Time is another contributing factor hat weighs heavily on a society definition of deviance. Over time society’s norms change and thus a person’s perspective of what is deviant will also be likely to change. Nonetheless, a deviant act generates attention and this paper will focus on the social norm of a person’s personal space. The deviant act I chose to experiment with was giving strangers hugs. Naturally, think the social norm in today’s context is that getting that close and physically touching a complete stranger is not appropriate.
My experiment took place at a grocery store in the middle of the afternoon, while plenty of people were hopping. Before hugging anyone I would get an overwhelmed sense of nervousness and an anticipation that I was about to do something wrong, even though I was simply going to give someone a hug. Was able to work up enough courage to test this out twenty times and would wait long enough between people so that the next person would not be expecting anything. The reactions I received varied immensely, however, it did seem as though nervousness and an awkward feeling was mutual for everyone.
Twice I did not even get to actually hug the person because they were quick to push me back as approached. The other eighteen strangers had fluctuating reactions ranging from excited, confused, uncomfortable, and one lady even got relatively upset. My feelings remained consistently nervous and very edgy throughout until I would see the other person’s reaction, at which time my reaction was for the most part a mimic of theirs. My results included six people who saw it as a positive welcoming gesture and even reciprocated my hug.
Five of the strangers just stood there confused as to why I was touching them and, although admitting to feeling awkward, they did not seem to view it as a deviant act that was negative. Another four people were quick to turn the situation into some kind of joke or comical relief and would start laughing and do something to contribute to the weird scene we were generating, such as starting to dance with me. Two people said they felt neither an approval nor disapproval and were not rejecting towards my gesture nor were they welcoming.
They merely waiting until my hug was done, which I found the most awkward reaction. One lady did essentially get fairly upset and was not afraid to let me know of her disapproval. Everyone approached shared the fact that they would all look around to see hat other people’s reactions were to me hugging them. It appeared like they were waiting for either approval or not from the other people nearby, and based their reaction upon what they observed more than what they felt. Things such as gender and age played a big part in who approved and who did not.
Out of the six people that reciprocated my hug all six were male. The four that turned it into a comedy scene consisted of three males and one female and the rest were all females. Males were much more eager to be in the spotlight and did not seem to mind the audience, while females were fast to try and downplay the whole thing. Similar, the others around us consisted of a majority of males that paid the most attention while most females simply minded their own business. Elderly would ask lots of questions and want to invoke a discussion, while young people really did not even notice. Also concluded that the more disapproval that my hug generated, the more people paid attention to it and were curious as to what was going on. My results led me to believe that people responded more to the way that others around them reacted rather than the way they actually felt about me hugging them. Element stated, “It could be maintained with credibility and inference that social control itself has the ironic effect of actually creating deviance and channeling the direction that it takes” (Element, 1972, p. 49). Basically, the way in which the others reacted dictated how the person themselves responded to my hug.
Socially speaking, a female hugging a male is more generally accepted and thus most likely influenced the positive responses I obtained being mostly from males. Deviance is not a straightforward, defined topic and if this experiment were repeated I am positive a different set of results would be obtained. The eagerness of people to be accepted by their peers will either fuel or downplay ones so-called act of deviance, and the surrounding circumstances play an enormous role in dictating what people see as a deviant act.
