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Social Norm

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Social Norm
The social norm that I chose to violate was to go into an elevator and instead of turning around and facing the door upon entering; I had my back to the door and faced the other people in the elevator. In normality a person enters an elevator, pushes the button for their desired floor and turns to face the door to avoid eye contact with strangers, and prepare to exit the elevator. The reason I choose to violate this particular social norm was because I’ve never seen anyone else do it and I was curious as to how people would respond to my deviant behavior. I decided to perform my social norm violation in the elevator at Deaconess Hospital. I picked this location because I know there would be all different types of people coming on the elevator so it would give me a good sample and I could get what I needed out of it.
Before I began my experiment, I felt nervous. I didn’t know what people were going to do, or how I should act. I waited on the first floor until me and 2 other people got on the elevator together. The elevators there are rather large so it was a little more awkward than I anticipated; I selected the older female to begin my experiment with. As I turned by back to the elevator door to face her, I began to feel a bit awkward, and I could feel my face getting really red. I could tell she was just as uncomfortable as I was, along with the other lady in the elevator. They both exited on the same floor as me, I exited only to make it to where I would enter the elevator with people on it. The next elevator ride I was on had 6 people on it. I began to feel more comfortable about staring then. Although, I was still uncomfortable and wanted to start laughing, I had to resist until I could get off at the next floor. During my experiment, all the people would avoid eye contact and I could tell they were very curious on what I was doing; they all seemed very

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