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Social Mettle

A List of Quirky Ideas for Social Norm Breaching Experiments

Suppose there is a game in which you are not allowed to say 'yes' or 'no', and have to answer only with another question. Using up the entire range of 'wh-questions', you can think of how entertaining this game can get. Social norm breaching is nothing different than this.

Suppose there is a game in which you are not allowed to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and have to answer only with another question. Using up the entire range of ‘wh-questions’, you can think of how entertaining this game can get. Social norm breaching is nothing different than this.

No Suggestions Implied! While a Superman costume flaunting an underwear is taken well, someone wearing undergarments over normal clothes (that too at a fancy dress party) becomes an act of breach! Unfair, isn’t it!

Eating with your hands while dining at a fancy restaurant, wearing your bathrobe to college one day, sending a reply via email when someone had called you on your cell phone, or talking to a stranger by getting very close to him/her, and such similar deeds are ones that a normal human being would usually avoid doing.

If you have tried any of these, you can be called a researcher who was engaged in studying social norm breaching experiments. Such kind acts of nonsense, which you may call bizarre, are not solely meant for entertainment purposes. This testing of socially accepted rules are mainly a part of the fields of sociology and social psychology. Yes, academics can get very interesting at times!

What are Breaching Experiments in Sociology?

Breaching experiments try to study the reactions of people when a social norm is broken or violated.

There are some unwritten rules that all of us follow in our day-to-day conduct. How one would (rather should) behave in a given situation is predefined and based on a lot of assumptions. These experiments try to break these ‘taken for granted’ social norms. Reactions of others to such tricks are also fun to look at. This concept is associated with the ethnomethodology theory of sociology , put forth by Harold Garfinkel.

An unexpected behavior or comment leaves the respondent completely puzzled, making the experiment successful. The approach behind such experiments highlights that, people continue to make a number of such rules everyday, and do not even realize it.

Experiment Ideas

Clearly, a breaching experiment is like asking for trouble. When the action is troublesome, it makes it visible that practices leading to social stability are so much ingrained into our minds. Breaching of norms has to be a deliberate act though; it is not an issue of conflicting opinions leading to disobedience of a given norm. You can try troubling others with the following ideas.

– To a casual question like ‘what’s up?’, you can say ‘the sky’. ‘How’s it going?’ can be replied to in an exhilarating manner, like ‘I didn’t see any ‘it’ going’. When people are not really interested in knowing about you, and they still ask those questions, you may actually stop them and really explain to them some random event going on in your life. (Be very sure about who you want to experiment with this though!)

– Some tests that college students were asked to take, involved behaving like a stranger or renter in one’s home. Talking only when asked about something, or being very polite, are some things their parents reacted to quite strongly.

– In the tic-tac-toe game, ask a person to play first. When he/she places an ‘X’ in a square, you place an ‘O’ on a line forming the matrix, and not in any square space. That person might get confused, or would exclaim, “Have you gone crazy?” Behaving according to the established practices of following given rules is so important here, even if it is a game. This exemplifies an established social order.

– At a decently crowded public place, get one of your friends to stand opposite you. You act like both of you are talking about something important. Then, act as if the both of you are holding a very thin and delicate cotton string in your fingertips, each one of you holding one end of it. Now, start to move away, very slowly, so that people feel that you are holding something very precious. Shout out words like, ‘easy’, ‘be careful’, or ‘watch out’. You may find a few people actually believing you and ducking while they pass through. Someone might even go around you, so as to not break that string. You would notice, it is very easy to create social norms.

Experiment Examples

Here are some examples of interpersonal conversations, mentioned in ethnomethodology literature as case studies of experimentation given by Garfinkel. These have been sourced from books like ‘Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology’ by John Heritage, and ‘Sociology in Perspective’ by Mark Kirby.

– The subject was telling the experimenter―a member of the subject’s car pool―about having had a flat tire while going to work the previous day.

S : I had a flat tire. E : What do you mean, you had a flat tire? She appeared momentarily stunned. Then she answered in a hostile way: ‘What do you mean? What do you mean? A flat tire is a flat tire. That is what I a meant. Nothing special. What a crazy question!’

– By asking ‘What do you mean?’, as a response to every statement, students were asked to continue the conversation.

S : Hi, Ray. How is your girlfriend feeling? E : What do you mean ‘How is she feeling?’. Do you mean physically or mentally? S : I mean how is she feeling? What’s the matter with you? (He looked peeved.) E : Nothing. Just explain a little clearer as to what you mean. S : Skip it. How are your Med School applications coming? E : What do you mean ‘How are they going?’ S : You know what I mean. E : I really don’t. S : What’s the matter with you? Are you sick?

– On Friday night, my husband and I were watching television. He remarked that he was tired. I asked, ‘How are you tired? Physically, mentally, or just bored?’

S : I don’t know, I guess physically, mainly. E : You mean that your muscles ache, or your bones? S : I guess so. Don’t be so technical. (After more watching) S : All these old movies have the same kind of old iron bedstead in them. E : What do you mean? Do you mean all old movies, or some of them, or just the ones you have seen? S : What’s the matter with you? You know what I mean. E : I wish you would be more specific. S : You know what I mean! Drop dead!

– The victim waived his hand cheerily.

S : How are you? E : How am I in regard to what? My health, my finance, my school work, my peace of mind, my … S : (Red in the face and suddenly out of control.) Look! I was just trying to be polite! Frankly, I don’t give a damn how you are.

The results from these cases proved that the experimenters could successfully break the norms. It was possible because of the fact that, any given conversation (or communication) takes place smoothly, ‘assuming the background knowledge’, which helps two people make sense of what the other means.

Well, if you’ve got the point now, you can be real ‘innovative and original’ with this act of breaching. Oh, but just be sure that you don’t mess with the wrong people at the wrong time.

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Doing Nothing: An Experiment in Norm Breaking

Nathan Palmer, a lecturer at Georgia Southern University and founder of the blog Sociology Source , recruited his entire class of 262 students to go into the world and do nothing (an idea he borrowed from Karen Bettez Halnon ).  It was sort of like a flash mob in which absolutely nothing happens.

