Monday, February 17, 2014

Intimacy with Strangers


Bernardo | Casimiro | Espedido | Guya
Manza | Montenegro | Server

SA21 K – Chichateam

Intimacy Today

         In the present day, people are used to harnessing the technology available to them. These innovations, which include the products made by Apple in the iPad, and iPhone, to the eBooks championed by Kindle, have all contributed to changing how society behaves in terms of technological use. While the advancement of technology has undoubtedly benefited us – easier information access, communication et.al, they have also given rise to consequences, and things that became less developed over time due to technological preferences.

        The most prominent example of a consequence that the technological advancements gave rise to is the lack of intimate communication. By defining it loosely, as opposed to academically, intimate communication is when you communicate with more than just simple conversation. It is when exchange is done between people on a deeper, and more emotional level. Examples of intimate communication in today’s culture are heart to heart conversations, affection shown through hugs, gifts, and the like.

        Why has this become an issue nowadays?
          
        It has become an issue because the convenience that technology provides with regards to communication has led people to take communication itself for granted. Relative to around a decade ago, people are in a sense, more accessible now. We do not value the presence of others around us as much anymore because we can reach them with a single click of a button. They can be called with a cellphone, emailed through the computer, or even skyped through the internet (note how Skype, a noun, is even a verb now.) The situation where people browse their phones in the company of other people, and having mundane conversations over the internet is running rampant. In other words, we take the presence of people for granted because separation, regardless of distance, is virtually non-existent in our day and age.


Violating Intimacy, Breaching Trust

      Hence, the norm we wanted to violate is related to intimacy – specifically, we wanted to violate the norm where we showed a display of affection or intimacy towards strangers who were able to help us with whatever help we needed. In the status quo, intimacy or affection is only expected from people who we are close or affiliated with to a certain degree. For example, you would expect a hug or kiss from your parents because you’re close with them. You would expect a hug, but not a kiss from a friend, because your relationship is more intimate than with a stranger, but less than that of a family perspective. With a stranger, you wouldn’t expect anything because there’s no sense of familiarity between either of you. This is because intimacy or affection, at the very core, requires a sense of trust with the person you are sharing it with. Trust is built with time, among other things – none of which are shared with strangers.  
                  

The Breaching Experiment

 ATENEO CAMPUS

      Since we wanted to violate the social norm of displaying affection or intimacy to a person we considered as strangers, we first needed to come up with a reason for us to be able to thank them, and hence show affection as a reaction to their help. It would have been too far fetched, albeit still violating of social norms, to just randomly pick out a person in the crowd and hug them for no reason. We as a group thought that could have been more difficult, and warrant for the subjects to think we were harassing them. So we first needed to establish a reason. We ended up deciding to ask for directions to get to a certain place within the area we were doing our experiment. The two areas we held our experiment in was Ateneo, and in the Katipunan area outside Ateneo. First, we chose Ateneo for both convenience, and a more familiar feel. Because it was in the context of a school, people would were more more trusting because there was a sense of familiarity with the groupmates we set as guinea pigs for the experiment (The people who carried out the hugging.) They would be more inclined to respond to the hugs because there is a sense of trust with our groupmates, since they were Ateneans, like themselves. This debunked a certain level of distrust. We chose to do it outside Katipunan, because we wanted to abolish all forms of probably familiarity where there wasn’t anything common, or innately letting the strangers trust us. In contrast to holding it in Ateneo, there was no familiarity involved with the people in Katipunan, because we weren’t common in terms of title, albeit being both Filipino and human.

          How we performed it is as follows:
1. The designated groupmate will stand and look lost in the middle of the area.
2. He or she will then choose a random person passing through, and ask for help.
          Each groupmate had a different question, although similar in essence.
3. Upon being helped, they will hug the person who helped them for an extended
          period of time – around a 10 second held hug. Some of them exclaimed
          things such as I love you, or I really appreciate your help, thanks in order
          to push the limits of intimacy.
4. They become informed afterwards that it was an experiment, when they reach
          the people recording at the opposite ends of the area.

      It should be noted that during our experiment, we also added certain things to make sure it went well, and documented. First, we made sure that people in the area would not catch on, so as to not suspect that we were experimenting on people. We took several steps to carry this out, namely – we had 3 different groupmates perform the experiment. We did this so that it wouldn’t look like there was a person who was lost, and kept asking for the same directions. It would be suspicious. Next, we made sure that we had a time interval of about 2 minutes between asking people for help. We did not want the people around our groupmate to overhear or witness the experiment, and then be experimented upon because it would ruin the pre-requisites and purpose of our experiment. Finally, we also made sure to keep moving in our designated areas in order to decrease the probably familiarity and suspicion that people might have been building up in our previous areas. We moved after asking for help from 3 people. The areas in Ateneo that we moved through were in front of Dela Costa hall (since there was a job fair, and hence a lot of people), in the intersection of EDSA walk and Berchmans entrance (since there’s always a lot of traffic here), and in Sec Walk, where a lot of people pass. Additionally, the groupmates who asked for help had handheld devices hidden on them that recorded the audio of how their conversations went.


