Norms are what most people in society consider to be normal, and are to be followed by everyone. The book Essentials of Sociology, describes norms as “an informal rule that guides what a member of a culture does in a given situation and how that person lives”. (Ritzer 74) Not all norms are formal, or written down. In today’s society, people are expected to follow the norms. By violating these norms someone creates an act of deviance. To be able to understand the norms and their violations we must create acts of deviance, and violate the norms. Ritzer describes deviance as “An action, belief, or human characteristic that members of a society or a social group consider a violation of group norms and for which the violator is likely to be censured or punished.” (159) In order to understand norms, I violated a norm through a break experiment. In this break experiment, I violated the norm, wearing the same type of shoes on your feet. …show more content…
I wore a brown bear paw boot, and a black and pink flip flop. I would dress up like I would any other day, but then I wore the two different shoes. I chose to wear them to work, weight room, and to my local high school. I decided to go with these three locations because I knew I would get a mix of different ages as well as genders. At weight room, I would get the reactions of people who are about my age. At the high school, I would also be getting reactions from people my age, but also those of my teachers. At work, I would be getting reactions form people from the age of 5 all the way to people in their late seventies. In all of these places there would also be people who are male and female. I figured this would be a good way to see what ages and genders reacted most to this experiment. While performing the experiment I would watch to see how people reacted, questioning looks or avoidance, and recorded anything that people said to me in reference to my