Kids for a Day

Breaching Experiment by:

Maynard Joshua Alanano,Kyra Isabel Miguel, Maria Isabela Mosquera

SA21-C

1) What norm did you violate?

We tried to violate the norm of making too much noise when outside in public, as it is often deemed shameful or “nakakahiya” to be noisy and attract the attention of the people in a public area as per our culture in the Philippines. We also violated the norm that young adults shouldn’t be playing games like nanay-tatay in public, as playing these kind of games are labelled as games that children play.

2) Describe the breaching experiment in detail. What was the activity? Where did you do it?

We as a group decided to play nanay tatay in front of the entrance and in the middle of the establishment where the guard and the patrons can see us clearly. We went to two different establishments, namely Starbucks and Jollibee.

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?

• STARBUCKS

The patrons were surprisingly not bothered by us at all. Some were staring at us as we went about the experiment, but other than that most, if not all, of them had blank faces. We were honestly expecting the guard to at least tell us to quiet down, but all he did was walk by us and he looked like he didn’t even mind us. We think that we got these reactions (or non-reactions) because people were busy doing their own stuff since it is finals week.  Since there was really no reaction to base it on, we personally thought that it did because of how we felt about the experiment. As was said we felt a certain type of shame as we were doing the experiment which actually shows us that we are deviating from a social norm.

• JOLLIBEE

The reactions were not all that different from that of Starbucks patrons. We received

more stares from the patrons and even some employees but that’s all they did, one girl was even seen turning her head to get a better look at who was making the noise. In the end the security guard approached our member who was holding the camera saying that it was okay to film but taking a video which would have the menu on film was prohibited, in the end he was only concerned that the filming was including the menu.

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.). [You could design the experiment based on these sociological themes. For example, you could compare reactions according to gender, social class, etc. That would more interesting--and might obtain a better grade! :)]

Gender did not play a big role in the experiment. We were actually hoping that social class would in a way play a role. Being that most Starbucks has a certain stigma of being a “sosyal” place and Jollibee having been a symbol for common filipino folk. although reactions from the patrons of both establishment were the same. We also hoped that beliefs of institutions would play a big role in the experiment. We were expecting to get more judgemental stares from patrons at Starbucks being that people go there to study or have casual office meetings. We were expecting for Jollibee patrons to stare but not really mind being that this is a family appropriate establishment where children play, but us being 18 year olds playing “nanay-tatay” we still got blank stare reactions.

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?

We felt like we were going to get scolded for making a lot of noise and people within that space would judge us outright. We were scared that our experiment won’t have the effect that we wanted it to have.As a group, we were hesitant to do it since there would be people who would stare at us and judge us. In the end we gathered our courage and decided to be shameless to finish the requirement. It was funny because we were doing something out of the blue and random in a public place.
6) Other observations and analysis that you may have on the activity and on deviance in general

We noticed that people would just look and not do anything. What we were doing might not be of the norms but the people ignored it since it did not bother them directly. Most of the people were too busy with their activities to notice us. In Starbucks and Jollibee, the guards either looked at us or just ignored us which shows that they would rather not disturb our game since one of our groupmates bought food. The act of buying food might have an effect to the way people treated us in the restaurants and/or the coffee shops.