School Setting

      There have been various reactions we got from people. While in a school setting, a lot of people either look to the guinea pigs (those people asking the questions) in the eye or look away hinting that they do not want to entertain a possible conversation. These were the two most common reactions we got from the experiment. A lot of our subjects were Ateneans, and therefore a lot of them responded politely even though it seemed as they were in hurry and wanted to end the conversation as soon possible. There were others who comprehensively answered the questions, especially our school manongs and manangs, in which the experimenters did not find any problem hugging them. A lot of people smiled after the hug while some look puzzled. However, since we were doing the experiment in a school setting, some of the subjects even asked if the deed was for SA or for an experiment. One of the guinea pigs, Carrie, hugged a guy near Kostka extension. The guy looked clueless and his face turned red while hugging. He even dropped his phone and some of his things while being hugged. Another testimony from a guinea pig resulted in a negative reactions. Malik stated, “I saw the point of the experiment as hugging people without context or reason to. As a guy, I found that more people rejected my gesture and the people who reciprocated more openly were also guys. Sort of unfair, 'cause nobody seemed to have a problem with hugging Magel and Carrie (except for the snobbish people). I especially got worried when one of the subjects became terrified and started hyperventilating. I was as alienated as she was." To give the context, he hugged a girl near the EDSA walk but the girl started running away. Malik said his apologies and that everything was for an experiment. The girl did not seem to be listening and the team walked away. After some time, the girl’s block rep came and told Malik that he was going to be reported for harassment. The team went to talk to the girl. Eventually, everything was clarified, and the girl dropped all intent to report Malik for harassment, since she was only caught in the heat of the moment.


Broadening Horizons: Outside the School

      We left the campus to venture out into an even more “strange” world to test reactions of people in a normal street setting. People in the street are much more defiant since media have instilled that streets are dangerous and everyone should be wary of danger. This notion, as we have observed, made almost everyone on the street vigilant and wary of others. Thus, we assumed that it might be harder to hug people in this context. The experiment was conducted with the first guinea pig, Magel. A lot of girls hugged her. Whenever she spread her arms or smile, people were more willing to hug her. However, since she was small, her hug seemed to be more awkward than the rest of the team (both arms around waist vs. one arm on top, one arm from bottom). Her hugging style is much more intimate than of the preconceived “friendly” hug. Some guys found it awkward because a girl was hugging them. Nevertheless, none expressed defiance over this hugging style. The next guinea pig is Malik. It was harder for him to get girls to hug him, relative to Carrie and Magel, the two other guinea pigs.. There might not have been problems with him hugging guys but guys on the street seemed to have been more defiant than usual. The last guinea pig that was put on test was Dorothy. She really had no problems with the experiment. One thing she realized was that people in groups were easier to hug because of how group dynamics work. When a member of the group hugged her, it became more likely for the rest of that person’s friends to hug her. What our team attributed this pattern to is how a group becomes more trusting of a person if at the very least 1 member of that said group trusts the person in question. She also realized the power of eye contact. She would know whether a person was willing to hug her if that person looked her in the eyes. In the event that they look away, it means they do not want to be bothered.


Other Observations

      There has been a significant difference of the numbers of hugs accounted by gender. A girl hugging a girl is much more prevalent than of a guy hugging a girl. This gender phenomenon seems to reflect the society’s norm that a guy trying to hug a girl is somewhat unacceptable because it implies something else. People are more vigilant on streets since media has imposed on them that streets are dangerous because of certain negative entities (such as pickpocketers, and other social groups that are conceived to be malevolent in nature). Therefore, the stranger element on the streets is much more powerful. This means that a person would think twice or thrice before doing actions such as hugging or talking, or showing affection to random strangers. But this observation can also be affected by the stranger’s appearance that may imply whether they are “dangerous” or not.


Sociological Themes

      Aside from the norms, as discussed earlier where intimacy and affection are only displayed between people you trust or are familiar with, there are other sociological themes that merit different reactions from different people, although less influential in the experiment relative to the norm being violated.


