17 February 2005: Sociological Experiment

As I might have mentioned in some journal entry or another late last year, I'm not going to have much time to write journal entries this year, because I'll need to spend most of my writing time on homework. Fortunately, I can occasionally reconcile this journal vs. homework conflict by posting my homework assignments as journal entries.

Last year, I posted some excerpts from Psychology and Communications papers. Today, I've got an entire report to post, from my Social Psychology class.

Sociological Experiments are all the rage among my fellow online journallers these days. Argus' first entry in his new Argawarga blog was about the Stanford Prison Experiment (of which we recently watched a bunch of surveillance camera footage in my Social Psychology class). Yoko recently wrote some entries about her foray into the world of online personals ads, which she referred to as a Sociological Experiment. And Lila's use of her Guttergaunt blog to invite readers' long-distance participation in her sex life has turned both the blog and her sex life into one of the most entertaining Sociological Experiments I've ever heard tell of (Lila is the blogging world's equivalent of one of those cartoon Mad Scientists whose experiments always go haywire and blow up).

So here's my contribution to the Sociological Experiment trend. The assignment given by Dr. K, my Social Psychology teacher, was to pick a minor social norm, and violate it either throughout the course of a day, or on several different occasions in interaction with different people. Examples we were given included dressing in a peculiar way, or staring intently at the right ear of whoever we were talking to. We were instructed not to do anything that might cause harm to ourselves or others. We were asked to write up a report on our experiments, describing what we did, and what the results were, including the reactions of the people we interacted with, and our own feelings during the interactions.

It was interesting to note that the deviations from social convention that many of my classmates chose (and were often uncomfortable engaging in) were less extreme than the deviations that any Autistic person makes constantly.

Other classmates came up with some pretty good ones, though: one young woman was asked to leave several high-end business establishments when she went shopping wearing women's business attire from the waist up and ankles down, and nothing but a pair of men's boxer shorts in between. And one guy had a great time freaking people out by always trying to stay no further than eight inches away from whoever he was talking to - until he got freaked out by a girl who wasn't bothered by it, and cheerfully continued talking to him nose-to-nose.

Anyway, here's the full text of the report that I handed in.

For this assignment, I decided to violate the social norm that when eating in restaurants, one may, in most circumstances, share one’s food with one’s own dining companions, but one does not share one’s food with strangers at other tables.

I performed my experiment a total of five times, once per day over the course of five days, while eating lunch at five different Downtown Berkeley restaurants. Budgetary restrictions prevented me from conducting the experiment at especially fancy and expensive establishments. Dr. K’s admonition to avoid causing myself harm prevented me from conducting the experiment at fast-food establishments such as McDonald’s, as it would have harmed me to eat the toxic swill that they serve in those places.

The experimental procedure was as follows: I would order a dish that I knew from past experience was quite good. Upon the meal’s arrival, I would eat a few bites, slowly and with obvious pleasure, making little appreciative “mmm” noises. Then I would pick up the plate and look around me until I caught the eye of someone at an adjacent table, whereupon I would hold the plate out to them, and say, with friendly enthusiasm: “Wow, try a bite of this! It’s great!”

Tuesday: Two white women in business attire, early forties, in Sushi Ko. Offered small tray of sushi. Both stared at me, heads drawn up and back like cobras preparing to strike. Expressions of utter revulsion, despite fine quality of sushi. Both at a loss for words for a moment, then one said, in a cold and angry tone, “Do you mind? We’re trying to have a conversation.” This was a lie – I don’t like interrupting people’s conversations, so I’d deliberately waited for a point at which there was no active conversation going on and they were both focused on eating. I smiled, shrugged, and went back to eating. They also went back to eating, looking rather irritated, and soon paid and left, with almost no further conversation. Both avoided looking at me for the remainder of their meal. I felt very nervous up until the moment I addressed them, but then I felt gleeful, reckless. Could feel that my grin was inappropriately broad and impish. Feeling of impish glee continued for the remainder of my meal, and recurred throughout the day.

