"STALKER MUCH!?"
Breaching Experiment by:
Sophiya Navarro, Majarlika Nazareno, Joshell Cabral, Dominique Deang, Lorenzo Pangilinan, Eldrich Marquez, Karlo Asturias, Patricia Fernando, Jacob Whittaker
SA 21 C
What norm did you violate?
We intend to deviate from the norm of respecting “personal space” and “personal choices.”
Describe the breaching experiment in detail. What was the activity? Where did you do it?
We intend to deviate from the norm of respecting “personal space” and “personal choices” and to do so, we would silently followed around people who are grocery shopping. We basically look “normal” only that we would keep following them around the grocery store. We stay right beside our prospects whenever they stop to get something and simultaneously get the same items they are getting. We also observed their activities very intently while following them. We did the experiment in grocery stores in Katipunan, SM North EDSA, and Trinoma to get a various data.
Reactions
Here are some of the notable reactions we got while doing the experiment:
Person A
-
seemed like a college student
-
Initially, person was unaware that he was being followed
-
After 5 minutes, person began to “maze” through the supermarket (or that he suddenly went through random alleys).
-
After 10 minutes, person began to walk faster until we couldn’t find him anymore then we saw him getting an item at the counter, paying for it, and then he left immediately.
Person B
-
a young man, possibly in his mid 20s, grocery shopping alone
-
When the subject became aware that he was being followed, we noticed that he would frequently glance back anxiously to see if he was still being followed.
-
After a few turns at the aisle next to where he was, he calmly confronted our colleague who was assigned to follow him saying “Sumusunod ka ba?” However, his face was visibly stern and anxious in doing so.
Person C
-
a middle aged woman in a yellow shirt
-
The whole time she was being followed, she seemed very paranoid and visibly frightened. She also kept glancing at her back to see if our colleague is still following her.
-
She was joined by another woman in the middle of our experiment and the two were talking about our colleague who were following them, loudly at first and then as our “stalking” progressed, they started talking about us in an inaudible manner.
-
In the end, they confronted us together.
Person D
-
a couple
-
The couple at first began to talk about our colleague loudly. However, they started murmuring to each other once they realized she wouldn’t go away.
-
The man kept checking our colleague. After a few more minutes, the woman confronted us.
-
During the debriefing, the woman said that she already noticed our colleague following her when they stopped at the second aisle yet, she decided not to confront her as she thought it would be rude to our colleague if she did.
Person E
-
a middle-aged man in white shirt with glasses
-
When we first saw him, it is noticeable how he is leisurely walking through the store, picking up the things that he needed calmly.
-
Toward the middle of our experiment, he started to walk very fast even reaching a point wherein our colleague almost lost him and that it seemed as if we were playing tag inside the store. He would also go to random aisles without picking anything but he continued walking very fast.
-
Despite this, the man seemed calm, not even attempting to check up on our colleague following him.
Person F
-
an old mother and a teenage daughter
-
The pair seemed awkward as our colleague was following them.
-
When our colleague got the same items they were getting, they were visibly annoyed.
-
After a few minutes, they started getting anxious as they were stealing glances at our colleague once in awhile.
Person G
-
a mother shopping alone
-
At first, she did not seem to mind that our colleague is following her.
-
She went to the sugar section and went away without getting anything. At this point, we thought we are getting no reaction from her so our colleague went away. However, after our colleague went away, she hurriedly went back to the sugar section and got the items she needed.
Person H
-
a father and his young son
-
They did not seem to mind that our colleague was following them and getting the same items they were getting.
-
However, a few minutes later, the father called for a staff even if what he needed is on the shelf and he can just get it easily.
Person I
-
a man with his earphones on
-
At first, he did not seem to notice.
-
However, when our colleague started staying really near to him and getting the same stuff he was getting, the man was visibly confused and anxious. He was even hesitating to get the items he should get.
-
He would also stare at our colleague with a stern look on his face. He also stops once in awhile to confirm our colleague’s presence.
NOTE: All subjects were debriefed and informed about our experiment after the activity.
General reactions include:
-
Most people were really anxious and visibly frightened.
-
Some people looked at us in a vicious manner. Some would look at us “discreetly” and anxiously.
