Examples Of Social Norm Violations

Sarah Shaffer Social Norm Violation Extra Credit A norm present in American society is not verbally communicating with other unknown individuals in public bathroom stalls. A violation of this norm would be attempting to communicate with other individuals in the stalls. Through an ethnomethodological investigation, I discovered certain aspects revolving around this specific violation. I subjected myself to two trials of violating this norm. In both trials, I went into a busy public restroom on the Texas A&M University campus with about five stalls. I began by asking the question: “Hello, how is everybody’s day going?” In the first trial, no one responded. An eerie silence fell over the bathroom. In the second trial, an individual uneasily responded to my verbal communication after a couple of seconds of unnerving silence. This individual first hesitantly laughed, said an unconvincing “good” in response, and then proceeded to prolong this unconventional conversation by directing a question back at me after another long painful pause. This individual
A complete disregard to my attempt of verbal communication exposes a constant refusal to encourage a break in privacy and communicative space. The silent treatment embodies an individual’s denial of intrusion of their right to absolute enclosure, and an attempt to bring the social ritualization of bathrooms back to normal. Yet, the response I got from the second trial suggests a slight break in the strength of this norm. Even though the other individual was uncomfortable with replying, she still decided to talk back. The social norm of being polite and responding to others was upheld higher than the norm of bathroom silence between stalls. The norm I broke is a relatively strong norm, but the norm of responding to a directed question is felt stronger by some individuals than