Palmer’s aim was to reveal a norm (in this case, that we all must always be doing something ), expose his students to the feelings one has when breaking a norm (even a consequence-less one like this), and show them the range of reactions that observers have to norm breaking.  And he recorded the whole thing for us:

Read Palmer’s entire write-up of the experiment at Sociology Source .

Comments 38

Robin — march 4, 2011.

I can't few the video, so I'm responding only to the text above, but couldn't you argue that the students are actually doing *something*, i.e. standing still? Is it ever possible to literally "do nothing"? Even when they are standing still. i.e. 'doing nothing' they are still participating in a sociological experiment (not to get all Devil's Advocate-y, but... yeah).

T — March 4, 2011

Also... I'm sorta getting tired of the flash mob stuff. It's a lot more "refreshing" when it's actually humanity doing human things.... Like the snowball fight in Times Square a little over a year ago.

http://blog.ricecracker.net/2009/12/20/snowball-fight-times-square/

No choreographed "flash mob" -- just people.

Leslee Beldotti — March 4, 2011

I've been doing this for years whenever I go to a medical appointment.

The expected behavior in a waiting room area is to read a magazine, talk/text on the phone, or at the very least watch the television if one is available (I REALLY hate blaring televisions in public spaces).

I prefer to take the opportunity to sit and practice my breathing. I'm always amused by the varied reactions I get when I do this.

Chris — March 4, 2011

My uncle from Nairobi visited my family here in D.C. for a week. When I ask him what was the most note worthy thing he noticed about America, he responded "there's a lack of non-motion", he said that nobody seems to just sit and do nothing. The concept that we have to pull out a book or a phone when we wait for something seemed to bother him. I thought the video touched on that strangeness he observed, but as the previous comments pointed out, these people are doing something.

Bri — March 4, 2011

Peopling staring and wondeing what's going on was to be expected. If someone is doing something odd, you're curious, that's just human nature. However, I was vert surprised by some of the anger I saw. Like the two woman at about 2:49 who cornered the other woman to taunt her. It was really sureal, because this is a fellow woman, a fellow classmate, who is doing NOTHING, why go out of your way to mess with them?

Chlorine — March 4, 2011

I feel that this may be more effective as an experiment if they only had one person do it rather than a large group. The large group does create the flash mob feel, and flash mobs have become well-known enough that there is kind of a societal norm in place as to how you respond to a flash mob.

If it was just one person, they would be more likely seen as a freak or a crazy person, I think. With a group, it's assumed there is something bigger going on (they're being punished, it's a class, etc).

Sambal : New Kinds of Taxes — March 4, 2011

[...] tax. Video game tax. Sitting around tax. Doing nothing tax. Mental activity [...]

Anonymous — March 4, 2011

I thought murder and bank robbing were breaches of taboo rather than more?

Village Idiot — March 5, 2011

Palmer’s aim was to reveal a norm (in this case, that we all must always be doing something), expose his students to the feelings one has when breaking a norm (even a consequence-less one like this), and show them the range of reactions that observers have to norm breaking.

In most semi-public places in the U.S. (such as shopping centers, parking lots, etc), "doing nothing" is a crime, and has real consequences. It's called "loitering" and there are often signs posted warning people not to do it.

A friend who grew up in Europe but now lives here in the U.S. once told me about how utterly bizarre the concept of the crime of "loitering" was to her when she first got here, and the more I thought about it the stranger it seemed but until it was pointed out by someone who grew up in a different context I hadn't really thought about it at all. I'd just always somehow known that I had to keep "moving along" because there are apparently only three types of space I'm allowed to occupy: My residence (the only legal place to loiter besides the occasional park bench), a place where I'm consuming something, or travel routes between places to consume things. If I'm on a travel route, I must keep moving or I will attract the attention of someone who will encourage me to keep moving. If I'm at a designated consumption spot such as a restaurant or store I must be actively engaged in consuming or I will attract the attention of someone who will encourage me to start consuming or move along. If I refuse to do either one I will be forcibly moved and possibly fined.

After all, doing nothing doesn't make anybody any money which is probably why it's illegal in so many places, and desiring to do nothing probably also means I'm some kind of freak and no one wants freaks hanging out near their place of business. Never mind the fact that private commercial spaces are sometimes so extensive that they become the de facto commons which effectively makes it illegal to be in public without buying something or being on your way to buy something (or at least looking like you are). That seems to be the trend, and it's virtually identical to the goals Disneyland is designed to accomplish in terms of crowd control and revenue extraction that I mentioned in a comment on the recent Disneyland post (I suspect they are directly related since the Disney corp. researched the subject for decades and originally developed many design guidelines for highly controlled spaces full of gift shops that are now widely implemented).

LQ — March 5, 2011

"Doctor Who" and "Torchwood" have used the degree to which most British/British-like cultures are unnerved by this to great effect in a couple of different episodes.

Interestingly, Japan (as in Zen) is so anti-loitering that their laws make it nearly impossible to have benches on sidewalks or cafes with outdoor seating. Sidewalks and streets are for motion. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20101010x1.html

R Farrell — March 7, 2011

Unfamiliar with the "frozen grand central" flash mob in 2008? flash mobs are becoming a new norm in themeselves. this would have deviated from the norm if there were not cameras, video and audio on site to document the occurrence. Especially at a college campus, anyone exposed to both the internet and a frozen flash mob would likely just assume, "oh this is just some weird stuff for the internet. i'll just keep doing whatever i was doing."

Trey_Y — May 17, 2011

I appreciate the point of the experiment. The theory behind it I believe is sound. The fashion in which the experiment was performed was not thought through carefully enough, I believe. Agreeing with most of the people posting before me, if there was less of a sense of organization, the reactions from the passers-by would stem more from noticing a complete lack of activity, rather than a group participating in an activity (even if that activity is "doing nothing").

