SA21 B - Physical Abuse In Public Spaces [Breaching Experiment]

Jeffrey Amit Lorenzo Arceo Samantha Tangco Dae Yeon Kim 1. What norm did you violate?
The norm that we violated in our experiment is physical abuse in public spaces. On a regular day, it is not the norm to see two people outright arguing, shouting and hitting each other in public spaces. Also, the society nowadays has developed strong gender-related stereotypes, so we wanted to violate the norm that males are always the one who abuse females.  

2. Describe the breaching experiment in detail. What was the activity? Where did you do it?
The breaching experiment that we conducted was to test the reactions of bystanders in a public space(Regis Center) when someone is getting physically abused. What we did was we had a boy (Lorenzo Arceo) and a girl (Samantha Tangco) act as if they were fighting. Boy was shouting and grabbing Girl and even pushed her on to a chair. After a few hours, we repeated the experiment, but instead of the boy hitting the girl, we made the girl abuse the boy. We did the activity in Regis Center due to the high traffic of people who go in and out of the mentioned establishment.

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?
When the girl was the one abusing the boy, most of the people just stopped, stared and continued on their way. Others just walked away from the area, not wanting to be part of the ‘event’ since most people don’t want to be engaged with something that harms or bothers them. However, when the boy was hitting the girl, there were a few men who really tried to help the girl.

We believe that this was the reaction because in the Philippines, people would rather stay out of each other’s business. It’s not the same in the western culture wherein people are more outspoken about their opinions; therefore, if this was done in a western society, we would’ve expected more reactions.

We also think that our society views women as the “weaker” gender. So when women are being hurt by men, people tend to really take the initiative to help. However, when a boy is abused by a woman, the “weaker being”, nobody really feels the urgency to take action - just like in our experiment.

Based on the overall reactions in our experiment, the deviant act definitely reaffirmed the existing norms, specifically that people would just be bystanders and that men would be treated different from women when put in this specific situation.

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, social class, values/beliefs

We all felt that gender was a big factor to the outcome of our experiment, especially because people responded differently when the boy was hitting the girl and when the girl was hitting the boy. We hypothesized that because women are stereotyped as physically weaker than men, the crowd felt more urgency to help them. We also concluded that this could be a reason why everyone who helped the girl were men. Another possible factor at play here is that it is more heard of and usual for men to abuse women than the other way around. Therefore, helping the woman wasn’t too much of a deviant act as opposed to helping the man. Men also take pride in their “strength” and might have even gotten offended if helped.  

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?

Initially, we were really hesitant and even a bit afraid and embarrassed to do the task.  We were standing in Regis for around 30 minutes arguing about who would hit who before we actually built the courage to do what we had to. In fact, we even recorded a number of failed attempts, probably because we didn’t expect that actually deviating from or doing something outside of what was normal was that difficult.

After the experiment, we got the reactions we expected; however, we felt a bit disturbed. How could people not take action in such a terrible situation? Is that how strong norms are that most people would rather follow it than take action in an urgent situation?  Similar to rape culture and drug abuse, we believe that physical abuse is a topic that should be given more light. It was seen that people take it lightly and did not even react to it when they saw it happening in a public space. Many chose to just ignore it and in real life cases, this ignorance could result to extreme consequences.

6. Other observations and analysis that you may have on the activity and on deviance in general?

Another factor that came into play would be the repercussion of the so-called Bystander Effect, which states that the presence of other people has a huge impact on the decision of people whether to help or not. It shows that there is a negative correlation between the number of people present and the likelihood of help. People are less likely to help when there are other people present. This concept may explain why some of the respondents didn’t bother to help the “victim” at all. Perhaps, they expected others to intervene, rather than bar the physical abuse themselves.
The group was disappointed with the results of the experiment, since most of people passing by were from Ateneo. As Ateneans, we are groomed to be socially aware of our surroundings and to be deviant of any unaccepted behaviors such as physical abuse. As the Team ADG twitter account would say “Being men and women for others has its risks because it means always being willing & ready to do what is right”.  However, the quote didn't surface during our breaching experiment?