Personal Narrative: My Norm Violation
For my norm violation, I decided to go out into a public place and briefly interact with complete strangers. To achieve this, I decided to simply say hi to individuals as they passed by me. In picking my location, I wanted to be somewhere with a lot of foot traffic. Ultimately, I decided to go to Fred Meyer on a Saturday, when I knew it would be busier, and start saying hi to unsuspecting shoppers. Even though this was a minor norm violation, it still made me feel very uncomfortable. Each time I went to speak I became nervous and scared people would respond to me negatively. After pushing through the awkwardness, however, and saying hello to large handful of people, I seemed to be getting a handful of the same reactions. People would either
unenthusiastically say hello back, not say anything but smile, completely ignore me, or do a double take, looking around to see if I was talking to somebody else. These reactions didn’t surprise me, especially because if I was in their shoes, I’m sure I would have responded the same way. When we are young, we are taught by our parents or other adult figures in our lives not to talk to strangers, and that being said we usually don’t expect strangers to talk to us, and are caught off guard when they do.
unenthusiastically say hello back, not say anything but smile, completely ignore me, or do a double take, looking around to see if I was talking to somebody else. These reactions didn’t surprise me, especially because if I was in their shoes, I’m sure I would have responded the same way. When we are young, we are taught by our parents or other adult figures in our lives not to talk to strangers, and that being said we usually don’t expect strangers to talk to us, and are caught off guard when they do.