Share Your (a little bit about you) World Sunday Week # 23 | Lady Barefoot Baroness — May 13, 2012

[...] http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/03/04/doing-nothing-an-experiment-in-norm-breaking-2/ [...]

Nimeshshrotriya — October 20, 2012

Good experiment done by you to define "doing nothing". I appreciate it.

Tiggy — October 7, 2013

I was surprised at how in your face some of the people who saw them were. I think in England people would react differenty. They would more likely just pretend nothing strange was going on and ignore them. That's what people do on the London Underground when someone is acting strangely. I think here they would be mildly amused, think it was some kind of class activity and go about their own business.

Emma — October 8, 2013

Agree absolutely with the flashmob/performance comments. Also, I think one of the reasons this behaviour seems 'off' is that they are standing in the middle of the walkways. Other people are having to manoeuvre/detour to get around them.

If you were in that space and genuinely wanted to relax or think/meditate, would you stand in the middle of the walkway? Even if (hypothetically) the building was closed down for the day and you knew nobody else would come along, it is quite unlikely you would choose to stand stock still in the walkway. It's more likely you would walk slowly around, or sit on the bench, or sit on the grass, or lean against a wall. Standing frozen in the middle of a walkway like that doesn't look like something anyone would genuinely want to do in in a normal situation.

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6.4: Social Norms

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Learning Outcomes

• Describe cultural norms, mores, and folkways

So far, the examples in this module have often described how people are expected to behave in certain situations—for example, when buying food or boarding a bus. These examples describe the visible and invisible rules of conduct through which societies are structured, or what sociologists call norms. Norms define how to behave in accordance with what a society has defined as good, right, and important, and most members of the society adhere to them.

Formal norms are established, written rules. They are behaviors worked out and agreed upon in order to suit and serve the most people. Laws are formal norms, but so are employee manuals, college entrance exam requirements, and “no running” signs at swimming pools. Formal norms are the most specific and clearly stated of the various types of norms, and they are the most strictly enforced. But even formal norms are enforced to varying degrees and are reflected in cultural values.

For example, money is highly valued in the United States, so monetary crimes are punished. It’s against the law to rob a bank, and banks go to great lengths to prevent such crimes. People safeguard valuable possessions and install antitheft devices to protect homes and cars. A less strictly enforced social norm is driving while intoxicated. While it’s against the law to drive drunk, drinking is for the most part an acceptable social behavior. And though there are laws to punish drunk driving, there are few systems in place to prevent the crime. These examples show a range of enforcement in formal norms.

There are plenty of formal norms, but the list of informal norms —casual behaviors that are generally and widely conformed to—is longer. People learn informal norms by observation, imitation, and general socialization. Some informal norms are taught directly—“Kiss your Aunt Edna” or “Use your napkin”—while others are learned by observation, including observations of the consequences when someone else violates a norm. But although informal norms define personal interactions, they extend into other systems as well. In the United States, there are informal norms regarding behavior at fast food restaurants. Customers line up to order their food and leave when they are done. They don’t sit down at a table with strangers, sing loudly as they prepare their condiments, or nap in a booth. Most people don’t commit even benign breaches of informal norms. Informal norms dictate appropriate behaviors without the need of written rules.

Breaching Experiments

Sociologist Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011) studied people’s customs in order to find out how societal rules and norms not only influenced behavior but also shaped social order. He believed that members of society together create a social order (Weber 2011). His resulting book, Studies in Ethnomethodology , published in 1967, discusses people’s assumptions about the social makeup of their communities.

One of Garfinkel’s research methods was known as a “breaching experiment,” in which the researcher behaves in a socially awkward manner in order to test the sociological concepts of social norms and conformity. The participants are not aware an experiment is in progress. If the breach is successful, however, these “innocent bystanders” will respond in some way. For example, if the experimenter is, say, a man in a business suit, and he skips down the sidewalk or hops on one foot, the passersby are likely to stare at him with surprised expressions on their faces. But the experimenter does not simply “act weird” in public. Rather, the point is to deviate from a specific social norm in a small way, to subtly break some form of social etiquette, and see what happens.

To conduct his ethnomethodology, Garfinkel deliberately imposed strange behaviors on unknowing people. Then he observed their responses. He suspected that odd behaviors would shatter conventional expectations, but he wasn’t sure how. For example, he set up a simple game of tic-tac-toe. One player was asked beforehand to mark Xs and Os not in the boxes but on the lines dividing the spaces instead. The other player, in the dark about the study, was flabbergasted and did not know how to continue. The second player’s reactions of outrage, anger, puzzlement, or other emotions illustrated the existence of cultural norms that constitute social life. These cultural norms play an important role. They let us know how to behave around each other and how to feel comfortable in our community.

There are many rules about speaking with strangers in public. It’s OK to tell a woman you like her shoes. It’s not OK to ask if you can try them on. It’s OK to stand in line behind someone at the ATM. It’s not OK to look over his shoulder as he makes his transaction. It’s OK to sit beside someone on a crowded bus. It’s weird to sit beside a stranger in a half-empty bus.

For some breaches, the researcher directly engages with innocent bystanders. An experimenter might strike up a conversation in a public bathroom, where it’s common to respect each other’s privacy so fiercely as to ignore other people’s presence. In a grocery store, an experimenter might take a food item out of another person’s grocery cart, saying, “That looks good! I think I’ll try it.” An experimenter might sit down at a table with others in a fast food restaurant or follow someone around a museum and study the same paintings. In those cases, the bystanders are pressured to respond, and their discomfort illustrates how much we depend on social norms. Breaching experiments uncover and explore the many unwritten social rules we live by.

Norms may be further classified as either mores or folkways. Mores (mor-ays) are norms that embody the moral views and principles of a group. Violating them can have serious consequences. The strongest mores are legally protected with laws or other formal norms. In the United States, for instance, murder is considered immoral, and it’s punishable by law (a formal norm). But more often, mores are judged and guarded by public sentiment (an informal norm). People who violate mores are seen as shameful. They can even be shunned or banned from some groups. The mores of the U.S. school system require that a student’s writing be in the student’s own words or use special forms (such as quotation marks and a whole system of citation) for crediting other writers. Writing another person’s words as if they are one’s own has a name—plagiarism. The consequences for violating this norm are severe and usually result in expulsion.

