Violating Social Norms Essay

Most Americans place a high priority on their personal space as evidenced by how far people stand apart from each other in virtually any public setting. Indeed, most Americans will unconsciously gauge just how much space is available for their personal space -- even on crowded elevators -- and when this personal space is violated, many people will experience discomfort and even alarm. While the reactions may differ, it is reasonable to posit that most Americans will react to violations of their personal space in some fashion. To gain some additional insights into this phenomenon, this paper describes a social psychological experiment in which the researcher intentionally violated a common social norm by sitting next to other people in an uncrowded movie theater where other seating was readily available in order to gauge their reactions. A more complete description of the experiment is followed by a discussion of the results and what was concluded from this experiment and how these findings supported the guiding hypothesis.

Personal space is a nebulous concept but an important one for most Americans. For instance, when someone stands too close to others, they tend to naturally move away as quickly as possible to restore the integrity of their personal space even in crowded conditions. When conditions are not crowded, this sense of personal space is likely expanded proportionately to encompass as much of the surroundings as possible.

Social norms are defined by Anomaly and Brennan (2014) as “emergent rules or behavioral regularities that arise as solutions to collective action problems of various kinds faced by individuals when they interact with each other” (p. 264). Some common examples of social norms in the United States include shaking hands, refraining from picking one’s nose in public, not standing too close to others, and never sitting right next to someone unless a movie theater is crowded (Social norm examples, 2016).

Because it is ubiquitous and easily observable, this experiment selected personal space as the social norm. According to the definition provided by Khan and Kamal (2010), “The term personal space was introduced into the psychological literature to describe the zone around the human body that people feel is 'their space.. This is the absolute minimal normally acceptable distance to separate individuals in most common settings” (p. 81). The precise dimensions of an individual’s personal space vary according to age, culture, gender, and context of the setting, as well as other factors (Khan & Kamal, 2010).

It was the hypothesis of this experiment that most if not all movie-goers would react in some fashion when a stranger sat down next to them in a movie theater that was no crowded and where there was an abundance of other seating available.

It was anticipated that movie-goers would react alternatively by either questioning the researcher’s rationale for the seating choice, moving to another seat further away (perhaps on another row), contacting an usher or manager for assistance, or even leaving the movie theater entirely.

The experiment was conducted in an enclosed mall’s movie theater that featured four separate theaters with approximately 200 seats each. The matinee showings of Sugar Mountain on a weekday were selected for the purposes of this experiment in order to have as few movie-goers as possible in attendance in order to increase the likelihood of an abundance of alternative seating. All told, there were eight participants involved in this experiment.

The researcher sat in the back row of the theater until new movie-goers arrived. After an individual, couple or group took their seats, the researcher sat down in an adjacent seat without saying anything or looking at the other individual(s). The reactions of the movie-goers were noted mentally including approximately age and gender until they could be recorded using field notes after they reacted in various ways.