Wednesday: Three cheerful-looking African-American men, casual dress, early twenties, in Cancun Taqueria. Offered mole poblano burrito (partially unwrapped and cut into slices, not bitten into). They looked at each other, back at me, back at each other. Two burst out laughing, one so hard that he had to put his head down on the table. Third one grinned, shook his head, and said, “Aw, no thanks, dude.” The three of them ignored me after that, but continued to laugh about it among themselves for the remainder of the time I was there. The one who’d put his head down was laughing so hard that he couldn’t eat, and the others kept doing imitations of me to make him laugh more. Felt some apprehension beforehand this time – I was concerned that they’d think I was a deranged Nazi skinhead engaged in some sort of bizarre race-baiting. Once they laughed, I was relieved. Didn’t particularly mind being laughed at, since I’d brought it on myself.

Thursday: Lone white woman in UC Berkeley sweatshirt, very early twenties, in Saigon Express. This time I was with two friends, whom I hadn’t informed about the experiment. I was looking forward to finding out how my friends would react, and was so focused on that that I wasn’t nervous. Offered plate of vegetarian spring rolls. While the woman was still looking at me in confusion, one of my friends started laughing, which got the other one laughing as well. The woman’s face turned red, and she shook her head sharply. I realized that she thought we were mocking her, so I quickly apologized and explained the experiment to her. She was reasonably good-humored about it, but still seemed a bit wary and uncomfortable – perhaps she thought it was some bizarre way of hitting on her? My friends thought the whole thing was hilarious, but I felt very bad that I’d caused the woman to feel mocked or ganged up on, even just for a few seconds, so I resolved that for the remaining two days, I’d stick to my previous pattern of only conducting my experiments when I was the one who was alone and outnumbered.

Friday: Group of white people, dressed middle-class casual, probably two families – two fortysomething couples, one sixtyish woman, three very active children with an age range of about five to eleven, all sharing a big round table at Long Life Veggie House. Multiple conversations, everyone talking at once and interrupting each other constantly, so I decided to break my taboo against interrupting conversations, based on the “When in Rome” principle. Didn’t feel at all nervous this time. Held out a plate of vegetarian potstickers in their general direction and made the offer loudly to no one in particular. The youngest child made a beeline for the plate. His mother grabbed him and hauled him up onto her lap, saying, “Don’t bother the man, Christopher.” Then she gave me a long-suffering apologetic smile and said, “I’m sorry about that.” Bizarre! Apparently, she’d gotten so used to keeping the kid from "bothering" people, that the whole routine was on autopilot – the idea that I had openly invited the interaction, and that I was the one initiating the disturbance, couldn’t penetrate her awareness, even though it had all happened right in front of her. The two men, meanwhile, hadn’t even looked up from their conversation. I found the whole thing creepy – very Stepford Wives, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I smiled and said, “No, that’s fine” – playing my own part in the autopilot sequence – and went back to eating. I looked for opportunities to sneak a potsticker to the kid later on, but never managed it.

Monday: Two fiftyish white men, struck me as probably a gay couple, short hair, jeans, sweaters, in Tuk Tuk Thai. Offered plate of pumpkin curry, with two pieces of pumpkin intentionally set apart on the edge of the plate nearest them. One raised his eyebrows and looked at me appraisingly but not with hostility; the other smiled and said, “Oh, no thanks.” I smiled back, withdrew the plate, and said, “Pumpkin curry. I recommend it.” “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. We went back to our respective meals, and exchanged smiles as I left. I felt completely at ease throughout the entire interaction, and the two of them seemed to be comfortable as well. Found myself wishing that more people were able to respond to the breaking of social norms in so relaxed and friendly a fashion. Wondered to what extent growing up gay, back when it was a much bigger taboo than it is in the Bay Area today, had contributed to their tolerant attitude. I felt good about the whole thing; felt it was a very happy note on which to end the experiment.

I got an A, by the way.