Unlike mores, folkways are norms without any moral underpinnings. Rather, folkways direct appropriate behavior in the day-to-day practices and expressions of a culture. They indicate whether to shake hands or kiss on the cheek when greeting another person. They specify whether to wear a tie and blazer or a T-shirt and sandals to an event. In Canada, women can smile and say hello to men on the street. In Egypt, that’s not acceptable. In regions in the southern United States, bumping into an acquaintance means stopping to chat. It’s considered rude not to, no matter how busy one is. In other regions, people guard their privacy and value time efficiency. A simple nod of the head is enough. Other accepted folkways in the United States may include holding the door open for a stranger or giving someone a gift on their birthday. The rules regarding these folkways may change from culture to culture.

Many folkways are actions we take for granted. People need to act without thinking in order to get seamlessly through daily routines; they can’t stop and analyze every action (Sumner 1906). Those who experience culture shock may find that it subsides as they learn the new culture’s folkways and are able to move through their daily routines more smoothly. Folkways might be small manners, learned by observation and imitation but they are by no means trivial. Like mores and laws, these norms help people negotiate their daily lives within a given culture.

https://assessments.lumenlearning.co...essments/13281

Watch this video to recap the things we’ve learned about in this module thus far—including culture, values, beliefs, norms, mores, and folkways. The video also explains the importance of symbols and introduces the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which we’ll examine in more detail soon.

An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: http://pb.libretexts.org/its/?p=120

Think It Over

• How do you think your culture would exist if there were no such thing as a social “norm”? Do you think chaos would ensue or relative peace could be kept? Explain.
• Elements of Culture. Authored by : OpenStax CNX. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:8pgQStDd@7/3-2-Elements-of-Culture . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]
• Symbols, Values & Norms: Crash Course Sociology #10. Provided by : CrashCourse. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGrVhM_Gi8k&t=14s&index=12&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtMJ-AfB_7J1538YKWkZAnGA . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License

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Ideas for Breaching Experiments

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A breaching experiment goes outside our ideas of social norms specifically to see how people will react to the violation of the arbitrary rules of a given situation. These experimental forays arise from the idea that people create social norms themselves without any awareness that they do so and that most individuals need to be shocked out of their ideas of normality to have any meaningful interactions.

Breaching with Figuratives

An example of "breaching" experimentally is to talk with an acquaintance and interpret his figurative usages literally, to explore the idea that we overuse figurative language to the point where interpretation becomes absurd. Your friend begins with "What's up?" and you reply "The sky." He may end the experimental conversation by saying "You trippin'!" Point out that you're standing and well-balanced, in no danger of tripping. Your friend's attempts to "normalize" the conversation throw light on how he responds to other situations that may puzzle his sense of social normality.

The Talk-Line Experiment

When we converse, we also create imaginary barriers, our force fields of comfort we call "personal space." An interesting breach of this is the talk-line. Enlist a compatriot to converse with in a hallway. As the two of you talk, move further away from each other so that you're at least 4 feet apart but keep your eye contact and conversation going. Notice how many people actually "duck" as they go between you as if your conversation has created an actual barrier. Again, they attempt to normalize the situation and re-establish boundaries that social convention has dictated.

Restaurants and Carlinisms

Sometimes social norms breach themselves. Eating with hands in a fancy restaurant used to be forbidden, but it's become more trendy with the introduction of different cultural norms. You still can breach restaurant etiquette experimentally. George Carlin, in "Brain Droppings," recommends asking a waiter if the garnish is free, then ordering a large plate of garnish. If you were to try this experiment, the waiter's response, and perhaps your own discomfort in placing the order, would reveal the predispositions you both have, that you must "set" normality in trivial situations, following norms simply because you believe they exist.

Garfinkle's Classics

Harold Garfinkle, the ethnomethodologist who pioneered breach experimentation, established experiments that invaded both home and business norms. He sent students back to their parental homes to act as renters and into businesses to mistake customers for salesmen. These actions, Garfinkle felt, brought to light automatic responses and the reinforcement of agreed social boundaries.

• Dictionary.com: Breaching
• Cengage.com: Choose Your Words: Figurative Language
• The New York Times: Dining and Wine: Mind Your Manners: Eat with Your Hands
• Brain Droppings (1st ed. 1997); George Carlin
• Sociology Guide: Harold Garfinkle
• The Social Experiment: Soc. 326: Contemporary Theory: Harold Garfinkel - Ethnomethodology and Breaching Experiment
• Sniggle.net: Breaching Experiments
• Wired Cosmos: Sociology in Action: The Breaching Experiment
• ERIC: Making Sociology Relevant: The Assignment and Application of Breaching Experiments

Michael Stratford is a National Board-certified and Single Subject Credentialed teacher with a Master of Science in educational rehabilitation (University of Montana, 1995). He has taught English at the 6-12 level for more than 20 years. He has written extensively in literary criticism, student writing syllabi and numerous classroom educational paradigms.

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Module 2: Culture and Society

Reading: social norms.

So far, the examples in this chapter have often described how people are expected to behave in certain situations—for example, when buying food or boarding a bus. These examples describe the visible and invisible rules of conduct through which societies are structured, or what sociologists call norms. Norms define how to behave in accordance with what a society has defined as good, right, and important, and most members of the society adhere to them.

Formal norms are established, written rules. They are behaviors worked out and agreed upon in order to suit and serve the most people. Laws are formal norms, but so are employee manuals, college entrance exam requirements, and “no running” signs at swimming pools. Formal norms are the most specific and clearly stated of the various types of norms, and they are the most strictly enforced. But even formal norms are enforced to varying degrees and are reflected in cultural values.

