Breaching Experiment - Research Paper Example

Breaching Experiment BREACHING EXPERIMENT Introduction The breaching experiment, an ingenious but simple technique of social psychology, is an interesting way to explore how people adhere to unwritten societal norms. Garfinkel (2011) states that members of the society encounter and are knowledgeable of the moral order as being perceived normal actions, in which matters are about familiar scenes and being either morally wrong or right. The breaching experiments, developed by Harold Garfinkel, are deliberate and planned breaks form social norms that are widely accepted, where the individual carries out the break and then observes and records how the people who are privy to the break react. For this experiment, in which the student will assume the personality of a FaceBook creeper, the reaction to being a creeper is the most important point. If the social breach succeeds and social norms are compromised, how people react is evidence of mechanisms through which they attempt to combat the breach or make sense of the abnormal behavior (Garfinkel, 2011). Whereas it is expected that lighthearted breaches in the FaceBook creeper experiment will induce curiosity, confusion, and laughter, breaches of a more serious nature are expected to cause anger and anxiety. It was also expected that the experiment would show how uncomfortable people are about unexpected notification or information. Experiment The Facebook picture creeper experiment was chosen for this study, in which I had to go through the photo album of an acquaintance on Facebook and comment on about fifteen to twenty photos. These photos were supposed to be more than six months old and the comments were to be posted over a period of three days. In addition, the experiment required that only positive comments were written on the posts, such as “cute photo” and other positive comments. After posting, I was to check back to identify whether anyone else had commented on photo as a result of my posts and a description of the responses was to be made, as well as a description of how I felt about making these posts. Method For the experiment, I picked one of my friends from high school, whom I had not seen or talked to for some time and was not a friend on Facebook. I searched for her name on Facebook and identified her photo, after which I made a friend request that was accepted. Immediately after we became friends on the site, I commented on twenty of her photographs from her photo album and, as required by the experiment, I ensured that all my comments on the photos were positive. In the beginning, I commented on only a few photographs at a time, following which I realized that this failed to elicit any response from the experiment participant at all. The next day, therefore, I elected to significantly increase the amount of photographs that I posted comments on. On the first day, I commented on five pictures, followed by seven pictures on the second day and eight pictures on the third day. For the third day, these posts were made in a span of half an hour. Because of this significant increase in the number of comments made to the test participant, I definitely expected a response, after which I would tell her about the experiment and what I was doing. Results As it turned out, the aforementioned expectations were correct. After intensifying my comments on the photos from the participant’s photo album, the participant replied about ten minutes later. The initial reaction was polite as she commented; “we haven’t seen each other in a while, how are you doing?” In addition, no one else commented below the comments on the first day. However, there was a discernible change in tone during the second and third day. From her comments, it seemed that she was confused and did not understand the reasoning behind the numerous comments on old photos. In addition, after the comments were intensified on the third day over a shorter period of time, she seemed to become very annoyed. She asked that the researcher “cooled down with the numerous notifications” and even asked whether there was anything, which I wanted to tell her that I was unable to. After making the decision to tell her that the posts were actually part of a classroom breaching experiment, which had been the plan from the beginning, her reaction was not at all what was expected. Rather than seem relieved, telling her about the experiment seemed to make matters worse. She immediately opined that she was not amused by the notifications and that her friends were also annoyed, especially when comments that were made on her personal pictures that resulted in her friends being notified. She added that the researcher should “just go ahead, collect all the data required, and be done with it”. The response from the participant can best be described as irritated and confused, which made the researcher think about just how much Facebook has shifted in the past ten or so years from when notifications and comments were always welcome. Discussion The most interesting aspect of this experiment was just how much expected social norms on Facebook have changed since first opening an account in 2007. At this point, everyone always sought to garner as many comments and posts as possible, while notifications were always treasured. Indeed, as stated by Kraut et al (2011), publicly displaying numerous instances of inappropriate behavior on online sites could lead its members to believe it to be expected and common. This was the case during the early days of Facebook when a lot of behavior that would be considered against social norms was tolerated. For example, commenting on old photos, making too many comments, and making them in such a short time frame are perfect instances of one being a Facebook creeper. Conducting this experiment has shown that expected social norms on Facebook have changed as people do not post photos as much as before, making most notifications about photos immediately stand out. Moreover, the numerous updates and changes made to posting rules have caused most participants on Facebook unwilling to post personal photos. This is an example of what Kraut et al (2011) contend with regards to the public display of statistics highlighting normative behaviors’ prevalence increasing adherence of the members to normative behavior. From the experiment, it also became clear that the norm of not making posts or comments about old pictures has become increasingly prevalent in society. The test participant commented that one of the reasons why her friends felt irritated and annoyed was because some of the pictures were too old. Obviously, violation of this norm was a problem for some individuals and the researcher also accepts that they find this a problem as well. As a result, it is evident that community influence on the rules made by the online site will enhance compliance to the rules (Kraft et al, 2011). While most people are guilty of Facebook picture creeping once in a while, especially when they have just befriended someone on the site, conducting this experiment showed that when these socially accepted norms are breached, particularly in relation to the number of posts and the time frame of the posts, most people become annoyed, confused, and extremely uncomfortable. However, as argued by Garfinkel (2011), some people conducting breaching experiments report feeling mildly oppressive when forced to play their part, which was evident in this case when it became necessary to finally tell the test participant why there so many comments in such a short time on her old photos. Commenting on newer photos, as discovered, was less annoying than for older pictures, most probably because the photo may have just appeared on the newsfeed and the participant liked it. In addition, initial comments would have been acceptable where the person believes that the researcher is simply reminiscing about their old days and wanted to catch up (Preece, 2012). However, commenting on twenty photos could be considered excessive and will end up making the test participant feel uncomfortable. In addition, it also tends to be annoying because the increased number of posts and comments will result in a higher likelihood that these photos will also be shared with other people’s newsfeeds. Thus, whereas commenting on old photos over a one day time frame could be considered acceptable, commenting on the same old photos for a time frame of three days was obviously unacceptable. This is a norm that has been socially constructed on online sites that have been in existence of as long as Facebook, especially where people have been friends for quite a while. As a result, in online communities where members are more committed, it is more likely that they will spontaneously comply with accepted social norms (Kraft et al, 2011). From this experiment, it can be deduced that a big part of most online communities, including Facebook, is that the activities on the site are supposed to be effortless, or at least appear to be effortless, considering how easy it was to access information from the site. Indeed, Facebook acts as a facilitator in breaking social norms during interactions between participants, whereby users are able to stare, watch, and even acquire private information concerning other people and remain anonymous (Veer, 2011). However, it can also be said that the appeal of this information seeking and staring behavior can be utilized in improving the appeal of future relationships based on social media. Facebook has, indeed, been one of the greatest facilitators of challenges to current social norms, creating its new social norms that allow people to comment on posts they have no reason to comment on and do so anonymously. The new social norms enabled by Facebook make it acceptable for someone to go through a person’s photos covering a period of years, even when the owner does not know this is happening (Veer, 2011). This experiment, however, was in violation of these new social norms, as the test participant was made aware of the fact that the researcher was looking at the photos. References Garfinkel, H. (2011). Studies in ethnomethodology. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Kraut, R. E., Resnick, P., & Kiesler, S. (2011). Building successful online communities: Evidence-based social design. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Preece, J. (2012). Online communities: Designing usability, supporting sociability. Chichester: Wiley. Veer, E. (January 01, 2011). Staring: How FaceBook facilitates the breaking of social norms. Research in Consumer Behavior, 13, 185-198. Read More