Holding Random People's (Stranger's) Hands

Sunshine Estoesta

Marco Lasam

Renz Jaranilla 

Patricia Jaranilla 

SA 21- B

Holding Random People's (Stranger’s) Hands

1.              For this breaching experiment, we tackled the norm of interacting with strangers. In our society today, the act interacting with strangers is not a very common practice, yet alone, holding hands with someone whom you don’t even know. The act of holding hands is viewed by the society as an act done by two individuals from the opposite gender who are very close or intimate with each other; such as couples and boyfriend & girlfriend. With this norm in mind, we formulated this kind of experiment where a total stranger from the opposite gender comes up to an individual and holds his/her hand without saying anything. We even took this experiment further by trying it out with people from the same gender.

2.              The breaching experiment was done by 3 members of the group (two female & one male member). It was done on a Monday at 10:30 in the morning to around 12o’clock noon. The group chose to do the breaching experiment within the Ateneo de Manila University along one of the most frequented areas in the school. The group did the breaching experiment along SEC (Science Education Complex) Walk because there was a wide range of people that would pass by. SEC walk is frequented by students from all year levels (freshmen to super-seniors) in both genders. The breaching experiment was to test’s people’s reaction to a complete stranger holding their hand in mid-walk. The experiment was done in this way; one member of the group would stand idly at the side of SEC walk, waiting for a possible person to execute the experiment on. The person had to be walking with their left or right hand free and without holding anything so as to make the fast “holding” of the hands possible. When we found a “target”, the group member would walk in the same direction the person is walking in and swiftly catch-up with them from behind. So both the group member and the target are walking in the same direction. We will then reach for the person’s hand, either simply holding the hand or intertwining our fingers with theirs, which was a little bit harder. If they don’t take away their hand at first touch, we keep holding the person’s hand until he/she stops walking, if he/she doesn’t, we continue to walk in their direction while holding their hands, as if there is nothing at all strange about our behavior. When the target person takes away his/her hand, or stops walking, we then stop holding their hands and walk away. The 3 members of the group who performed the experiment each made sure to target at least one boy and one girl so we had situations where in a girl held a boy’s hand, a boy held a girl’s hand, a boy held a boy’s hand and a girl held a girl’s hand. From a distance, the entire experiment is being subtly documented by the two other members who make sure that the videotaping is not visible so as not to affect the target persons reactions.

3.              In the experiment, we made sure to do it on both sexes to ensure that we would get all possible reactions. In the first part of the video, we see the attempts of holding a complete stranger’s hand of the opposite sex--and the general reaction (whether male or female) was a surprised and confused face, accompanied with the swift movement of their hands jerking away from the touch and any and all other forms of contact. Everyone continued to walk along however and none demanded for an explanation of sorts. In the later parts of the video we see attempts on holding the hands of strangers on the same gender and the results were a little improved for the girls. They would successfully be able to hold a girl’s hand and even manage a bit of eye-contact before they let go and the stranger walks off. Still, the look of shock and confusion was still present on their faces. However in the case of male-to-male attempts, we see that the boys were far more strict and that they barely even got to hold hands before they looked at the male with at first surprise, confusion, a bit of judgement and then walking off with a stern expression. The main cause of these reactions are the shock and confusion that surrounds them because they were not at all prepared or even expecting that some random stranger would grab their hand and try to hold it while walking on a busy hallway. This deviant act reinforced the existing norms since everyone basically had a blanket reaction, and we see the same patterns cross their faces--that being at first shock, and then sometimes a look of understanding but more often than not they walked away with a look of confusion, which affirms the notion of the norm that strangers cannot hold hands or hug or kiss because they do not know each other.