For example, money is highly valued in the United States, so monetary crimes are punished. It’s against the law to rob a bank, and banks go to great lengths to prevent such crimes. People safeguard valuable possessions and install antitheft devices to protect homes and cars. A less strictly enforced social norm is driving while intoxicated. While it’s against the law to drive drunk, drinking is for the most part an acceptable social behavior. And though there are laws to punish drunk driving, there are few systems in place to prevent the crime. These examples show a range of enforcement in formal norms.

There are plenty of formal norms, but the list of informal norms —casual behaviors that are generally and widely conformed to—is longer. People learn informal norms by observation, imitation, and general socialization. Some informal norms are taught directly—“Kiss your Aunt Edna” or “Use your napkin”—while others are learned by observation, including observations of the consequences when someone else violates a norm. But although informal norms define personal interactions, they extend into other systems as well. In the United States, there are informal norms regarding behavior at fast food restaurants. Customers line up to order their food and leave when they are done. They don’t sit down at a table with strangers, sing loudly as they prepare their condiments, or nap in a booth. Most people don’t commit even benign breaches of informal norms. Informal norms dictate appropriate behaviors without the need of written rules.

Breaching Experiments

Sociologist Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011) studied people’s customs in order to find out how societal rules and norms not only influenced behavior but also shaped social order. He believed that members of society together create a social order (Weber 2011). His resulting book, Studies in Ethnomethodology , published in 1967, discusses people’s assumptions about the social makeup of their communities.

One of Garfinkel’s research methods was known as a “breaching experiment,” in which the researcher behaves in a socially awkward manner in order to test the sociological concepts of social norms and conformity. The participants are not aware an experiment is in progress. If the breach is successful, however, these “innocent bystanders” will respond in some way. For example, if the experimenter is, say, a man in a business suit, and he skips down the sidewalk or hops on one foot, the passersby are likely to stare at him with surprised expressions on their faces. But the experimenter does not simply “act weird” in public. Rather, the point is to deviate from a specific social norm in a small way, to subtly break some form of social etiquette, and see what happens.

To conduct his ethnomethodology, Garfinkel deliberately imposed strange behaviors on unknowing people. Then he observed their responses. He suspected that odd behaviors would shatter conventional expectations, but he wasn’t sure how. For example, he set up a simple game of tic-tac-toe. One player was asked beforehand to mark Xs and Os not in the boxes but on the lines dividing the spaces instead. The other player, in the dark about the study, was flabbergasted and did not know how to continue. The second player’s reactions of outrage, anger, puzzlement, or other emotions illustrated the existence of cultural norms that constitute social life. These cultural norms play an important role. They let us know how to behave around each other and how to feel comfortable in our community.

There are many rules about speaking with strangers in public. It’s OK to tell a woman you like her shoes. It’s not OK to ask if you can try them on. It’s OK to stand in line behind someone at the ATM. It’s not OK to look over his shoulder as he makes his transaction. It’s OK to sit beside someone on a crowded bus. It’s weird to sit beside a stranger in a half-empty bus.

For some breaches, the researcher directly engages with innocent bystanders. An experimenter might strike up a conversation in a public bathroom, where it’s common to respect each other’s privacy so fiercely as to ignore other people’s presence. In a grocery store, an experimenter might take a food item out of another person’s grocery cart, saying, “That looks good! I think I’ll try it.” An experimenter might sit down at a table with others in a fast food restaurant or follow someone around a museum and study the same paintings. In those cases, the bystanders are pressured to respond, and their discomfort illustrates how much we depend on social norms. Breaching experiments uncover and explore the many unwritten social rules we live by.

Norms may be further classified as either mores or folkways. Mores (mor-ays) are norms that embody the moral views and principles of a group. Violating them can have serious consequences. The strongest mores are legally protected with laws or other formal norms. In the United States, for instance, murder is considered immoral, and it’s punishable by law (a formal norm). But more often, mores are judged and guarded by public sentiment (an informal norm). People who violate mores are seen as shameful. They can even be shunned or banned from some groups. The mores of the U.S. school system require that a student’s writing be in the student’s own words or use special forms (such as quotation marks and a whole system of citation) for crediting other writers. Writing another person’s words as if they are one’s own has a name—plagiarism. The consequences for violating this norm are severe and usually result in expulsion.

Unlike mores, folkways are norms without any moral underpinnings. Rather, folkways direct appropriate behavior in the day-to-day practices and expressions of a culture. They indicate whether to shake hands or kiss on the cheek when greeting another person. They specify whether to wear a tie and blazer or a T-shirt and sandals to an event. In Canada, women can smile and say hello to men on the street. In Egypt, that’s not acceptable. In regions in the southern United States, bumping into an acquaintance means stopping to chat. It’s considered rude not to, no matter how busy one is. In other regions, people guard their privacy and value time efficiency. A simple nod of the head is enough. Other accepted folkways in the United States may include holding the door open for a stranger or giving someone a gift on their birthday. The rules regarding these folkways may change from culture to culture.

Many folkways are actions we take for granted. People need to act without thinking in order to get seamlessly through daily routines; they can’t stop and analyze every action (Sumner 1906). Those who experience culture shock may find that it subsides as they learn the new culture’s folkways and are able to move through their daily routines more smoothly. Folkways might be small manners, learned by observation and imitated, but they are by no means trivial. Like mores and laws, these norms help people negotiate their daily lives within a given culture.

Think It Over

How do you think your culture would exist if there were no such thing as a social “norm”? Do you think chaos would ensue or relative peace could be kept? Explain.

1. The biggest difference between mores and folkways is that

• mores are primarily linked to morality, whereas folkways are primarily linked to being commonplace within a culture
• mores are absolute, whereas folkways are temporary
• mores refer to material culture, whereas folkways refer to nonmaterial culture
• mores refer to nonmaterial culture, whereas folkways refer to material culture
• Introduction to Sociology 2e. Authored by : OpenStax CNX. Located at : http://cnx.org/contents/02040312-72c8-441e-a685-20e9333f3e1d/Introduction_to_Sociology_2e . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]

Sociology 101

Breaching ¶.

