{"id":7159,"date":"2020-03-16T18:35:41","date_gmt":"2020-03-16T13:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/?p=7159"},"modified":"2020-03-16T18:35:41","modified_gmt":"2020-03-16T13:05:41","slug":"making-connections-sociological-research-breaching-experiments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/making-connections-sociological-research-breaching-experiments\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Connections: Sociological Research :Breaching Experiments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Relevance: Sociology<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Sociologist Harold Garfinkel (1917\u20132011) studied people\u2019s customs in order to find out how societal rules and norms not only influenced behavior but shaped social order. He believed that members of society together create a social order (Weber 2011). His resulting book, Studies in<\/em> Ethnomethodology<\/em>,<\/strong> <\/span>published in 1967, discusses people\u2019s assumptions about the social make-up of their communities.<\/p>\n

One of his research methods was known as a \u201cbreaching experiment.\u201d<\/strong> His breaching experiments tested sociological concepts of social norms and conformity. In a breaching experiment, the researcher behaves in a socially awkward manner. The participants are not aware an experiment is in progress. If the breach is successful, however, these \u201cinnocent bystanders\u201d will respond in some way.<\/p>\n

For example,<\/strong> if the experimenter is, say, a man in a business suit, and he skips down the sidewalk or hops on one foot, the passersby are likely to stare at him with surprised expressions on their faces. But the experimenter does not simply \u201cact weird\u201d in public. Rather, the point is to deviate from a specific social norm in a small way, to subtly break some form of social etiquette<\/strong>, and see what happens.<\/p>\n

To conduct his ethnomethodology, Garfinkel deliberately imposed strange behaviours on unknowing people. Then he would observe their responses. He suspected that odd behaviours would shatter conventional expectations, but he wasn\u2019t sure how.<\/p>\n

He set up, for example, a simple game of tic-tac-toe. One player was asked beforehand not to mark Xs and Os in the boxes but on the lines dividing the spaces instead. The other player, in the dark about the study, was flabbergasted and did not know how to continue. Their reactions of outrage, anger, puzzlement, or other emotions illustrated the existence of cultural norms that constitute social life. These cultural norms play an important role. They let us know how to behave around each other and how to feel comfortable in our community.<\/p>\n

There are many rules about speaking with strangers in public. It\u2019s okay to tell a woman you like her shoes. It\u2019s not okay to ask if you can try them on. It\u2019s okay to stand in line behind someone at the ATM. It\u2019s not okay to look over their shoulder as they make their transaction. It\u2019s okay to sit beside someone on a crowded bus. It\u2019s weird to sit beside a stranger in a half-empty bus.<\/p>\n

For some breaches, the researcher directly engages with innocent bystanders. An experimenter might strike up a conversation in a public bathroom, where its common to respect each other\u2019s privacy so fiercely as to ignore other people\u2019s presence. In a grocery store, an experimenter might take a food item out of another person\u2019s grocery cart, saying, \u201cThat looks good! I think I\u2019ll try it.\u201d An experimenter might sit down at a table with others in a fast food restaurant, or follow someone around a museum, studying the same paintings. In those cases, the bystanders are pressured to respond, and their discomfort illustrates how much we depend on social norms. Breaching experiments uncover and explore the many unwritten social rules we live by.<\/p>\n

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Relevance: Sociology Sociologist Harold Garfinkel (1917\u20132011) studied people\u2019s customs in order to find out how societal rules and norms not<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[114,115,116],"tags":[392],"class_list":["post-7159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sociology-optional","category-sociology-optional-paper-i","category-sociology-optional-paper-ii","tag-union-public-service-commission-upsc"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7160,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7159\/revisions\/7160"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}