...reaction and centuries of habit has deeply ingrained this behavior into society. It has developed a sort of "functional autonomy" meaning that the modern implication of "bless you" is detached from its roots (Psychology Today). Acknowledging a stranger, be it holding the door or elevator, is not only tied to the impression an individual gives, but it has become a norm and an expectation in everyday behavior. Some may even be offended or hurt when others do not conform, leading to a dispute like the one between Robin and Michael in Seinfeld's "Good Samaritan" episode. Analyzing the social context makes it apparent that society uses norms to guide behavior and pressure people to conform while frowning upon those who stray from expectations. In a Seinfeld scene where Robin, Michael, Elaine, and George have dinner at a moderately classy restaurant, Robin sneezes and George hesitates before saying "bless you." George then proceeds to joke that Michael, who is Robin's husband, ought to have the responsibility of saying "bless you" first (Seinfeldology). George points out Michael's lack of adherence to the social norms demanded in such a formal setting. In this case, there is a variety of factors that shape the level of formality. The group is in a relatively upscale environment where appropriate attire applies, wine is served, and diners ask instead of reaching over for the bread basket. This adds to the social pressure that comes with proper dinner table manners and...
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...those culture. Part II – Current Culture A. Cultural Type As we can see in the accompanying OCI Circumplex, Sandstone is strongest in the Aggressive/Defensive Styles. This Aggressive/Defensive culture is generally one “in which members are expected to approach tasks in forceful ways to protect their status and security, are characterized by Oppositional, Power, Competitive, and Perfectionistic norms.” * Oppositional: pointing out flaws * Power: building up one’s power base * Competitive: turning the job into a contest * Perfectionistic: doing things perfect Primary style is Competitive This was the cultural norm with the greatest percent score: 89%. According to the OCI Interpretation & Development Guide, a Competitive culture is generally one “in which winning is valued and members are rewarded for outperforming one another. Members operate in a "win-lose" framework and believe they must work against (rather than with) their peers to be noticed”. (Turn the job into a contest; never appear to lose) Secondary style is Oppositional This was the cultural norm with the second greatest percent score: 88%. According to the OCI Interpretation & Development Guide,...
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...Challenging the Social Norm. “Story Of An Hour” by Kate Chopin is a telling story about a woman, Mrs. Mallard, who’s given the horrible news that her husband has passed away in a train wreck. Devastated by her husband’s sudden death, she excuses herself and immediately rushes to her bedroom; this is where readers see a different side of Mrs. Mallard. In time she has taken on a different angle of life. Although obviously upset about her husband’s sudden death, Mrs.Mallard has something to be happy about. In 1894 when the “Story Of An Hour” was written, women didn’t have a say over anything and because of her husband's death; Mrs.Mallard learns the cost of both freedom gained, and freedom lost. Kate Chopin lived in a time period when women really did not have any rights. Therefore her stories typically focused entirely around the theme of female characters who dealt with these problems; Chopin was well known for writing about these society blocks. However in her stories the women usually take on a more conventional side than what would be expected. Normally they chose their own path rather than what society would want. One theme in Chopin’s story is freedom (Mayer, 95). In the beginning of “The Story of an Hour” the scene opens up and readers are introduced to Mrs. Mallard, who has been told that her husband has died in a horrible train wreck.She reacts to this news like any other wife would -- yes, she is clearly upset so she excuses herself and rushes off to her bedroom...
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...as in the case of noise pollution. However, human behavior is not always simple when determining the source. Many points of input are present, one of them being environmental cues. “Cues are elements in the environment that convey important information or trigger an affective reaction” (Steg, 2013, p. 120). How a human responds and impacts the environment is determined by the cues and the message they convey. Environmental Cues and Behavior “Sentences, words, and visual images are environmental cues that can affect the behavior of individuals (Charles-Sire, Guéguen, Pascual, & Meineri, 2012, p. 457). The presence of environmental cues is constant and therefore shapes human behavior in positive, as well as negative ways. Social norms and laws or rules are reinforced or weakened as a result of environmental cues. For example, a fabric rail queue line at the bank is meant to control the line and spread the customers for quicker service. Some individuals adhere to this cue regardless of the abundance or lack of customers while others adhere only if no way around it is found. Cues can be as basic as signs warning to not litter or as involved as public service announcements and social media campaigns. Behavior Modification There are often a variety of external cues and internal drives that shape behavior. As such, when an individual has set a goal to meet or an intention for new behavior, when the circumstances change, often the goals and intentions are dropped because...
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...Norms are based on your behavior. Norms can be put into many groups. Informal norms are everyday behavior. They aren’t written down and can be as common as saying “good morning” and washing your hands or saying a prayer before you eat. Formal norms are written down into a law, which, if broken you will face a punishment. Examples of formal norms are do not steal from a store or do not speed. We enforce norms by sanctions. Sanctions can be positive or negative. Positive sanctions could be as simple as smiling at somebody or as formal as receiving a raise. Negative sanctions could be a frown or going to prison. Society adapts the norms to the world around them. For example, people in Texas don’t need to wear the same winter apparel...