-
Some tried to lose us by going through random aisles or walking really fast.
-
Men are not as threatened compared to the women but their body movements and gesture suggest that our activity also bothered them.
-
Women tend to be confrontational and more so if they are in a group.
-
Men would usually avoid confrontation.
A clear implication in this social experiment is the presence of the belief in respect towards others' personal space. Interactions with strangers are expected to be limited to the least possible occurrence or proximity. In the public setting, people seem to live by the saying "mind your own business" unless their interactions cause them any trouble and/or inconvenience. Individuals are expected to adhere to their personal tasks and/or schedules and be courteous enough to let others proceed with their own. Therefore, when this social experiment was carried out, this norm of having one’s own personal space and respecting that of others was reinforced through and evidenced by the anxious and apprehensive reactions of the subjects.
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 the institutions (religions, family, peer group, etc.)?
Contextualizing the social experiment in a society that has strong, patriarchal views on gender and gender roles, arbitrarily-decided gender norms are partly at play in the reactions of some of the individuals we randomly chose as subjects. From the range of our samples (observably, men and women of the working age and class) it can be noted that the men mostly just tried to ignore or kindly confront--after a long time--the girls of our group whom we tasked to follow them. In addition, the constraints made by strong patriarchal norms also limited our group’s range and diversity in selecting subjects, as we can only follow and copy certain people with particular members of the group: notably, that females [or sometimes together with males] of the group follow and copy males on the supermarket was acceptable in that people will not mistake us for a syndicate as elements of syndicates are usually socially-defined in media as a lone/group of males; and that the males of our group cannot just follow females in the supermarket for fear of being framed with assault/attempted assault (sexual or otherwise) is a very telling fact that in patriarchal settings, the privilege of power attributed to males are inverted in laws and social norms’ presumptions of guilt and innocence--why would, for instance in the context of a dating couple, be acceptable for a male to be thrown with water by a female and not the other way around as it would be presumed as an assault? The acceptability of having our female members do the experiment instead of our male members and the hypothesized--and confirmed--dynamics of interaction arising from the gender differences between the experimenter and the subject is a telling fact of the strong, unarticulated gender norms of Filipino society.
In addition to this, the highly-Christian/conservative morality/values at play in our society may also be observed to be at play in the social experiment, as our members were “busted” by our subjects when they picked up items they would not usually pick for themselves in their gender and current social status. An example would be Ms. Cabral being busted by the subject in her attempt to copy and also get baby food and some male toiletries such as shaving cream, and also a subject’s discovery of Ms. Deang’s role as an experimenter in her attempt to copy the actions of the subject (a mother) and likewise also get baby’s diapers. The social assumptions we have as a society regarding as to the needs of particular age groups and genders reveal our judgments in our reactions when deviants occur in a space highly suggestive of such needs--where, for instance: mothers are almost always presumed to be in the food, cooking, and parenting sections; with males almost always presumed to be in the male toiletries’ section, supplies for home repairs, and parenting sections as well.
Another theme that can be highlighted in this experiment would be the common assumption of individuals in relation to other people around them, in which everyone is expected to cooperate. This cooperation in a sense is the very foundation of day-to-day social life, for it is crucial for the success of each of our social roles. Each interaction requires specific exchange of information and in return will provide the teamwork necessary for the actions of each individual whether intentional or unintentional to be completed. Relatively speaking, this cooperation was perhaps disturbed in this experiment; wherein normal customers would go by their businesses, parking carts at the side so as not to create traffic, making space for others to acquire their desired goods, and minding their own grocery lists and lining up properly at the cashier, by constantly invading space, distracting customers and making them feel uneasy with one’s presence, actions are not completed (i.e. when the target customers scurries away from the experimenters).
Although subtle in its presence, teamwork is also observable in this experiment, as mentioned a while ago, through the small cooperations of each customers, and in a sense dehumanizing as just another “shopper” and nothing else. This in return helps assure every customer that the only interaction they will be having would be making space for the other to pass through, or in the most rarest of cases, to reach for something another individual could not, therefore lessening confrontations. Allowing particular leeways eases the flow of interactions and completion of personal businesses. “To get the show on the road” as Henslin and Biggs said in their study of vaginal examinations, wherein the main subject is how patients maintain the necessary definition that the upcoming examination does not involve any form of sexuality and malice, especially since the primary concern of the persons in uniform are purely non-sexual and entirely professional. Same can be said with this experiment, how then can confrontation be avoided when a person constantly follows you and is seemingly disturbing your private space. The moral dilemmas start to rise up and the learned ideas, the socialization and past experiences (whether directly or indirectly) could be taking over one’s mind in these situations and therefore they react respectively so as to preserve what was left of their state before being bothered.