4.         Our breaching experiment of holding the hands of random strangers without them having the prior knowledge of our intention demonstrates how interpersonal relationship and intimacy is essentially grounded on an individual’s impulse to be respected, in accordance with the theme of structural-functionalism. It is obvious how people cannot just hold hands with strangers: this exact circumstance is what defines the ‘stranger’ for every person; the ‘stranger’ is someone of whom a person has no prior knowledge about and so is subject to curiosity and questions. As with the norm, it is expected for any functioning member of a society to recognize the ‘being stranger’ of a stranger and the possibility that one is also a stranger to other people. Essentially this is governed by a lot of functions revolving around the persistence of a ‘social grid’. For instance, we could have never conducted this simple experiment if the people we consider ‘strangers’ surrounding us were people of high sociopolitical status (celebrities, political leaders, professors and teachers, church personnel, etc.), an example of how social class functions are implicitly respected. Additionally, as we have demonstrated in our experiment with same-gender circumstances, the way people consider one another at first sight on the basis of gender is also present as part of the proliferative existence of social grid.

Experiment #1: Opposite Sex

First, the group tried holding hands with people of the opposite sex within campus.  At first it seemed “awkward” to just randomly hold the hands of strangers.  The strangers also seemed perplexed, shocked and some how irritated when we tried holding their hands.  The hand holding also lasted for a few seconds; they don’t hold on any longer.  People take their hands away from the stranger.

Experiment #2: Same Sex

Second, the group tried holding hands with people of the same gender. The students still found it “awkward”, but most of them simply laughed it off.

Guy to guy

The guy-to-guy holding hand was very brief.  It didn’t even last a second.  The guys weren’t able to fully grasp the hands of other guys.  The reaction of guys were delivered immediately especially when they saw that it was a guy trying to hold his hand.  The guys would immediately keep their hand away from the person trying to hold it and walk a step away.  They would even stare at the guy trying to hold their hand and watch the person leave them.   The slightest touch made the guys look irritated and weirded out.

Girl to Girl

For girl-to-girl handholding, the duration of the handholding was generally longer as compared to holding the hands of the opposite sex.  As the girls saw the other girl, they would look but not stare.  It also seems to be okay for the girls to hold the hands of fellow girls.  Their reaction was much more slower and subtle as compared to the guy-to-guy holding hand version.

Here we can see that gender imposes a big difference to the way the respondents reacted to the experiment. In most cases, the contact in the form of holding hands for the opposite sex creates a more evident reaction which makes in clearer to us that most people in society still and are more likely to expect boundaries between themselves and strangers of the opposite sex.

5.              “Personally, it was really hard for me since I’m a guy. The reason why I found it hard is because I had this fear of getting slapped by the opposite sex while doing the experiment. After a few unsuccessful attempts, I finally had the courage to hold a random girl’s hand. At first, I was so scared because the girl seemed pissed after I held her hand. A few more tries and I became used to it. After some time, it felt really good to break norms because we rarely get the chance to do so. It was really fun to observe other people’s reactions because they all vary from each other. Doing deviant things is really difficult at first because of the fact that we avoid conflict as much as possible but once we do them, it starts getting better and we tend to enjoy doing it. “ (Renz Jaranilla, 2014)

“From a girl’s perspective, I was naturally at first embarrassed to be holding other people’s hands. I was more hesitant to hold the hand of a guy than of a girl, basically because it would entail a bigger chance of being misinterpreted. Though, I expected a rather different reaction from boys because I expected the boys to be more or less okay with a girl randomly holding their hand. I did not expect them to pull their hands away so abruptly, as if they are scared or threatened by a girl holding their hand. It was easier for me to hold the hands of a girl or someone of the same sex because girls generally reacted much more comfortably with the experiment. Most of them did not pull their hand away abruptly and most of them, despite the look of confusion actually just let me hold their hands.” (Patricia Jaranilla, 2014)

6.              As mentioned by our professor before, people, as much as possible, avoid conflicts. We verified this by studying their reactions. Majority of them either laughed or just walked away as if nothing happened. As for deviance, we also verified that whenever patterns are broken, people react. It was shown when a stranger held their hand. They withdrew their hands quickly and tried processing what happened. Personally, if I were the person being experimented on, the questions that would pop up on my head if someone holds my hand randomly are: do i know you? why did you hold my hand? The reason for this is because I was raised believing that holding hands is a form of intimacy. Having that pattern broken makes me react because it rarely happens.

Holding Random People's (Stranger's) Hands Video