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...Each and every day we do most things without having to put much thought into them. We brush our teeth in the morning, we raise our hand when we want to speak in class, we wait in line behind others instead of cutting, along with tons of other norms. Whenever people break away from these norms society sees it as being deviant, and it catches people off guard because we are to be carrying out these norms, not only by ones-self but also by other’s around us and society. The norm I decided to breech was as simple as walking on the sidewalk to class. There always tends to be a certain side of the sidewalk that people walk on depending on the direction they are going. And when this is disrupted it forces people to change their direction. Whenever...
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...Norms are the behaviors that are expected out of us depending on the society that we live in. The norms that we have learned about this year in class can be on different levels of importance and they are also situational. There are many different types of norms and they all mean different things. The two main norms I will be focusing on today with my acts of deviance will be Folkways and More. Folkways are minor rules that change from what group of people you are with and there really isn’t much of a punishment for them. The other norm, More, is a way more important and also cares a severe punishment for breaking them. There will be two act of deviance that I will be discussing today that I performed to see if it changed any of the other people I was around to break these norms. The first act of deviance will be to kneel in an elevator. I choose this because of the video we watched in class when the people stood backwards in the elevator and everyone that got into the elevator turned around as well. I want to see if it still works today and if it works with more people or just with a single person. I expect it to probably not work in today’s society and people to just look at me and my...
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...This study tests the effects of social norms and Perceived Social Support (PSS) on the consumption of alcohol. Because of earlier discoveries, this paper attempts to study the correlation between the level of social support from a participant’s social group and the drinking norms as a base for their drinking. The paper hypothesized that those that had low levels of social support from friend groups would be more willing to follow drinking norms and that those with a higher level of social support would be less likely to follow drinking norms. There were 574 college students, both men and women with an average age of 18.77. Each completed a measure of their social support level and what peer alcohol norms were. The participants were to keep a diary of their drinking habits everyday and used it to figure out each person’s drinking frequency and quantity. The hypothesis was proven and the individuals with lower social support were more likely to fall into the norms of drinking. However, there wasn’t a correlation between high social support and drinking norm behavior. In conclusion, if a social group is supportive the less pressure one feels to fall into the path of the norm. Within this article one strength was having the participants record each the drinking of each participant was measured by day. Not allowing any time to pass within each diary entry allows for a more consistent result as well as more confidence in that what the participants are keeping track of is...
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...article the authors use information from various academic references to support their theories. They also conduct this study with a focus primarily on physicians. This article starts of by introducing what workplace deviance is. In this article antisocial behavior, workplace aggression, organizational retaliation, and employee deviance are all used to describe behaviors generally regarded as workplace deviance. The article goes on to state that very little research has been done that examines the positive aspects of workplace deviance. One of these positives aspects is the occurrence of constructive workplace deviance. This article states that constructive workplace deviance encompasses behaviors that violate significant organizational norms in order to contribute to the well-being of the organization. The authors explore the belief that unlike much of the field of organizational behavior which focuses on managerial dysfunctions, such as resistance to change, constructive deviants can play a central role in facilitating organizational change. (Robbins & Galperin, 2010) The authors of this article go on to give an in depth look into what constructive deviance is. It states that the management literature has...
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...Deviant Behavior Course Project Option Four: Mini Research Paper Breaking Folkways For this assignment I chose this particular research option because I am very interested in people’s reactions to experiencing things they are not used to, I also do not embarrass easily. My research involved intentionally violating common folkways in the presence of family, co-workers and strangers. After breaking common norms I than analyzed the results and recorded them below. Day One – Hugging co-workers rather than saying hello In our culture, when in the workplace, it is appropriate to greet fellow employees with a “hello”, “hi” or handshake. For the purpose of this assignment I decided to greet my coworkers with hugs, rather than saying hello and shaking their hand. Clearly the norm which I violated here were keeping the greeting casual and possibly invading my co-workers personal space. Americans are usually very adamant about not getting too close to others while in public and vice versa, so this one was fun for me. Throughout my work day, whenever I encountered a fellow employee I gave them a semi-long hug with a pat on the back, this included both male and female co-workers. I really enjoyed this one. The reactions from the people whom I greeted with a hug, rather than a simple “hello” or hand shake ranged by the particular individual and were usually along the lines of what I expected. All of the females I hugged responded with a return hug, meaning my hug...
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...Final Exam Essay: The Sammy in Me When I first read the short story “A & P” several moths ago, I remember feeling very identified with Sammy because I felt that I would have done the same thing if I had been working in the store. A 19-year-old cashier at an A & P supermarket, and the narrator of "A & P," he quits his job in a fit of teen angst and sexual attraction. I feel that Sammy and I connect because every male teen suffers from teenage angst at some point or another, especially when it comes to girls. Sammy notices everything around him, and he drinks in every detail of the girls’ physical appearance, from the texture and patterns of their bathing suits to the different boundaries of their tan lines (Updike 311). When I first met my former girlfriend, I too did the same thing; I began taking in how wonderful she was and the way she spoke gave me insights into her life. Sammy’s insights are equivalent to my insights in that both of us have focused observations of the opposite sex to whom we are attracted. I felt superior to others when I was dating my ex-girlfriend and the irony of it is that Sammy also felt the same sense of superiority. However in the eyes of the girl, Queenie, he must seem just like Stokesie and Lengel. Sammy to the girl, just like me to my former girlfriend, was just another guy. He needed to do something brave to win the girl’s attention and possibly love. His desire to set himself apart from Stokesie—to prove that he is different—compels...
