After reading about social norms and understanding their construction in society, your assignment is to break a social norm and write about your experience.
Think about some social norms in your society and culture. These unwritten rules are often silly and arbitrary, but they tend to govern how we act and how we view others who break them. They impact how we think, how we feel, and how we act on a daily basis.
What do you do when you walk into an elevator when there are other people in there with you? Do you face each other? Do you stand back to back? Or do you stand facing the door in complete awkward silence until the doors open and your can get back to feeling comfortable. This is an unwritten social norm, and people tend to know that they should follow it. If an average person were to walk into an elevator and stand less than 1 ft away from you staring into your eyes and trying to make conversation, you would feel very uncomfortable and probably think that they are not from your society/culture since they are acting out of the norm.
What are some other norms you can think of? The unwritten rule of how to stand in line at a grocery store? How you just know that you have to put your items on the conveyor belt, how you know to add the divider between your items and the items of the person in front of you, how you know to wait your turn… what would happen if you broke those norms?
For this assignment, DO NOT DO ANYTHING ILLEGAL OR HARMFUL TO YOURSELF OR TO OTHERS, but pick something that is a social norm, and break it.
Write a reflection of how you felt, how others looked at you, how you think this norm came to be, what its importance is in society, and what you think would happen if everyone ignored it. Make sure to use the information you learned in the chapters you’ve read in class about Sociology, Society, Socialization, and Culture to analyze your experience.
Your answer should be in essay format, and about 3 pages long. Organize it any way that best conveys your thoughts on paper. It will go through TurnItIn so please be sure to cite your sources.
(This is posted in my assignment what is required to get full point)
Breaching Experiment Rubric
Followed Directions
Followed directions, did not miss any topics from the instructions. about 3 pages long, citations (any format).
Clear organization & syntax
Paper is organized in a way that makes sense. Thoughtfully curated sentences that clearly explain thoughts. No wordiness or extra long sentences to fill the space.
Analysis
Clear analysis, demonstrates understanding of material, explains analysis by bringing in theories, perspectives and vocabulary from lessons learned in chapters discussed in past 4 weeks, clearly explains breaching experiment they conducted.
