culturally shared beliefs of how an individual is “supposed to” behave. They regulate behaviour within a group. Conforming to group norms results in a positive and valued social identity and we receive the desired respect from others. Conformity is an indirect form of social influence that involves a change in behaviour in order to fit in with a group. The need to belong plays a strong role in the desire to conform to group norms.…
- 896 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
when I was breaking the norms I felt dumb. I love the attention, but I prefer it to be positive attention rather than negative attention. I think it wasn't just…
- 477 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
Personal space. All people value this as social boundary and create appropriate norms. As we were assigned this task of violating a social norm in public, I began to consider all the strange personal space norms our society and campus holds. For example, while riding the bus if there a few people on it, you are typically going to sit two seats or more away from one another. However, when the bus is packed to the brim, which is the only time you are permitted to sit right beside a person or stand right up next to them. I found this fascinating; how in our campus society, people try to stay as far away from each other as possible. Moreover, the reason behind why I decided to violate this norm on the way home from class.…
- 591 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Initially I failed miserably, I was too embarrassed and unable to fully commit, so I decided to enlist some of my friends to help me out and we set out for a night of social norm breaking. The “out of the ordinary” things we decided on doing involved breaking both cultural values and presentation of self by not upholding socially acceptable behavior, not showing courtesy, and invading others personal space. The purpose for these functions is solely to create structure and order in people’s lives, as virtually everyone focuses on being as efficient as possible, going out and upholding what is expected in our “performances”, doing what has to be done, and for all of those things to happen smoothly with out any disruptions. Maintaining these social norms standardizes the behavior of the general public and is supposed to build pro-social behavior, although that can be…
- 1637 Words
- 7 Pages
Better Essays