Social interaction represents one of the central building blocks of society. Despite being unscripted, these interactions have strict unwritten rules. Breaking those rules, or being deviant, is a critical way of discovering what the norms are and what is the range of reactions to norm violations. Before you begin, please review the section on “Values, Norms, and Sanctions” in the Culture chapter and take a look at page 436 in the textbook(“Encounters with Strangers”), particularly the concept of “civil inattention”.

You will conduct an exercise that violates social norms and write a short paper about the experience. This exercise may be performed alone or in a group (of your choice) of four or fewer participants. **The norm violation can not include illegal activities or those that might risk someone’s safety, health, or well-being (i.e., violating masking requirements in a pandemic). In addition, don’t complete breaches where the violation is that you make someone else sad or angry (ex. telling your friend they look ugly, etc.) because that is mean. ** In our current pandemic world, I would strongly encourage you to conduct your breach on social media, such as something that defies our new norms of online courses, such as brushing your teeth during Zoom class. If conducting your experiment as a group, each group member will perform the breach once. When not performing the breach, the other group members should observe the interaction and write an observation log documenting people’s reactions to the breach. After completing your breach, you should write a brief research report that discusses your research and what you found. You may conduct your breach as part of a group, but each person must individually write and submit a research report.

These are guidelines, but feel free to try new things and stretch your creativity for a high pass. In your submission text, please clearly state which set of requirements you are attempting to fulfill.

In order to receive a Pass or High Pass, you must complete all components of that grade category.

Violates more than one well-identified social norm in a clear way or violates the same norm in more than one way.

Chooses breaches that are creative

Includes video or photographic proof that the breach occurred. Ideally, this would be a link to a video of the breach. If you are doing this solo, a photo of the situation pre or post breach is sufficient. Attach this on Sakai or text it to Professor Caren (919-381-7638) along with your name. As part of your assignment, put “I texted the video to Professor Caren from my phone, 919-xxx-xxxx.”

Include summary paragraph as introduction.

Describe your data and methods of analysis, including describes the breaches with details about the settings they took place in (virtual/physical), the norms and your expectations.

Use detailed description to explain people’s reactions to the different breaches

Describes how you felt while doing the breaches and analyzes why that feeling occurred

Explains why your breaches are significant sociologically- what do they show/mean? Make a clear connection to more than one course concept.

Evaluate your methodology.

500 word minimum

Varies the breach or norm in such a way as to test a hypothesis

Describes your hypothesis.

Reflects on how the breach might have been different if a different person had conducted it (maybe someone of a different personality type or identity)

Analyzes the limitations of these types of experiments

Violates a well-identified social norm in a clear way

Describe people’s reactions to your breach

Describes how you felt while doing the breach

250 word minimum

Social Life

4 social norms you should break, how breaking some rules of social behavior can improve your social life..

Posted May 15, 2017 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

There are many norms governing our everyday social interactions. For example, in the United States, it is normative to:

• Allow some personal space between you and other people (often two or three feet between friends and four feet or more between strangers).
• Take turns during conversation and avoid interrupting others while they’re talking.
• Maintain a comfortable amount of eye contact (about three seconds at a time).
• Reciprocate when someone does something kind for you.

It’s wise to conform to these social norms. They help people know what to expect during social interactions and they facilitate social connection, which is essential for one’s health and happiness . Also, people who do not conform to these norms risk social disapproval or rejection. (Consider how you feel about the person who stands too close for comfort, or the mooch who lives off the generosity of others without giving anything in return.)

On the other hand, there are some norms surrounding social interaction that you shouldn’t follow.

Some of the behaviors that are normative in our modern society (like glancing at one’s phone while talking to a friend) can limit opportunities for social interaction and hinder authentic social connection. These norms may also contribute to the loneliness epidemic in America, where at least one-third of adults feel lonely.

So, go ahead: break the rules. Here’s how:

1. Stop asking “How are you?” unless you really want to know.

Sometimes people ask “How are you?” because they really want to know how others are doing. Other times, they ask because it has become a normative greeting in our society. “Hi, how are you?” seems to be a lengthier alternative to “Hi.” The standard response is usually mumbled as a single word: goodhowareyou? or fineandyou? This exchange happens even when people are moving in opposite directions, with no possibility of having an actual conversation.

When the question “How are you?” becomes a simple greeting rather than an expression of genuine concern, it forces us to provide quick and/or inauthentic responses. This conditions us to relate to others on a shallow level, which can make meaningful connection more elusive.

If you’re one of the many people who asks this question, reserve it for times when you really want to know the answer.

2. Talk to strangers.

Many of us tend to avoid talking to strangers, especially in crowded spaces. We assume that talking to strangers will be awkward and unpleasant, or we worry that others will not be interested in talking to us.

And yet, research shows that our concerns about talking to strangers are overblown. Talking to strangers often goes better than expected, and even brief moments of connecting with a stranger can improve one’s mood and well-being. In one study , commuters on a train into downtown Chicago had a better experience when they talked to a stranger than when they sat in silence, even though they predicted the opposite result. This was true for extraverts and introverts . Another study found that taking the time to talk to the coffee shop barista increased people's sense of belonging.

Try breaking the norm of staying silent. Say “hi” to the strangers you encounter during the course of the day. Doing so could leave you feeling happier and more connected to others.

(If you feel anxious about talking to a stranger, start by making eye contact. The data suggest that simply acknowledging a stranger with eye contact is enough to foster connection.)

3. Talk, don’t text.

Technology has dramatically changed the way we communicate in the modern world. According to a recent Gallup poll , sending and receiving text messages has become the most prevalent form of communication among U.S. adults under 50. In other words, texting has become the norm.

There are many advantages to texting, but research shows we may feel more connected with others if we pick up the phone or make a video call. What’s important is being able to hear the other person’s voice. The voice communicates interpersonal warmth, which is harder to convey via text.