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?
It was pretty embarrassing for our part because we have never done this “sketchy” activity and now we will do this to strangers. Just thinking about how the people would react shows that we ourselves are also affected and act by the norms because we already have our preconceived notions of what would probably happen. We were hesitant at first because it does not feel right to follow people around, and because we might get violent reactions from them.
It felt a tad bit uncomfortable to deviate from the established norms, for fear of being judged and being talked about in secret. Given that we were following people around, it makes one wonder what the subjects whisper to themselves (once they start to notice us). We also had the tendency to choose the subjects that we were going to follow around. For the activity, our group thought it best if we steered clear of the elderly as it may cause unwanted incidents (health hazards). Our group was also hesitant to follow stern-looking mothers or women and big guys as we fear what they may do to us. However, we just had to. We were hesitant first also because we did not know how they would react, and it is the first time we were going to do something like that. We were also scared because somehow, we were violating their “space.” Also, we realized that we were able to do the breaching experiment with less hesitation when it is done in groups rather than doing it alone.
There is this sense of uncertainty of the response of the people. With the advent of social media, it is now easy to promulgate side-effects that we would not want to arrive at. (e.g. the person writes on an FB post about how we was stalked by strangers, and then quickly arriving at a conclusion that we are some kind of a syndicate).
Other observations and analysis that you may have on the activity and on deviance in general.
-
It is very hard to intentionally break from the norm even if we know we are doing this for the class since we are aware of the effects that could follow from our deviance.
-
Different factors affect the responses elicited by the subjects. In conducting a breaching experiment, it is essential to note on the characteristics of the subjects (age, gender, etc.) so as to better understand behavior in social interactions.
-
Sanctions may not necessarily be directly applied by the people around us. We just imply that we have been sanctioned (e.g. we felt that we were negatively sanctioned when the subjects scurried away from us) as the norms are deeply ingrained in us through the process of socialization.
What norm did you violate?
We intend to deviate from the norm of respecting “personal space” and “personal choices.”
Describe the breaching experiment in detail. What was the activity? Where did you do it?
We intend to deviate from the norm of respecting “personal space” and “personal choices” and to do so, we would silently followed around people who are grocery shopping. We basically look “normal” only that we would keep following them around the grocery store. We stay right beside our prospects whenever they stop to get something and simultaneously get the same items they are getting. We also observed their activities very intently while following them. We did the experiment in grocery stores in Katipunan, SM North EDSA, and Trinoma to get a various data.
Reactions
Here are some of the notable reactions we got while doing the experiment:
Person A
seemed like a college student
Initially, person was unaware that he was being followed
After 5 minutes, person began to “maze” through the supermarket (or that he suddenly went through random alleys).
After 10 minutes, person began to walk faster until we couldn’t find him anymore then we saw him getting an item at the counter, paying for it, and then he left immediately.
Person B
a young man, possibly in his mid 20s, grocery shopping alone
When the subject became aware that he was being followed, we noticed that he would frequently glance back anxiously to see if he was still being followed.
After a few turns at the aisle next to where he was, he calmly confronted our colleague who was assigned to follow him saying “Sumusunod ka ba?” However, his face was visibly stern and anxious in doing so.
Person C
a middle aged woman in a yellow shirt
The whole time she was being followed, she seemed very paranoid and visibly frightened. She also kept glancing at her back to see if our colleague is still following her.
She was joined by another woman in the middle of our experiment and the two were talking about our colleague who were following them, loudly at first and then as our “stalking” progressed, they started talking about us in an inaudible manner.
In the end, they confronted us together.
Person D
a couple
The couple at first began to talk about our colleague loudly. However, they started murmuring to each other once they realized she wouldn’t go away.
The man kept checking our colleague. After a few more minutes, the woman confronted us.
