Eating with your hands at a restaurant

Wearing all of your clothes backwards

Wash your car in the rain

Go swimming or get in the water at a lake or beach fully clothed

Sit down and meditate in a grocery store

Go into a store with a baby doll wrapped in a blanket and place the doll in someone's basket and ask them to watch your baby for you while you go to the bathroom.

Some Ideas I have to fulfill this train of thought are:

1. Asking to sit with a stranger in a public setting when there are many available spaces to sit.

   • Normally when there are places to sit people will spread out or sit with others they know. Breaking this norm by asking to sit with someone in an empty room will allow you to see important responses like willingness and comfortability, here body language is a big things to monitor.

   
   

2. Approach students walking around campus and see how long they will have a conversation with you about pointless things

   • Typically people will walk from one area to another without ever talking to someone along their path. By breaking this social norm we will be able to look at how willing people are to talk and how simple or complex their answers will be.

     
     

3. Talk loudly in an extremely quiet environment

   • When sitting in an extremely quiet environment people will typically quiet down or completely stop talking. By talking loud in a space like this we break that norm and can observe the looks people give and see if people will intervene, leave it alone, or just leave the setting.

     
     

4. See how long you can dance in a store before you're asked to stop

   • Going to a store people expect to just get their goods and leave, no one expects much more. By dancing in the middle of a store you can catch people off guard and take people out of autopilot. You can expect looks or people getting caught off guard, this can serve as valuable information to how people react to unusual scenarios.

     
     

5. Compliment as many people as you can in a day

   • Oftentimes people don't get compliments enough, so receiving one in public often leaves people caught off guard. Compliments can be extremely basic and still leave that memory in someone's head. This can be seen as a positive break in social norms and see how it affects people and their friendliness towards you.

     • Examples for compliments:

       -You have a really cool backpack

       -Your outfit looks amazing

       -You look like a very confident person

       -You have a welcoming vibe

       -etc...

       
       

6. See how casual you can dress in a professional environment before you're questioned about it

   • In professional settings like school, work, clinics, etc we will often wear clothes we find suitable for the occasion. With this experiment we want to see how casual you dress before getting actively stared at or confronted. You can wear beach/Swimming clothes to school (appropriately), wear snow gear in an area with AC, wear hiking gear to a restaurant, so on and so forth. This will allow us to see how people react to the break mix-up caused by a change in wardrobe.

     
     

     
     

7. Maintain heavy eye contact with people during a conversation

   • You can try talking to friends, family, peers, or teachers and maintaining heavy eye contact to see how the other person reacts. Some reactions can include looking away, uncomfortable looks, being asked to stop, or increased aggression. Seeing any of these shows a successful attempt at breaching social norms.

     
     

8. Go to an arcade or gym and see how long you can stay on one machine before being asked to move.

   • Seeing someone hog a machine is no fun, but often people leave and come back hoping that it will be free when they come back. By sitting on one machine it forces people who want to use it to confront/talk to us to have access to it. Often this is an uncomfortable process so seeing someone come up to you will show a success in the experiment.

     
     

9. Attend a horror movie and laugh loudly at intense scenes

   • When watching movies some people stay silent, and others talk through it. During intense or emotional scenes people will often stay silent. By laughing during scenes like this we can see how people will react to a sudden shift in the vibe caused by your disruption, some may ask you to stop and others might stay quiet, either of these reactions will still show a successful experiment.

     
     

10. Stage breakups or proposals in public settings

    • Often people will go throughout their day not expecting to see anything exciting. Staging a break up or proposal breaks that expectation and you can see if people will also break their norms by congratulating the new couple, or quieting down and listening intently to a breakup

• Bargaining at a fixed price store. Going into either a target or retail store and asking if I get something for cheaper than the listed price and try to negotiate that price.

• Asking strangers for help with very obvious easy things. I already don't like to ask for help from people I know so this would be a really good one to help me break that.

• A funny one I saw was asking permission for simple everyday things, Such as "Can I blink?" "May I walk over there?"

- walking with a stranger and making conversation

- asking random people at a dressing room if a piece of clothing looks good on me

I’m open to working with other people!

I will say things like “Hey, how are you?” or “What’s up?” to people walking by. This breaks the normal social rule because strangers usually don’t greet each other.

I want to see how people react. Some might say hi back, some might look confused, and others might ignore me. This will help show how people react when a normal social expectation is broken.

.Hug people while you're talking to them and only let go after you're done saying what you need to say.

.Eat an ice cream cone, cone first. The ice cream would have to be in a bowl of course.

.Greet people with goodbyes and leave them saying hello.

