Violation of Social Norms
My mother always told me that there are things that you just don't do. For example, horsing around in Church, being loud and yelling at the table or in public, picking your nose, etc. While your mother may have simply called this "behaving," sociologists call these things social norms. Social norms are defined as "the implicit or explicit rules a group has for the acceptable behaviors, values, and beliefs of its members." In layman's terms, social norms are like an everyday code of conduct that determines how you behave in certain situations. Social norms are often very strictly enforced and offenders are often ostracized or outright rebuked for their conduct. Also, such norms are more rigorously held to in certain situations than in others. For example, it is a social norm that people should be decently covered in public, but a woman wearing a swimsuit and shorts into McDonald's is less likely to be ostracized than a woman wearing the same outfit in a Church service or at
As I did these things, I feel different, very weird, as if I was doing something totally against the natural order. The reactions I received varied in their nature and in their strength, but in all cases there was at least some response. Since, depending upon your personality, violating minor social norms can be fun, and since I was required to do it, I decided to violate the norm of personal space and see what came of it. All of this means that Americans take violations of that space quite seriously. I engaged in several abnormal behaviors such as sitting next to someone on a nearly empty bus, coming into a public restroom and standing next to another person, rather than a few stalls down, and finally, talking to people face to face from very short distance. The bathroom scenario was something on a completely new level. I was shown outright hostility and scorn, several men actually asked if I was gay or a pervert, leading me to conclude that this was the most grievous of space violations I had committed. Social norms are cultural products, and as such we should always be aware of the local norms of polite behavior when we are traveling to a foreign, strange place. America is an individualistic culture and as a result, personal space is so revered, it is almost a religion in itself. So, while it may be fun to sometimes "think outside the box" and act in an unorthodox behavior, we should keep in mind the value of social norms and their positive effect upon effective interaction. The mildest response came from those incidents where I stood very close to someone while talking to them. Also, privacy is important in American society and personal space helps to secure that privacy. I set out to test this hypothesis by experimenting with interpersonal space violations in different situations. Social norms are not just something Martha Stewart or one of her contemporaries set up to make us all polite, well-mannered people, but they serve a useful purpose.
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