During the debriefing, the woman said that she already noticed our colleague following her when they stopped at the second aisle yet, she decided not to confront her as she thought it would be rude to our colleague if she did.
Person E
a middle-aged man in white shirt with glasses
When we first saw him, it is noticeable how he is leisurely walking through the store, picking up the things that he needed calmly.
Toward the middle of our experiment, he started to walk very fast even reaching a point wherein our colleague almost lost him and that it seemed as if we were playing tag inside the store. He would also go to random aisles without picking anything but he continued walking very fast.
Despite this, the man seemed calm, not even attempting to check up on our colleague following him.
Person F
an old mother and a teenage daughter
The pair seemed awkward as our colleague was following them.
When our colleague got the same items they were getting, they were visibly annoyed.
After a few minutes, they started getting anxious as they were stealing glances at our colleague once in awhile.
Person G
a mother shopping alone
At first, she did not seem to mind that our colleague is following her.
She went to the sugar section and went away without getting anything. At this point, we thought we are getting no reaction from her so our colleague went away. However, after our colleague went away, she hurriedly went back to the sugar section and got the items she needed.
Person H
a father and his young son
They did not seem to mind that our colleague was following them and getting the same items they were getting.
However, a few minutes later, the father called for a staff even if what he needed is on the shelf and he can just get it easily.
Person I
a man with his earphones on
At first, he did not seem to notice.
However, when our colleague started staying really near to him and getting the same stuff he was getting, the man was visibly confused and anxious. He was even hesitating to get the items he should get.
He would also stare at our colleague with a stern look on his face. He also stops once in awhile to confirm our colleague’s presence.
NOTE: All subjects were debriefed and informed about our experiment after the activity.
General reactions include:
Most people were really anxious and visibly frightened.
Some people looked at us in a vicious manner. Some would look at us “discreetly” and anxiously.
Some tried to lose us by going through random aisles or walking really fast.
Men are not as threatened compared to the women but their body movements and gesture suggest that our activity also bothered them.
Women tend to be confrontational and more so if they are in a group.
Men would usually avoid confrontation.
A clear implication in this social experiment is the presence of the belief in respect towards others' personal space. Interactions with strangers are expected to be limited to the least possible occurrence or proximity. In the public setting, people seem to live by the saying "mind your own business" unless their interactions cause them any trouble and/or inconvenience. Individuals are expected to adhere to their personal tasks and/or schedules and be courteous enough to let others proceed with their own. Therefore, when this social experiment was carried out, this norm of having one’s own personal space and respecting that of others was reinforced through and evidenced by the anxious and apprehensive reactions of the subjects.
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 the institutions (religions, family, peer group, etc.)?
Contextualizing the social experiment in a society that has strong, patriarchal views on gender and gender roles, arbitrarily-decided gender norms are partly at play in the reactions of some of the individuals we randomly chose as subjects. From the range of our samples (observably, men and women of the working age and class) it can be noted that the men mostly just tried to ignore or kindly confront--after a long time--the girls of our group whom we tasked to follow them. In addition, the constraints made by strong patriarchal norms also limited our group’s range and diversity in selecting subjects, as we can only follow and copy certain people with particular members of the group: notably, that females [or sometimes together with males] of the group follow and copy males on the supermarket was acceptable in that people will not mistake us for a syndicate as elements of syndicates are usually socially-defined in media as a lone/group of males; and that the males of our group cannot just follow females in the supermarket for fear of being framed with assault/attempted assault (sexual or otherwise) is a very telling fact that in patriarchal settings, the privilege of power attributed to males are inverted in laws and social norms’ presumptions of guilt and innocence--why would, for instance in the context of a dating couple, be acceptable for a male to be thrown with water by a female and not the other way around as it would be presumed as an assault? The acceptability of having our female members do the experiment instead of our male members and the hypothesized--and confirmed--dynamics of interaction arising from the gender differences between the experimenter and the subject is a telling fact of the strong, unarticulated gender norms of Filipino society.