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...Porsche Massey April 19, 2012 SOC-340 Spring 2012 Breaching Assignment The Things That Happen When You Break in Line The breaching experiment I chose was breaking in line. At first, I didn’t think that I was going to get much of any reaction because sometimes breaking is something I have seen occur a couple of times. However, I received a great response when I completed the task. I chose to spice up the experiment by going to three totally different places, and acting three different ways. The first way in which I was going to act was to break in line and act as if I did nothing wrong because something that the customer was doing or had violated me and I no longer wanted to wait in line behind them. The second reaction was to argue back with anyone who said something to me about breaking. The third reaction was to be apologetic but at the same time not get out of line because I felt entitled. The first place I decided to go was to a smaller retail place called Walgreens to get some reactions. I went in on March 9, 2012 at 3:00pm. The exact location was Walgreens on Highway 31 in Vestavia Al. There were approximately twenty people in the store not including the workers. As I was approaching the front of the store I noticed an array of races; Blacks, Whites, Asians, and Hispanics. Also, the ages ranged from fifteen to late sixties. The second place I went to was Wal-Mart on Lakeshore Drive in Homewood Al on April 3, 2012 at 11:00am. It was over fifty people in the...
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...The social norm I chose to violate was to sit in an empty chair at an otherwise occupied table. I chose a table occupied by three people in a coffee shop in Portland, Oregon. There was not much of a reaction to the social norm violation I committed. The people at the table just looked at me for a moment. After an awkward moment of silence the people at the table said hello and made small talk with me. They were very friendly and easy going. They did not seem to mind that I sat at their table uninvited. After speaking for a few minutes I explained to them that this was a psychology assignment and let them read the assignment. The people at the table were somewhat confused as to why such a thing would be assigned by a college professor. They explained that they felt it was inappropriate for a teacher to ask students to put themselves into any of the listed situations. All the people stated they were not offended by someone actually doing these things. They were bothered that students were required to violate any of the “so-called social norms on the list”. I found my actions to be rude and inconsiderate. I would not like it if someone came over and sat at my table uninvited. Maybe someone wants to have a private conversation with the others at the table. Maybe someone is on a date and wants to be alone. Maybe the people at the table are criminals. Maybe the people do not care if someone sits at their table uninvited. The bottom line is that for me it was uncomfortable...
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...I have undertaken the task of breaking a social norm within the campus grounds. I wanted to see what kind of reactions I could get from a wide variety of people, and since UNL is so diverse with different genders, race, and age, I chose our campus to be my laboratory. I decided that I would try standing in the back of the union by the fountain, and then I would play the guitar and sing out loud as if I were enjoying the nice weather. This would probably seem normal to most people, however, I don’t know how to play the guitar at all and I can’t sing worth anything. I figured the combination of my terrible abilities would make a great formula for gaining attention from other people. I recorded myself doing it so that I could remember what I sang about too. I also thought it would be great to sing about my observations of the people around me. I would sing things such as people looking like animals, or making fun of their clothes, or describing every move they make, or give them a story about their day and how it’s going. One time a tall white guy was walking past me by himself and my first reaction was that he looked like a giraffe, so I went with that. I sang loudly “hey tall guy with the red coat how are you today, when I first saw you, you looked like a giraffe to me, can you tell me giraffe man where I can find some good leaves on a tree, giraffe people are mad all the time that they cant fit through doors, they always hit their head and it gives their head soars, which is why...
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...definition “The collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another … includes systems of values.” Geert Hofstede “A system of ideas … constitute a design for living” Zvi Namenwirth & Rober Weber 2 /3 /2 0 1 6 P a tr ic k F o o n g VALUES Values: Ideas about what a group believes to be good, right and desirable; shared assumptions about how things ought to be They include a society’s attitude to individual freedom, truth, justice, social obligations, the role of women, love, sex, marriage, etc. They are invested with considerable emotional significance; people argue, fight and even die over values such as freedom 2 /3 /2 0 1 6 P a tr ic k F o o n g NORMS Norms are the social rules that govern people’s actions toward one another based on values It can be subdivided into: folkways and mores 2 /3 /2 0 1 6 P a tr ic k F o o n g FOLKWAYS Folkways are the social conventions of daily life Good social manners, appropriate dress code, eating with the right utensils, etc. Violation of folkways is not normally a serious matter; people may consider violators as weird or eccentric and if you’re a foreigner, you may be initially excused 2 /3 /2 0 1 6 P a tr ic k F o o n g FOLKWAYS Eg attitudes toward time in different cultures ie lateness What is the general attitude toward punctuality in your culture? 2 /3 /2 0 1 6 P a tr ic k F o o n g FOLKWAYS ...
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