Have you ever tried standing facing the back of the elevator, or sitting right next to a stranger on a bus when it’s nearly empty? Have you ever gone to a restaurant and ordered dessert first, and then finished with an appetizer? Guys, have you ever had another man use the urinal right next to you when there were plenty of other urinals still open? How did this make you feel? There are many different norms/rules/standards of conduct that, though we may not always talk or think consciously about them, have been well established in our society. Your job for this extra credit assignment is to think of one of these “unspoken rules” and break it. Once you’ve broken your norm, answer the following questions:
1) What is the social norm(s) you chose to break and why did you choose to break it?
2) What was the reaction of others around you while you were breaking the norm?
3) How did it make you feel to break the norm?
4) How do you feel about social norms in general? Why do you think we have such rules in our society?
- Feel free to be as creative as possible (without doing anything dangerous or illegal that might get you into a fight or arrested).
- Some of my previous students have done a number of different things including facing the back of the elevator, lifting weights at the gym in a tuxedo, putting one’s towel directly next to a stranger’s towel at the beach, paying for groceries with all change, etc..
- The body of your assignment should be a minimum of 2 FULL pages, double-spaced, with size 12-point font.
- Pape.. shorter than 2 pages can still earn partial credit.
- Accepted file formats include .doc . docx and . pdf
