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Breaking a Social Norm Essay

Decent Essays

Breaking a social norm In our society we have a number of society norms that we abide by. For example, there is an unwritten rule of how one should behave in an elevator. For example, it is proper to face front, stand away from strangers, and not to look at others. When a social norm is broken people may respond with alarm, humor, fear, irritation, or an array of other emotions. When you think of a norm, you are probably thinking about being normal. But in psychology terms, norm means, a standard or representative value for a group. The norm that is more common to people is a social norm. Meaning expectations about what behavior, thoughts, or feelings are appropriate within a given group within a given context. In society today us as …show more content…

I wanted to turn around and say something but I just kept my cool and said to myself, “This is only a test Cynthia don’t let them get to you.” Once I finished talking to myself I was relieved and ready to go into the movies. While walking into the movies, I received more looks and heard more whispers coming out of people which really didn’t make sense. All they had to do was just except me for who I was and that I was wearing clothes. After I got tired of the looks and whispers I changed my clothes and walked back in movie theatre. Once again my boyfriend looked at me strangely and said, “ Why did you change”? When I finally broke it down to him that I was doing a project for psychology he started to laugh. His response towards me was, he was going to love me no matter how I come out the house. I thought that was cute, that let me know that he doesn’t care what people think and that he was always going to be with me no matter how I look. When I broke the norm of how I look, I felt really insecure about myself and I really did care of what people were going to say about me. But I did learn this people are very judgmental on a person that they have no clue about. The other norm that I broke was going against authority. The authority that I went against was my mom during Thanksgiving dinner. When I did this norm, I really felt bad because, me and my mom are so close and I would never had disrespect her the way I

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