In addition to this, the highly-Christian/conservative morality/values at play in our society may also be observed to be at play in the social experiment, as our members were “busted” by our subjects when they picked up items they would not usually pick for themselves in their gender and current social status. An example would be Ms. Cabral being busted by the subject in her attempt to copy and also get baby food and some male toiletries such as shaving cream, and also a subject’s discovery of Ms. Deang’s role as an experimenter in her attempt to copy the actions of the subject (a mother) and likewise also get baby’s diapers. The social assumptions we have as a society regarding as to the needs of particular age groups and genders reveal our judgments in our reactions when deviants occur in a space highly suggestive of such needs--where, for instance: mothers are almost always presumed to be in the food, cooking, and parenting sections; with males almost always presumed to be in the male toiletries’ section, supplies for home repairs, and parenting sections as well.
Another theme that can be highlighted in this experiment would be the common assumption of individuals in relation to other people around them, in which everyone is expected to cooperate. This cooperation in a sense is the very foundation of day-to-day social life, for it is crucial for the success of each of our social roles. Each interaction requires specific exchange of information and in return will provide the teamwork necessary for the actions of each individual whether intentional or unintentional to be completed. Relatively speaking, this cooperation was perhaps disturbed in this experiment; wherein normal customers would go by their businesses, parking carts at the side so as not to create traffic, making space for others to acquire their desired goods, and minding their own grocery lists and lining up properly at the cashier, by constantly invading space, distracting customers and making them feel uneasy with one’s presence, actions are not completed (i.e. when the target customers scurries away from the experimenters).
Although subtle in its presence, teamwork is also observable in this experiment, as mentioned a while ago, through the small cooperations of each customers, and in a sense dehumanizing as just another “shopper” and nothing else. This in return helps assure every customer that the only interaction they will be having would be making space for the other to pass through, or in the most rarest of cases, to reach for something another individual could not, therefore lessening confrontations. Allowing particular leeways eases the flow of interactions and completion of personal businesses. “To get the show on the road” as Henslin and Biggs said in their study of vaginal examinations, wherein the main subject is how patients maintain the necessary definition that the upcoming examination does not involve any form of sexuality and malice, especially since the primary concern of the persons in uniform are purely non-sexual and entirely professional. Same can be said with this experiment, how then can confrontation be avoided when a person constantly follows you and is seemingly disturbing your private space. The moral dilemmas start to rise up and the learned ideas, the socialization and past experiences (whether directly or indirectly) could be taking over one’s mind in these situations and therefore they react respectively so as to preserve what was left of their state before being bothered.
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?
It was pretty embarrassing for our part because we have never done this “sketchy” activity and now we will do this to strangers. Just thinking about how the people would react shows that we ourselves are also affected and act by the norms because we already have our preconceived notions of what would probably happen. We were hesitant at first because it does not feel right to follow people around, and because we might get violent reactions from them.
It felt a tad bit uncomfortable to deviate from the established norms, for fear of being judged and being talked about in secret. Given that we were following people around, it makes one wonder what the subjects whisper to themselves (once they start to notice us). We also had the tendency to choose the subjects that we were going to follow around. For the activity, our group thought it best if we steered clear of the elderly as it may cause unwanted incidents (health hazards). Our group was also hesitant to follow stern-looking mothers or women and big guys as we fear what they may do to us. However, we just had to. We were hesitant first also because we did not know how they would react, and it is the first time we were going to do something like that. We were also scared because somehow, we were violating their “space.” Also, we realized that we were able to do the breaching experiment with less hesitation when it is done in groups rather than doing it alone.
There is this sense of uncertainty of the response of the people. With the advent of social media, it is now easy to promulgate side-effects that we would not want to arrive at. (e.g. the person writes on an FB post about how we was stalked by strangers, and then quickly arriving at a conclusion that we are some kind of a syndicate).
Other observations and analysis that you may have on the activity and on deviance in general.
It is very hard to intentionally break from the norm even if we know we are doing this for the class since we are aware of the effects that could follow from our deviance.
Different factors affect the responses elicited by the subjects. In conducting a breaching experiment, it is essential to note on the characteristics of the subjects (age, gender, etc.) so as to better understand behavior in social interactions.
Sanctions may not necessarily be directly applied by the people around us. We just imply that we have been sanctioned (e.g. we felt that we were negatively sanctioned when the subjects scurried away from us) as the norms are deeply ingrained in us through the process of socialization.
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