Experiment: Sociology and Norms Essay

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In this experiment, we were asked to violate a social norm in a public setting and make observations on what we saw and how our audience responded. The social norm that I chose to violate was simply that of common courtesy. I decided to walk thru a drive thru at McDonalds. Norms are a very important part of society. In the book, norms are defined as "the specific expectations about how people behave in a given situation. Without norms, a society has no foundation on which to stand. It would have no normalcy. Norms are what make a society unique. Other concepts such as ethnocentrism also tie into how norms affect a society. People who are ethnocentric often compare the norms of their society with that of others and through this, determine that their own society is superior. In contrast of these ideas, I believe that all societies are normal according to their owns norms, not the norms of others y breaking a social norm, my friends and I wanted to do something creative. So in a couple of minutes of thinking we figure something creative. Our plan was to go to McDonalds and use the drive thru to order our order, but the catch is that I was supposed to walk to the drive thru with no car just me standing there ordering my order and when they said to pull up to the next widow I would just walk to the window and pay and walk to the other window to get my order. We did this after the work around like 10:40. So I basically I got of the car I started walking to the drive thru and I was basically stuck in traffic. I got behind this black Tahoe and I waited for my turn. So finally it was my turn and I

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