All of these are silly and would probably cause arguments or some form of discomfort if experimented with the wrong crowd. In would personally only test this on close friends or family members.

2) Let out an obvious fake laugh during a serious conversation, then casually go back to being attentive to the conversation as if you didn't laugh at all.

3) Greet people with goodbyes and exit the conversation saying some form of hello

4)eat an ice cream cone, cone first. The ice cream would have to be in a bowl of course

5) Set up a lyft and then ask them for directions instead of getting in the car, once they arrive.

All of these i would only try on super close friends. In reality they would cause fights or be very rude.

2. Wearing formal attire like suits in public areas like grocery store, gas station.

When someone ask “ How am I doing?” I will give a very honest and descriptive explanation.

People ask this just out of social norms and trying to be friendly. They always expect you to say “I’m good” or “I’m doing good” and vis versa, but I will be honest and descriptive to how am I actually doing that day. Throwing off the person.

People ask this just out of social norms and trying to be friendly. They always expect you to say “I’m good” or “I’m doing good” and vis versa, but I will be honest and descriptive to how am I actually doing that day. Throwing off the person.

— Kamora Williams

I like to tell my kids to always sed thank you for to day we always tell my girls to pray every day and that what we do as a family

I would observe how the employee reacts to the situation. They might look confused, laugh, answer the question normally, or try to figure out why I’m asking something so obvious. I would also pay attention to their body language and tone to see if they seem uncomfortable or surprised.

This experiment would show how people expect others to follow certain social norms in everyday situations. When someone breaks those expectations, it can create confusion or awkward reactions, which helps demonstrate how strongly social norms influence behavior.

-using the gym equipment completely wrong and see if anyone corrects me

-reading every label out loud at the grocery store to see what kind of looks I get.

-Sitting or standing too close to somebody in public

-Wearing pajamas to a formal place or being overly dressed in a casual place.

- Randomly posting strange things on my Instagram story to see if anyone slides up

-saying "hello" instead of "goodbye"

. sitting immediately next to a stranger at an empty, large table rather than taking a separate table.

. Looking away or focusing on a phone.

. Personal = Friends and Extended Family = 1.5 - 4 feet in distance.

all of the things that I seen people need to be alone and maybe take a few minutes to think about your yourself instead being scared or shy the whole day of school, work, and places to get over the personal space forever.

-Lauryn Herrera

Say one day I go out to eat at a restaurant, and the server greets me with the typical "Hello how's your day?". Instead of saying "Good and yourself?" I would say "Oh I'm having the worst day, I just failed my midterm, my boyfriend just broke up with me, my car's gonna get repoed, I just have so much going on." Make up a complete lie of how horrible of a day I'm having just to see their reaction.

Maybe retail violation going into subway ordering a Jersey Mike sub!! But I’m really thinking home interaction treating my husband like the landlord that would be so interesting.

Angela Lobusta

Questions or statements like...

1. Asking someone if they are okay after they smirk, smile, or laugh.

2. Complimenting everyone's smile for a whole day.

Actions such as...

1. Poor milk before my cereal (I believe this may get a lot more reactions than some expect.

2. Pat every person I have a conversation with on the shoulder when the interaction is over.

2. Treat a stranger like a close friend

3. Stand close in lines

4. Ask to sit in someones seat

1. Getting up and walking away in the middle of someone talking without explaining why I did it.

2. Saying goodbye when someone says hello to me

3. facing towards a random person in the elevator and having a conversation as if I knew them.

   
   

go up to a stranger act like you know them.

For my breaching experiment idea , I will talk to one of my friends or classmates and slowly stand a little closer than normal during the conversation. I won’t say anything about it and will act like everything is completely normal. The goal is to break the unspoken rule of personal space and see how they react. They might step back, lean away, or look uncomfortable without actually saying anything. Some people might even try to end the conversation early.

My goal is to actively observe their immediate reaction to this behavior. I will secretly track how many seconds they pause in confusion, note their facial expressions as they try to figure out if you are joking, and listen to whether their tone shifts to a simplified, slow explanation. I will also monitor my own internal anxiety and note how hard it feels to break the script before I ultimately record the results for my paper.

1. Narrate my actions out loud

   for example: quietly narrate everything I do to myself to see how others react

2. Thank people excessively

   for example: overly thank someone for any little thing to see how they react

3. Stand in a corner facing the wall

   for example: choose a high traffic area and simply stand in a corner and face the wall

-Bryant Cruz

2.wait extra seconds before responding in a conversation.

3. thank people excessively for small actions

1. Doing a presentation while doing a macho man randy savage style promo impression and see what kind of reactions I get, if any.

2. Have a friend and me dress up as Statler and Waldorf and heckle people on the street

3.