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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.
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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