write comments for each paragraph I provided (125 words each)
1. The social norm I put to the test for my breaching experiment was the general expectation of people to be relatively calm and quiet while hiking. To conduct the experiment I ventured to Upper Campus and loudly sang along with some of my favorite albums while walking around the trails. When people would pass me I would try to engage them by making eye contact while continuing to sing as loudly as I could while still wearing a mask. Most people I made contact with smiled or visibly chuckled as they passed me but several people looked at me strangely and/or avoided making eye contact with me as they drifted to the other side of the trail. I noticed that this happed especially when the person (or people) was within earshot when I got to an especially profane section of the song. When that was the case I noticed that I felt embarrassed and sometimes even felt my face flush a little bit. Even when the people I engaged with had a somewhat positive response at first the prolonged eye contact was too much for everyone almost without exception. I assumed as much when I added in the eye contact aspect of the experiment but I didn’t realize just how much it would affect my results. For the first several interactions, before I introduced the prolonged eye contact, the people I interacted with almost seemed to be entertained by my singing along with my songs but this reaction became much less common as soon as I would stare intensely at the people I would pass.
2.A “breaching experiment” I decided to conduct was to wave at the people in the cars next to me when I was at a stoplight. It felt very weird because the societal rule is to not look or interact with people in other cars. The only time it is acceptable to communicate with other drivers is when we’re apologizing to them, letting them know about an issue with their car or something relating to the road. As expected, when I waved at other drivers, some of them thought that I was calling their attention to let them know about something wrong with their car. Some people didn’t even notice me waving or just decided to ignore me because they are so used to just looking forward and not paying attention to the other drivers. Other people waved back with a confused look on their faces, and a few waved and smiled. How weird I felt doing it as well as how weirded out people were to see me waving at them shows how much of an influence social constructions have on the way we feel and act. If I lived in a small town where everybody knew each other, it would probably have been perfectly normal to wave at other drivers. I wonder how people in other countries would react if this experiment was conducted. For example, in some countries like South Korea, it is inappropriate to wave at people. I’m interested in seeing how people from other cultures would react due to their different social norms.
