Norm Violation Essay

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In society there are unwritten rules that everyone instinctively follows, and these are the norms. Norms are, to most people, the things that you may and may not do in public or any social setting. For example, we know that you may not wear swim trunks to an interview or wear your Halloween costume to school. This norm behavior is picked up in life from our family, friends, and the society, and etched into our heads forever giving us the definition of norm. When this norm is broken it will cause attention to it, as if a blinding light has been put upon it, because we are only used to seeing it the way we have always seen it. When a norm is broken what will it cause? How will people react when these unwritten rules are violated? I have decided to go up to people with my shoes untied and ask them if they would kindly tie my shoes for me. I did this at the Escondido mall, on Friday at about 4:30 pm. I chose to do it at this particular time and location because it is close to a school so it will be busy giving access to people of all ages that I may try this with. The mall is very crowded at this time and day, giving me the opportunity to have many people and reactions where I may accurately conclude how the public would react if a norm is broke. While I was standing at the bottom and top of the escalators I had a very large amount of people coming and going, but they were all about the same age range. I realized that by standing by certain escalators the stores that are by that particular escalator will result in certain age groups and a sprinkle of a few others. I decided to change locations throughout the mall to see if this is a violation of a norm within all age groups or is it different between ages. At my first location I was located in front of a department store, walking back and forth from one bush to a small tree, asking anyone that passed by,

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