If you want to really connect, make the call. Or at least send a voice message.

4. Put your phone away during social gatherings.

In a recent survey , 89% of cell phone owners reported using their phones during their most recent social gathering.

Even though it’s a normative behavior, using your phone when you’re with other people can have negative social consequences. Indeed, researchers have found that phubbing (the act of snubbing someone by looking at a phone) makes people feel ignored or rejected.

Even the mere presence of a phone can diminish the quality of social interactions. One set of experiments showed that simply having a phone out and visible during a conversation lowered people’s sense of connection to the other person and the quality of the conversation. This was especially true during meaningful conversations.

So, the next time you gather with friends or family, resist the temptation to use your phone. Keep it out of sight—and out of mind.

Also consider creating new norms or rules for your social gatherings (e.g., the first person to pick up their phone at dinner has to pick up the bill!).

Bottom line: Don’t be afraid of breaking the social norms that hinder meaningful social connection. Doing so may be a key to a less lonely world.

Natalie Kerr, Ph.D., is a social psychologist and a professor at James Madison University.

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Break a Norm Project

• March 9, 2022
• No Comments
• Project-Based Learning , sociology

Do you ever get bored of going through the same cycle each week? Outside of work, this often looks like doing laundry and grocery shopping. Honestly, this is no way to relax on the weekend, but there is no other time to do these tasks. Thus, time outside of work is often restful but not very exciting. Sadly, this is also how many students feel in school. For them, it means following a carefully dictated schedule. Upon entering class, it means sitting in a specific spot, raising a hand to talk, and following a teacher’s request. Students follow the norms because of set expectations. The majority of students do not want to break the rules or upset authority figures. Thus, understanding a unit on crime and deviance can be challenging. To help appropriately allow students to experience the content, the Break a Norm Project will be perfect to use! 

Break a Norm Project 

It is fantastic to have a classroom full of students who want to do well academically and follow the rules. Honestly, this makes the lives of teachers easier. However, this aspect can cause students to struggle to understand crime and deviance in Sociology class. Now, no teacher wants to force students to start breaking laws and purposely get into trouble. Additionally, no teacher wants to encourage students to act out. However, there are creative ways to help students relate to the content! 

The Break a Norm project is highly engaging! Honestly, it will be a project students always remember. The purchase includes the assignment, examples, and a rubric for easy grading. Students will see creative ways to break a norm without violating real law by looking at the examples. For instance, this may be skipping instead of walking or sitting at a teacher’s desk in the middle of a lesson. Ultimately, students will break a norm but do so legally. 

Project Components 

The Break a Norm Project includes five components. First, students write a statement of the problem, defining the norm they plan to violate and how it acts as a mechanism of social control. Then, students will explain why they are breaking the norm. Second, they will write a hypothesis. They will describe the range of reactions that others will have due to the violation. Third, they will describe the setting. This allows them to think about where the norm violation will occur and who will observe. Fourth, students will describe the incident. This will let them explain what happened. Lastly, students will complete a summary and interpretation. They will explain how it felt to violate the norm and receive reactions of those in society. Essentially, this project will allow students to gain a deeper understanding of crime and deviance. 

Accountability 

This project is a way to help students understand what it feels like to break a norm. However, it does not involve doing something to get arrested or into serious trouble. Therefore, it is essential to stress the importance of selecting a societal norm that is school appropriate. Ultimately, students are responsible for their actions. Hence, it is valuable to spend time reviewing the included examples together. By doing this, they will get a feel for what is acceptable and not. 

Teacher Benefits of the Break a Norm Project 

As a secondary Social Studies teacher, I understand the lack of available resources. Additionally, it is hard to develop creative lessons with so many different preps. Therefore, I create projects that are teacher tested and student approved. This means that I utilize the Break a Norm project each year. Specifically, I reflect on my students and their results to create comprehensive plans driven by proven results.  I even provide FREE updates as I continuously reflect on lessons. As a teacher, I know how stressful life can be. Thus, all of my products are organized for teachers and engaging for students. 

The Break a Norm Project is a powerful way to help students understand crime and deviance. It will allow students to see what it is like to go against the norm and the results. Ultimately, this will be a project students never forget! 

If you do not want to miss any of the upcoming lessons, join my email list to be notified of all the interactive lessons coming up! By joining the email list, you will also receive a Final Sociology Project FREEBIE for blog exclusive subscribers!  

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Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Social Norms — An Experiment Breaking Social Norms: Invading People’s Personal Space

An Experiment Breaking Social Norms: Invading People’s Personal Space

• Categories: Behaviorism Personal Experience Social Norms

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Published: Jan 28, 2021

Words: 1005 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, three experiments of breaking a social norm.

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Propagandists are using AI too—and companies need to be open about it

OpenAI has reported on influence operations that use its AI tools. Such reporting, alongside data sharing, should become the industry norm.

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At the end of May, OpenAI marked a new “first” in its corporate history. It wasn’t an even more powerful language model or a new data partnership, but a report disclosing that bad actors had misused their products to run influence operations. The company had caught five networks of covert propagandists—including players from Russia, China, Iran, and Israel—using their generative AI tools for deceptive tactics that ranged from creating large volumes of social media comments in multiple languages to turning news articles into Facebook posts. The use of these tools, OpenAI noted, seemed intended to improve the quality and quantity of output. AI gives propagandists a productivity boost too.

First and foremost, OpenAI should be commended for this report and the precedent it hopefully sets. Researchers have long expected adversarial actors to adopt generative AI technology, particularly large language models, to cheaply increase the scale and caliber of their efforts. The transparent disclosure that this has begun to happen—and that OpenAI has prioritized detecting it and shutting down accounts to mitigate its impact—shows that at least one large AI company has learned something from the struggles of social media platforms in the years following Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election. When that misuse was discovered, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (now X) created integrity teams and began making regular disclosures about influence operations on their platforms. (X halted this activity after Elon Musk’s purchase of the company.) 