Gender

      The first sociological theme that had an impact in how the people experimented on reacted was gender. In our experiment, we had 2 females, and 1 male experimenter who would do the asking and hugging. The reactions discussed previously can be explained by gender. This is because it is highly likely that the girls, especially the girl who was baffled by our male experimenter hugging her, have this bias, or pre-conceived notion that men are likely to be suspicious, or malicious than women are. This is not to be misogynistic, but this pre-conceived notion that women have over men and their tendency to be malicious towards women may be attributed to how media presents males as a gender, in general/as a whole. What society perceives of men are the dominant, or more aggressive gender. Hence, they are perceived as more threatening, especially in terms of the context of our experiment. In our experiment, we set out to give affection to strangers, specifically to hug them. Our experimenter Malik, being male, might have overstepped the boundary of sociological norms in terms of intimacy not because his actions were stranger, but possible because of the bias that his gender inherently has. Since he was an untrusted, and unfamiliar stranger, this bias, or distrustful/threatening notion was amplified.

      It is contrastable with how the women fared, where the worst they received were exclaims of awkwardness and wanting to detach. When it came to hugging between 2 women, the female subjects were generally willing to hug, with a few showing the expected exclaims of awkwardness. The reactions that the men gave to women hugging them can most likely be attributed to not expecting such a random hug from a girl. The norm in society is for the men to be the ones instigating affection, or in lay man’s terms making the move, on the girl. The women instigating the affection is what probably elicited the awkward responses. When it came to woman-woman interaction, it is probable that their reaction of general acceptance can be attributed to not seeing each other as a threat, because they do not perceive each other as anything along the lines of being a sexual predator, or capable of malicious intent such as men. There wasn’t as much distrust, when contrasting these two interactions.


Institution

      The second sociological theme that may have had an influence in our experiment and the people’s reaction, is the context of institution. In our experiment, the institution that we used is the Ateneo, and the non-institutional area we used was Katipunan. The effect that institution has in this experiment is that being under the same institution gives you all a common title, or at the very least something in common. It is a conceived pattern in people’s behavior that having something common between, especially ones that are obvious or visible (such as coming from the same school) allows for better trust, and relieves some degree of being a stranger towards another person.

      In our case in this experiment, it was helpful that looking like a student, and being present in the Ateneo campus itself already gave the implication that we were Ateneo students. We did not have to introduce ourselves as such. Hence, when we performed the experiment, the subjects of the experiment had less alarms set off because there was a sense of commonality between the experimenter and the subject.

      In contrast with the latter area, where it was held in Katipunan, it was much more difficult even for our experimenters to hug and show affection to strangers, not only the subjects themselves. It was not held in any institution, where there were pre-requisites for being able to join in the first place. Being an Atenean – having that title, implies a sense of class. As a result, it is easier to size up the intentions of people who have this title, because it has certain implications. The strangers outside institution on the other hand have no labels with which we can size their intentions and capabilities up on, aside from their appearance. Hence, it becomes more difficult to trust them, and in effect, more difficult to willingly show them affection as well. This goes both ways for the experimenter and the subject.


Pre-experiment

      At first, the actual experiment seemed to be much more embarrassing than we expected it to be. The guinea pigs seemed to think twice about whether or not they would push through with the experiment. This sense of doubt could possibly arise from them thinking of the alienation or stranger force. They also could have been thinking “What if the subjects would react negatively or cause harm? What if they just completely avoided and embarrassed us?” Regardless, they were able to dispel these apprehensions after around three rounds of showing affection to strangers in the respective areas.  


On Deviating Norms

      We find that deviating norms can be really difficult and embarrassing at first. Nevertheless, as we do it repeatedly, we consequently feel lax about it. We realized that there is nothing really bad about the deeds we do when deviating norms. Who ordered us to follow these norms anyway? As the experiment went on, we started to think that hugging strangers may not such a strange act anyway. There is certainly nothing wrong with hugging. What’s the real difference between hugging friends and strangers? We’re all humans. We’re supposed to be common. We think that what sets deviance and the more socially acceptable deeds is its social construct. Unwritten rules are somehow stronger than written ones. When rules are deviated, you get physically punished. However, when unwritten rules are deviated, the powers of society emotionally punish you, which is more powerful because no one wants to live in a world where people think that you are weird and unacceptable. These forces drive people to follow society’s norms, albeit no definite punishments can be incurred.
           

Social Classes

      It cannot be directly answered by our experiment, but a person of higher class seems to be more defiant than a person of lower class. In the experiment, Magel easily hugged the manongs that were on streets rather than middle and upper class men. This is to think that they assume that Magel is a person of higher class, and therefore, safe to interact with. Maybe we also have this notion that a, in a higher class perspective, people of lower class are much more “needy” and will are more desperate to do deviant acts. We cannot prove this fact but it might be something worth looking deeper into.




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