Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Happy Birthday to You : A Breaching Experiment

SA 21 B
Chan, Espiritu, Montemayor, Villanueva, Tiu

The Fab 5 presents
1) What norm did you violate?
People follow the norm of only singing happy birthday to other people they know during the day of their actual birthdays. However, in our experiment, we sang happy birthday to random strangers even if we weren’t sure if it was even their birthdays (in our experiment, all participants we sang to did not celebrate their birthday during that said day).
2) Describe the breaching experiment in detail. What was the activity? Where did you do it?
The breaching experiment consisted of the experimenters going to a public space and singing the “Happy Birthday” song to random groups of people (or individuals) in unison while surrounding them. In order to document the experiment, an aide would go near the target beforehand to blend in unnoticed. The aide would then start filming covertly with a smartphone once the experiment was underway. After the experimenters have finished singing the song, one of the experimenters would then proceed to explain the nature of the experiment, and would ask the formerly unaware participant if he/she would be willing to give his/her consent for the acquired data to be used and analyzed for the experiment. In order for the aide’s cover to not be blown (as there is a high chance that the surrounding people will watch the experiment unfold), the aide will not be introduced as a part of the experiment team during the participant’s debriefing.
SM Marikina was chosen to be the experiment site primarily because it is a public place where multitudes of people gather. It was also chosen because of its relative proximity to the Ateneo, making transportation easier.
3) What were the different reactions of the people? List all possible reactions you observed. Why do you think they reacted this way? What caused these reactions? Did the deviant act re-affirm/reinforce the existing norms based on these reactions?
Surprised was the most common reaction of the people who we chose for the breaching experiment. However, we also received other reactions that we perceive as “harmless” and “harmful,” such as embarrassment, confusion, mild hostility, skeptical, enjoyment and even “kilig.” The workers (ice cream stall vendor, security guard) exhibited more of the “harmful” reactions, while the students, who we perceive as teenagers who belong to a lower age group compared to the workers, exhibited more of the “harmless” reactions.
For the workers, who belong to an older age group, exhibited the “harmful” reactions probably because of past experiences of certain modus operandi or whatnot. These people, aided with their experiences, know better and will tend to act safely and carefully around strangers. The students, on the other hand, may not have experienced the events mentioned, and may have a narrower view in life in general compared to the workers. In turn, they have a much different perspective on our breaching experiment, which led to their reactions being different from that of the workers. The concept of generation gap may also play a role in this notion. The students and the workers both have different viewpoints or perspectives in life, which are in line with their respective generations. Different generations have different societies, and different societies mean a difference in socialization among people.
The deviant act indeed breached the norm, more specifically the folkway, of stranger-stranger conversation, that is, very limited in today’s society.
4) Aside from the norms, what sociological themes are at play for people to react in a certain way? Is it a function of gender (gender norms, roles), social class (norms of the rich & the poor), values/beliefs of institutions (religion, family, peer group, etc.).
We can see that the difference in the reaction of the people we performed the breaching activity on varied greatly from person to person. However, we can see a very distinct difference in the reactions between the working group and the students. As thus, we can see the theme of professionalism come into play. The workers have the employee status, which makes them have the role of protecting the store’s image and integrity. With this role, they perceive the breaching activity not only directed at only them, but also at the whole store itself. Thus, their next reaction, after being surprised, is to be hesitant in releasing the videos. This may be because the videos might contain something that would damage their stores’ identity, and may consequently lead them to be fired. With this mentality, they often referred us to the manager when asked about the release of their videos, since their manager should supposedly know more about whether or not the videos we took could damage the reputation of the store.
We also see the themes of age come into play wherein the adults generally paid more attention to us during the subsequent briefing after the experiment was done on them. This is because of their “mature” status, which leads them to have the role of being more responsible for their own sake. They listened more, and this may be attributed to the fact that as adults, it is very important to be fully aware of what they get themselves into, as there may be repercussions and consequences in the future due to their being negligent.
5) How did you feel when you did this experiment? How does it feel to deviate from the norms? Were you hesitant to do the activity?
Honestly, the group had a difficult time performing the experiment. Although we conceptualized everything we needed to do, what greatly hindered us was the fact that we were afraid to deviate from the norms. We were scared that people would judge us or even reprimand us especially since we appeared to be random strangers. Even worse, we were afraid that they may think that we were involved in a modus operandi. Other concepts, such as the possibility of getting into fights with people who may be offended by our experiment, made us even more paranoid. With all of these ideas in our minds, we had a harder time executing our experiment. In fact, it took us several minutes before we actually executed our experiment on our first target. Given this experience, we realized that deviance is a difficult task especially if one is not used to doing this said act. With the established norms of society, it makes it more difficult for us to go against such concepts. Despite the worries we had in mind, we just did our best and went through with the experiment especially since we only allotted ourselves an hour and thirty minutes to finish the experiment. With this limit in mind, we were able to then execute our experiment. What is noticeable is that the actual performance of the experiment is easier than the pre-experiment stages. Once we were deviating from the norm, we regretted nothing, just tried to have fun, and got it over with. As we continued singing Happy Birthday, we all felt that people were more attentive to us when we deviated, but we just pushed ourselves to finish the act.
6) Other observations and analysis that you may have on the activity and on deviance in general.
We feel that what we learned from the breaching activity we did and deviance in general can further be reflected upon our society today. Folkways are indeed a powerful form of social control in society as evidenced by our own hesitation to deviate from the norm, even if the deviation was simply that of singing “happy birthday” to strangers. As members of our society, we experienced what it was like on the other side of deviance, wherein we had to force ourselves to go against the society’s norms. Very few of these folkways were mentioned or taught to us, we simply adopted these from the culture already present within society; and as we experienced, it was almost as if our own culture and personality was that which limited and controlled us from deviating, aside from the control done by the society around us. As such, it can be said that the members of the society can impact one another in these very subtle (sometimes even subconscious) ways, and that social control stems from each and every member of society, including ourselves.

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