OpenAI’s disclosure, in fact, was evocative of precisely such a report from Meta , released a mere day earlier. The Meta transparency report for the first quarter of 2024 disclosed the takedown of six covert operations on its platform. It, too, found networks tied to China, Iran, and Israel and noted the use of AI-generated content. Propagandists from China shared what seem to be AI-generated poster-type images for a “fictitious pro-Sikh activist movement.” An Israel-based political marketing firm posted what were likely AI-generated comments. Meta’s report also noted that one very persistent Russian threat actor was still quite active, and that its strategies were evolving. Perhaps most important, Meta included a direct set of “recommendations for stronger industry response” that called for governments, researchers, and other technology companies to collaboratively share threat intelligence to help disrupt the ongoing Russian campaign.

We are two such researchers, and we have studied online influence operations for years. We have published investigations of coordinated activity—sometimes in collaboration with platforms—and analyzed how AI tools could affect the way propaganda campaigns are waged. Our teams’ peer-reviewed research has found that language models can produce text that is nearly as persuasive as propaganda from human-written campaigns. We have seen influence operations continue to proliferate, on every social platform and focused on every region of the world; they are table stakes in the propaganda game at this point. State adversaries and mercenary public relations firms are drawn to social media platforms and the reach they offer. For authoritarian regimes in particular, there is little downside to running such a campaign, particularly in a critical global election year. And now, adversaries are demonstrably using AI technologies that may make this activity harder to detect. Media is writing about the “AI election,” and many regulators are panicked.

It’s important to put this in perspective, though. Most of the influence campaigns that OpenAI and Meta announced did not have much impact, something the companies took pains to highlight. It’s critical to reiterate that effort isn’t the same thing as engagement: the mere existence of fake accounts or pages doesn’t mean that real people are paying attention to them. Similarly, just because a campaign uses AI does not mean it will sway public opinion. Generative AI reduces the cost of running propaganda campaigns, making it significantly cheaper to produce content and run interactive automated accounts. But it is not a magic bullet, and in the case of the operations that OpenAI disclosed, what was generated sometimes seemed to be rather spammy. Audiences didn’t bite.

Producing content, after all, is only the first step in a propaganda campaign; even the most convincing AI-generated posts, images, or audio still need to be distributed. Campaigns without algorithmic amplification or influencer pickup are often just tweeting into the void . Indeed, it is consistently authentic influencers—people who have the attention of large audiences enthusiastically resharing their posts—that receive engagement and drive the public conversation, helping content and narratives to go viral. This is why some of the more well-resourced adversaries, like China, simply surreptitiously hire those voices. At this point, influential real accounts have far more potential for impact than AI-powered fakes.

Nonetheless, there is a lot of concern that AI could disrupt American politics and become a national security threat. It’s important to “rightsize” that threat, particularly in an election year.  Hyping the impact of disinformation campaigns can undermine trust in elections and faith in democracy by making the electorate believe that there are trolls behind every post, or that the mere targeting of a candidate by a malign actor, even with a very poorly executed campaign, “caused” their loss. 

By putting an assessment of impact front and center in its first report, OpenAI is clearly taking the risk of exaggerating the threat seriously. And yet, diminishing the threat or not fielding integrity teams—letting trolls simply continue to grow their followings and improve their distribution capability—would also be a bad approach. Indeed, the Meta report noted that one network it disrupted, seemingly connected to a political party in Bangladesh and targeting the Bangladeshi public, had amassed 3.4 million followers across 98 pages. Since that network was not run by an adversary of interest to Americans, it will likely get little attention. Still, this example highlights the fact that the threat is global, and vigilance is key. Platforms must continue to prioritize threat detection.

So what should we do about this? The Meta report’s call for threat sharing and collaboration, although specific to a Russian adversary, highlights a broader path forward for social media platforms, AI companies, and academic researchers alike. 

Transparency is paramount. As outside researchers, we can learn only so much from a social media company’s description of an operation it has taken down. This is true for the public and policymakers as well, and incredibly powerful platforms shouldn’t just be taken at their word. Ensuring researcher access to data about coordinated inauthentic networks offers an opportunity for outside validation (or refutation!) of a tech company’s claims. Before Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the company regularly released data sets of posts from inauthentic state-linked accounts to researchers, and even to the public. Meta shared data with external partners before it removed a network and, more recently, moved to a model of sharing content from already-removed networks through Meta’s Influence Operations Research Archive. While researchers should continue to push for more data, these efforts have allowed for a richer understanding of adversarial narratives and behaviors beyond what the platform’s own transparency report summaries provided.

OpenAI’s adversarial threat report should be a prelude to more robust data sharing moving forward. Where AI is concerned, independent researchers have begun to assemble databases of misuse—like the AI Incident Database and the Political Deepfakes Incident Database —to allow researchers to compare different types of misuse and track how misuse changes over time. But it is often hard to detect misuse from the outside. As AI tools become more capable and pervasive, it’s important that policymakers considering regulation understand how they are being used and abused. While OpenAI’s first report offered high-level summaries and select examples, expanding data-sharing relationships with researchers that provide more visibility into adversarial content or behaviors is an important next step. 

When it comes to combating influence operations and misuse of AI, online users also have a role to play. After all, this content has an impact only if people see it, believe it, and participate in sharing it further. In one of the cases OpenAI disclosed, online users called out fake accounts that used AI-generated text. 

In our own research, we’ve seen communities of Facebook users proactively call out AI-generated image content created by spammers and scammers, helping those who are less aware of the technology avoid falling prey to deception. A healthy dose of skepticism is increasingly useful: pausing to check whether content is real and people are who they claim to be, and helping friends and family members become more aware of the growing prevalence of generated content, can help social media users resist deception from propagandists and scammers alike.

OpenAI’s blog post announcing the takedown report put it succinctly: “Threat actors work across the internet.” So must we. As we move into an new era of AI-driven influence operations, we must address shared challenges via transparency, data sharing, and collaborative vigilance if we hope to develop a more resilient digital ecosystem.

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