SA 21 C Breaching Experiment (Añonuevo, Bagalay, Diaz, Mendoza, Ordoñez)

1. What norm did you violate?
• The stigma on periods can be characterized as something that always has been universal. It is always perceived as something “unpleasant”, “repulsive”, and something that should generally only be discussed in private. What some people fail to acknowledge, however, that this subject is also a matter of personal hygiene. For this reason, the group decided to have this breaching experiment in violating the norm on personal hygiene. The group wanted to witness first-hand the breach on this social norm.
2. Describe the breaching experiment in detail. What was the activity? Where did you do it?
• The breaching experiment was done in a crowded place where a lot of different age groups, but most especially, the young adults, spend time in. The target place was UP Town Center which is a large hub for students and young working people alike.
• The activity involved placing the act of deviance in a crowded section of the mall, like in the escalators, the pathways near the restaurants and the crowded clothing stores to get as many reactions as possible.
• One of the group members will be the target stimuli and will pose as a girl who stained her pants because of her period, this involved the use of food coloring. Another group mate walks behind the target to record the reactions and a another individual walks with the target to take note of the close contact reactions that might not have been caught by the camera.
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?
• Most of the people ignored the stimuli, this might be because they were too involved with what’s going on with themselves that they didn’t have time to notice the deviance, especially in such a place as crowded as a mall.
• It is interesting to note however, that a large majority of those who did take notice were the young people. The people from the older age group barely looked at the stimuli.
• There were multiple occasions that people stared at the stain and laughed. This reaction involves the negative and informal sanctioning of the deviance. It might be important to note too that the more pronounced reactions came from ones in twos or in larger groups. This might be coming from the peer adherence/pressure principle to involve oneself with the sanctioning when in part of a group.
• The only one who approached the stimuli was a young woman. She expressed concern for the target. This reaction may be rooted in that there is a sense of “relation” with another girl because there is “sympathy”. Coming from the same age group and the same gender, there is a need and a driving principle of the norms that was imbedded in the girl so that she took it upon herself to respond to the deviance head-on.
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 of institutions?
• The breaching experiment was actually heavily reliant on the gender principle. The sociological theme of gender played a heavy role in determining who will react to the norm more and who would take the initiative. The age group was also a big factor in determining who again will take action and react in a more pronounced manner. The theme of gender, as expected, created a space for the woman to act in accordance to the deviance that she saw. Concern that stems from the shared and common experience of periods might have pushed women to react more strongly to the point of intervention.
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?
• Target Stimuli: “It was really hard to do at first because for as long as I can remember periods have always held this stigma in our society. Being seen with a period stain is ‘unladylike’ or ‘kadiri’, so to walk around an extremely public and populated space with a bright red stain on my jeans made me really conscious. However, after a while admittedly it started to become fun, especially since not a lot of people paid attention to it.”
• Target Stimuli: “It honestly felt weird at first, since I’ve never really deviated from any kind of norm before. However, I realized that a lot of people are too absorbed with themselves and their own lives -- making sure they themselves were conforming and not deviating from the norms -- to worry about someone who was.”
• Target Stimuli: “Yes, I was hesitant in doing the activity. It took me about 10 minutes to get out of the restroom and actually start doing the project.”
6. Other observations and analysis that you may have on the activity or deviance in general.
• The breaching experiment was limited to shoppers in UP Town Center which limited the participants to the higher social classes. Because of this, the reaction of lower classes was not observed and therefore possibly making it different from what was observed from the video.
• People chose to simply stare at the stimulant rather than perform any actions to address the situation.
• Showing apathy towards an unusual situation has become the norm.