Throughout our daily lives, we have many expectations. We are expected to act and behave in a certain manner as we carry out our day to day lives. These expectations will vary depending on the setting or occasion. The expectations may also vary culture to culture. Because of these expectations, social norms have been developed. Social Norms are unwritten rules about how to behave. They provide us with an expected idea of how to behave in a particular social group or culture. Behavior which fulfills these norms is called conformity, and most of the time roles and norms are powerful ways of understanding and predicting what people will do. (McLeod) We typically use these norms to predict what people will do in a certain situation. These norms …show more content…
Without social norms, humans would not know how to act in their day to day life.
A social norm that is not extremely popular is letting someone in front of you in line at the grocery store. Many people today have become selfish. We just want to take the quick way out of things. When is the last time you let someone with fewer groceries than you cut in line? A simple act of kindness goes a long way. Generally, we do not even pay attention to the person standing behind us in line.
For my breaching experiment, I decided to go test out this social norm at my local grocery store. I went into Kroger, one Monday and bought a few groceries for my family. Once it got time to check out, I chose the busiest line possible. Within twenty-five seconds of being in line, there was someone behind me. They had fewer groceries than
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I am not a particularly shy person, but I do not like to be taken out of my comfort zone. The experiment generally went how I expected it to. Most people, including myself, tend to accept an act of generosity. To keep up with each reaction, I took notes after each trip to the grocery store. Overall, this experiment had a huge impact on me. The elderly man’s comment really caused me to analyze today’s society. Many of us go throughout our daily life without giving anyone but ourselves a thought. How would the world be if we would set a goal each day to simply do just one thing for someone