Breaching Experiment - Assignment Example

Introduction People’s personality is shaped according to the culture and social norms that they are brought up in. This makes it important to understand the role of social norms in shaping human behavior. Hence, an experiment was conducted to study what happens when someone tries to breach a social norm. This paper describes the result of the experiment.Experiment and reaction It is an acceptable practice for females to apply make-up. However, it is not an acceptable social norm for males to apply make-up while going out.

I decided to breach the social norm by going out with a complete make-up applied on my face. On the day of the experiment, I borrowed the make-up kit from my female friend and applied the make-up. I applied face powder, lipstick, gloss, eye shadow, mascara and liner. Then I went out with my friend. I found that even after knowing that this was an experiment, my friend was feeling quite uncomfortable and conscious. Later, when we took the bus, everyone on the bus was looking at me in strange way.

They were trying not to look, but still their attention was getting to me repeatedly. They were checking if my dressing was also like girls. Some people were expressing amusement, while others were showing disgust. Later, we visited some stores. When I was asking the salespeople some questions, they were doing their best to avoid looking at me while answering my questions. One sales girl actually said “aaahhhh…uuummmm” for some time before taking off her eyes from my gaudily made up face and answering my question.

I got the same reactions from almost everyone. While some people were amused, others were disturbed. ConclusionThe breaching experiment generated different kinds of reactions from different people. Surprisingly, I found that no one reacted to me normally, or as if nothing has happened. This shows how difficult it is for people to accept, or react normally, to something that does not fit the social norms.