Escalator Observation Report

When you go to a mall or to the airport, people would use escalators to get from one floor to another. Escalator is such a common thing in today’s society and there are social norms afflicted with it. Everyone is expected to go up or down the same way as the escalator and those that don’t, people will question their actions. For my experiment I wanted to see how people would react if this social norm of going the right way on the escalator was violated. From what I have studied about norms and roles in society, I assumed that people around would become irritated and outraged at us. My hypothesis for me and my friend, Kong, we went up the down escalator was that the people around JCPenny would get mad at us. I also believe that if any security was present we would had got yelled at. This wound up being somewhat true. The security
A major one was that I really thought a lot more shoppers would have been angered by what I and Kong were doing. An interesting thing about this experiment was how different the reactions and behaviors were in the control and experimental groups. The control group consisted of the people going down the escalator when we were going down the right way. Their reactions were nothing out the ordinary. People were talking, carrying children and shopping bags. Since no one was breaking any rules or causing any trouble there was nothing for them to react to. Everyone simply went on with their day. The experimental group consisted of the people around the store when Kong and I went up the wrong escalator. The reaction of the experimental group was very different from that of the control group. When we went up the wrong way, the people on the escalator seemed startled that we were running the wrong way. No one said anything, but expect just keep on looking at