A Description of Informal Norm Violation

Category: Psychology
Last Updated: 28 Feb 2023
Essay type: Informal
Pages: 3 Views: 83

Every society has spoken and unspoken rules that members of the populace respect. Social norms are apart of our every day life and we follow these unspoken guidelines with out thinking twice about it. When you assigned me this challenge to violate an informal norm, it took me some time to think of the right norm to break. After running through a couple ideas, I decided that making out with your boyfriend in the middle of a store is definitely against our societies customs. Besides on a high school campus, I hardly ever see people so wrapped up in each other. Literally.

Public displays of affection attract a variety of emotions from onlookers. Some people find it annoying, inappropriate or even get jealous. While others feel that it signifies that you care about your partner. I thought that it would be really amusing to find a store or place of business that people visit because they have to, not because they're just hanging out. Since the bank, which was our first choice, was closed on Sunday, my boyfriend Nick came up with the idea to make out in the jewelry store at Bella Terra.

I brought my brother with me not to watch us do it, but because I needed a third set of eyes to watch our audiences reactions since we were going to be a little busy. While we were walking to the store I could tell Nick was pretty uncomfortable. It was understandable; we were about to put on an interesting show. Personally, I was kind of excited. How often do you get to break an informal norm like this and get points for it in class? So we all walked into the store and Nick and I started "browsing" the jewelry. To set the scene, we were the only people in this store besides the four sales associates behind the counters. All eyes were on us. Immediately the girl behind the counter starts trying to show us stuff and following us around.

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We told her that we were looking for our one-year anniversary present. After trying on some bracelets that were so not my style, I had to keep myself from giggling when I was acting interested in them, I turned to Nick and said, "You are just the sweetest guy for buying me jewelry!" and planted a big kiss on his lips. That got the ball rolling, and we went for it. I could hear the giggles of the girls helping us, and one of the guys uncomfortably cleared his throat. My brother told me that the girl that was helping us stared at us really confused for a minute, and then she walked over to him and started a conversation. Everybody left us alone, literally walked to the other side of the store, and my brother told me that they were watching us and quietly giggling. When we surfaced for air, I immediately made eye contact with one of the girls and she had the most priceless look on her face. It was sort being impressed mixed with a lot of "are they seriously doing this in here?" I would say that we made out for a solid three minutes. When we were done we pretended to be interested in some turquoise stone and walked out wishing the girls a great day. I turned around and laughed when I saw everybody heads turned, watching us leave the store.

PDA is not unacceptable in our society, but it definitely crosses a line when you take it too far. The reason being that, holding hands and kissing are signs of affection and when you take it to the next level of tongue and groping, I assume people feel like they are invading your privacy as well as you graphically disrupting and distracting their atmosphere. PDA is more intolerable in family areas or in religious places because that comes with a natural air of conservativeness most people don't want to disturb. The jewelry store or bank or grocery store would be other perfect places to break the standards of normal behavior.

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A Description of Informal Norm Violation. (2023, Feb 17). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/a-description-of-informal-norm-violation/

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