[Kirsten Oakes

Professor Marlow Soc -1104

Intro to Sociology
2/19/15
Breaking a Social Norm
The norm I will be violating is invading others personal space. This
norm acts as a mechanism of social control because the accepted behavior
in our society is to give people their personal bubble when around others.
Violating this norm creates awkwardness for other people and also goes
against the regulation of behavior for rules in our society. To violate this
norm, I will first take a situation that I am already a part of and invade
someones personal space i.e. if I am speaking to a friend I will take a step
closer to them to get closer even when we are already at close range. To take
it a step further, when I am in a social setting such as waiting in line for
dinner at Glar, I will stand very close to the person in front of me. Also,
walking to class, I will try to find people walking to the same building and
walk right next to them invading their space.
There are so many different reactions that are possible in situations
such as these due to the fact that all of the invasions will be indifferent
settings with different people. Reactions that I could come up with are funny
looks, comments to other people they are with, people moving away, people

asking me to step back, people pushing me away, and people ignoring the
situation. I think the most popular reaction is going to be people moving
away from me due to that being a natural reaction when you are in an
uncomfortable situation. You usually want to remove yourself from the
situation or step away so you can act like you are not involved.
The setting of my breaking of the norm happened in a few different
locations. As previously noted, I tried this out in the line for Glar, walking to
class, and also when speaking to other students in my German class
yesterday. In the first setting in line for Glar, there are about 30 people in line
(mostly students), walking to class, students are sparse due to the cold
weather, and in my German class there are six other students and our
Professor.
The first incident I will be describing was when I was in line for dinner.
Last night I went to Glar without my friends so I would be able to approach as
many people in line. I hopped in line and immediately got very close to the
person in front of me. I think I got too close too fast because I touched the
person too soon. Granted this is still a form of invading personal space, I
didnt mean to go quite so dramatically. The person turned around and
looked at me and my natural reflex was to say sorry so I did. I got out of line
and went to the back of the line and tried again. This time I slowly crept upon
the person in front of me and my presence must have alerted them because
they turned around and saw how close I was standing to them. The subject

glared at me and was waiting for me to move back out of their space. I
repeated this with three other subjects and got similar results. The next
incident was when I was walking to my English class last night. It was very
cold outside and not many students were out but I saw a group of three girls
that I walked towards. They were walking in the same direction as myself but
were going quite slow so it was easy enough for me to catch up to them. I
walked closely behind them as if I was a part of the conversation that they
were having. Within three seconds, one of the girls turned around and asked
me why I was walking so close to them and I said it was because I was cold
and wanted to have the wind blocked. They didnt seem to think that was a
normal response and ceased their conversation but did not say I should back
off or go away. Lastly, in my German class yesterday, I chose to sit relatively
close to the person next to me. There are only two people in the class who
came in as friends and although we are all friendly with each other, we are
not on the invasion of space comfort level. I sat right next to my neighbor as
opposed to leaving desks open per usual since it is such a small class.
Immediately when my neighbor came in, he was confused as to why I was
not sitting in my normal seat and was trying to figure out where he was
going to sit because sitting next to me was not an option. I had invaded his
personal space by sitting a desk closer to him. He eventually ended up
sitting in the front row since there were no seats in the back with at least one
space in between other people.

While doing this project and violating the norm, I felt awkward around
other people. It wasnt the fact that I was doing something different that was
awkward, it was that the subjects involved did not know what was going on is
what made me uncomfortable. I did feel a little awkward invading these
peoples space because I know how uncomfortable it is for me when people
come into my bubble. I was a little surprised by most peoples reactions due
to the fact that nobody really confronted me and told me to back off when I
was the one in their personal space. They all strayed away or ignored the
situation. I did not have any issues carrying out my assignment because all I
needed was another person in a few different situations to test out my theory
on and people are quite abundant on a college campus. During this
assignment did see the correlation between norms and social control. Norms
are the ways that people comply with the rules of our society and they
change within each society.

I have neither given nor received any unauthorized aid on this assignment,
nor have I knowingly tolerated any violation of the McDaniel Honor code.