Strawberry Holiday: Breaching Experiment Report

"When Life Gives You Lemons..."

Strawberry Holiday

Arante, Basilio, Bueno, Itchon, Mary, Velasquez, Villanueva

1. Our breaching experiment aimed to put our “subjects” in a strange situation that somewhat makes sense. The strange shows the norm breaking that occurred. Rarely do random strangers come up to you when you’re in a mall minding your own business, and they usually don’t just give out free things with no explanation.
2. We wanted our breaching experiment to make sense, instead of just pure randomness we decided to take a saying and concretize it. We often hear the phrase “when life hands you lemons,” and our breaching experiment did just that. Several of us walked around Eastwood on a Monday afternoon holding up an ipad with the word “LIFE” flashed on the screen and walked up to some people and handed out lemons.
3. Our first subject was the guard at the entrance of the mall, when handed the lemon he looked shocked and goes “ay salamat ma’am.” The next man asked what it was for then kept asking what he had to do for the lemon, making sure that it was free. There were some people who were left in confusion and others refused the lemon. Personally, we believe that the reactions were caused by the unexpected disturbance in their routine, it was not something they expected they would have to deal which makes their openness to it quite surprising.
4. The most general reaction to the experiment was just shock but a pattern we observed was the reluctance of people who worked for the mall, as if accepting it would get them into trouble.
5. It’s not only strange to be approached by a random stranger and receive a lemon, it is also strange (and extremely nerve-wracking!) to approach a random stranger and hand them a lemon. It’s so awkward when the respondents don’t understand what it is you’re trying to do and you have to take the time to explain it to them.
6. It’s easy to talk of deviance and fun to think of strange things to do but once you actually have to do it, breaking the norms is really difficult!

• video: http://youtu.be/2F1EZwMZtaU