“We are all fragile creatures entwined in a cobweb of social constraints”. These are words that were spoken by social psychologist, Stanley Milgram. The “constraints’ that he was speaking of were social norms. Social norms are defined as the “rules that regulate social life”. (Chambliss & Eglitis, 2016, p 332) Social norms can vary from written law to cultural understanding of acceptable behaviors. Everything that we do is governed by a social norm in some way. Take for example greeting someone when you are being introduced for the first time. There is no law stating that you must make eye contact and shake their hand. If you decided not to, it would be considered rude. It is also a social norm in our culture to stand in line in public places rather than expecting immediate service. When I was considering where to conduct my observation, I wanted to choose a location where there would be multiple norms to observe and then later violate. I decided on a local café and deli in the business distract of downtown Cincinnati. Since the observation was taking place in the business district, I decided that lunch time would be the best time to do it. I started at 12 o’clock Thursday. The café is located on the ground level of apartment building that was built in the late 1800’s. The entire front side of the store is floor to celling glass, letting in a ton of natural light. There is only one entrance and one exit. Once inside to the right of the entrance is the deli, where all food orders are placed. On the opposite side is the café, which is just a sitting area and soda machines. I took a seat in the café area that allowed me to see the rest of the store. The first thing I noticed was the difference in the demographics of the employees and the customers that they served. The employees were mostly middle-aged African American women with the exception of one African American male and one white woman. The white woman worked as the cashier. The others all worked as cooks. The customers, on the other hand, were young professional type. They entered mostly in small groups of twos or threes. Normally as they came in the door they were engaged in conversation with themselves. Some would pause to reply to the cashier that greeter Do you mean greeted? people as they entered, while others did not even notice her greeting. The line to order moved at a quick pace. People where ready to order by the time it was their turn. The expectation Do you mean exception? to this was one set of young women. They appeared to be in their early twenty’s. Unlike the rest of the customers, who wore business attire, they were in athletic wear. It was obvious that others were bothered by their hold up. There was a rushed mood throughout my observation. I concluded my observation at 12: 45. I decided, with permission from the owner of the store, in order to break a social norm I would bring my very large dog the next day. The next, day at the same time, my dog and I took our seats in the café. This time I sat closer to the cashier. I did this in order to put myself closer to the entrance and exit. At first it seemed like people tried to act like they did not notice the dog. They purposely looked in different directions and avoided us. Some even seems seemed bothered. I received a lot of dirty looks. The first real reaction came from a woman. She first asked if it was a service dog. Then she asked if she could pet her. After the first person finally broke away from the lunch routine, it seemed to make others become more interested and welling willing to do the same. Person after person stopped to ask questions about the dog and to pet her. It was still obvious that some people did not approve of a dog in a public setting. Overall, I believe that people found it to be a distraction. It was such a distraction that I was able to wrap up my observation in the amount of time that I wanted to. I was not able to leave until after 1o’clock. What I found most interesting was that everyone that stopped to talk or pet my dog either had a dog or grew up with dogs. This leads me to believe that their own life experiences were the root cause of their interest to leave their normal lunch routine. The second most interesting thing was how interest grew in the dog as more people asked about her. It seemed as if it was deemed okay to stop and talk since others were doing the same. I can see how, on a small scale, how social acceptance of something that was once thought to be a taboo can become a norm. In conclusion I learned that social deviance is not always negative. Deviance can mean anything that is outside of the normal way of doing things in our day to day lives. Stopping to pet a dog on your lunch break may be deviance, but it could be just the thing to make the rest of your day a little better.

References

Chambliss, W. and Eglitis, D. (2015). Discovering Sociology: Second Edition.