Words: 559
It was an enlightening experience to see how people react to others who break social norms and gave me a great perspective on how I myself have one through life with certain expectations for how others should behave. In the first experiment, was at the doctor’s office. It was time for my son to nurse and we were still in the waiting room. There were four other adults and one child in the waiting room. Normally would have put on a cover to nurse him; instead, I discretely had him latch on, without using my cover. I could immediately tell that those around me became uncomfortable.
One man made sure to constantly look down and played with his phone, two other patients looked around, but would not look in my direction and appeared to e tense and awkward. There was one woman, who appeared to be in her fifties, who kept staring at me and giving me looks of disgust. After about ten minutes, she came over to me and proceeded to tell me how inappropriate it was that would nurse my child in public without covering myself. Had quite the debate with her for several minutes until she was finally called back to see the doctor and she complained to the nurse on her way in, about my “horrid public display. In my second experiment, I made dinner for my family. We had chicken, rice and green beans. I sat down and moved my utensils away from me and proceeded to use only my hands. My fiance© gave me an odd look, but didn’t say anything right away. My four year old gasped and asked me why I was eating like a baby. Laughed and she scolded me and explained that “big people don’t eat with their hands! You need to use your fork and spoon! ” My fiance© laughed and asked me what I was doing. Just smiled, picked up my utensils and finished my dinner. My daughter then told me that needed to say that was sorry for having bad manners at the dinner table.
My last experiment was at Preview Hospital. I got on the elevator and there was one other person on the elevator. Got on and pushed the buttons for every floor. The man looked up and stared at the buttons and then gave me a dirty look. He shook his head, looked back at his phone and mumbled something to himself. I just stood there looking straight forward and tried my hardest not to laugh or crack a smile. He was not happy by the time we got 3 floors up and he finally reached his destination. I found this assignment to be very interesting.
It is very easy to see how we take certain social norms for granted and it was also interesting to see the different ways that people communicated their feelings about a situation. Some people said nothing and avoided the violation entirely, others used their body language to express their irritation with the issue and others were very verbal and direct in expressing their disdain with the situation. This assignment was fun and very insightful in helping me understand and pay attention to the details of the many ways that others express themselves through non-verbal and verbal communication.