Breaching experiment

In the fields of sociology and social psychology, a breaching experiment is an experiment that seeks to examine people's reactions to violations of commonly accepted social rules or norms. Breaching experiments are most commonly associated with ethnomethodology, and in particular the work of Harold Garfinkel. Breaching experiments involve the conscious exhibition of 'unexpected' behavior/violation of social norms, an observation of the types of social reactions such behavioral violations engender, and an analysis of the social structure that makes these social reactions possible. The idea of studying the violation of social norms and the accompanying reactions has bridged across social science disciplines, and is today used in both sociology and psychology.Case 2:E1: 'Excuse me. Do you think it would be all right if I asked someone for a seat?' In the fields of sociology and social psychology, a breaching experiment is an experiment that seeks to examine people's reactions to violations of commonly accepted social rules or norms. Breaching experiments are most commonly associated with ethnomethodology, and in particular the work of Harold Garfinkel. Breaching experiments involve the conscious exhibition of 'unexpected' behavior/violation of social norms, an observation of the types of social reactions such behavioral violations engender, and an analysis of the social structure that makes these social reactions possible. The idea of studying the violation of social norms and the accompanying reactions has bridged across social science disciplines, and is today used in both sociology and psychology. The assumption behind this approach is not only that individuals engage daily in building up 'rules' for social interaction, but also that people are unaware they are doing so. The work of sociologist Erving Goffman laid the theoretical foundation for ways to study the construction of everyday social meanings and behavioral norms, especially by breaking unstated but universally accepted rules. Garfinkel expanded on this idea by developing ethnomethodology as a qualitative research method for social scientists. Later, in the 1970s and 80s, famous social psychologist Stanley Milgram developed two experiments to observe and quantify responses to breaches in social norms to empirically analyze reactions to violation of those norms. Goffman published two seminal works related to this domain: Behavior in Public Places in 1963 and Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order, published in 1971. Goffman draws on his earlier studies of individuals in mental asylums, as well as other stigmatized social groups, in order to highlight the often taken-for-granted rules of social interaction, as well as the results when rules are broken. He argues that the most common rule in all social situations is for the individual to 'fit in'. He defines norms as a kind of guide for action supported by social sanctions or reactions, in that there are penalties for infraction, or breaking norms, while individuals are generally rewarded for compliance. If an individual breaches a social norm, the act is often attributed to some property of the individual, such as that the person is sick or mentally ill. For example, a person who is observed talking to himself in a public place is assumed to be mentally ill by any strangers who may notice. Goffman further states that social gatherings have significant importance for organizing social life. He argues that all people in a social setting have some concern regarding the rules governing behavior. Infractions, or violation of an unstated rule, may be 'taken as a sign that the offender cannot be trusted' not to take advantage of the situation 'even though the original infraction itself' may actually be harmless. Individuals come to 'feel that rules for participating in gatherings are crucial for society’s well-being' and that these 'rules are natural, inviolable, and fundamentally right'. Garfinkel suggests that each member of society uses 'background expectancies' to interpret and decide how to act in a social situation. However, individuals are unable to explicitly describe what each of these expectancies, or rules, are. One way to help make background expectancies more visible is to be a 'stranger to the life as usual character of everyday scenes'. For instance, saying 'hello' at the termination of a conversation. Although the term 'breaching experiment' developed as a result of Garfinkel's approach, he warns it should not properly be called an experiment, but more accurately, a demonstration meant to produce disorganized interaction in order to highlight how the structures of everyday activities are ordinarily created and maintained. Some examples of everyday scenes include the home, school, or workplace. One task Garfinkel assigned to his graduate students was to challenge everyday understandings by frequently asking for clarification during a normal conversation with a friend or family member. Below is an example of an excerpt quoted in Garfinkel's text, Studies in Ethnomethodology: This is a breaching experiment in the form of interpersonal conversation. The violation of the expectancy of shared verbal understanding between friends results in the subject expressing confusion and irritation. Garfinkel conducted other experiments—often using his students: Garfinkel instructed his students to treat such everyday, implicit understandings as problematic phenomena to be studied. Breaching experiments reveal the resilience of social reality, since the subjects respond immediately to normalize the breach. They do so by rendering the situation understandable in familiar terms. It is assumed that the way people handle these breaches reveals much about how they handle their everyday lives. Later work in the field of social psychology adapted this approach, but often refers to the phenomena as social norm breaking. Two of the most well known studies of violation of social norms by a social psychologist were carried out by Stanley Milgram, well known for his infamous obedience experiments. One was conducted on the New York City Subway in the 1970s, when experimenters boarded crowded trains and asked able-bodied but seated riders, with no explanation, to give up their seats. The other was conducted in the 1980s, and studied the reactions to graduate student experimenters cutting ahead in lines of people waiting to purchase railroad tickets. These experiments build on the sociological work on breaching norms, but note that they are approached quantitatively by being structured so the experimenter can observe and count people's reactions.