Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Blog 1- Pre- Experiment Blog Entry

My social science experiment is going to be breaking a social norm. The experiment I am going to conduct is one where I am going to take the elevator but I am going to stand backwards and face the back wall instead of the door which is what is usually done the normal way. This will be my experimental group. I will then compare my results to a controlling group where I will stand the right way. I am going to be doing this in an apartment building elevator across the street from mine where I will take the elevator for four floors before starting again.

My results are going to be evaluated by comparing them against the social norm of standing the right way. I am going to see how people react as oppose to me standing facing the right way. I will compare my results to the controlling group. My outcome will be measured with the people’s reactions how they react to me standing that way. I will be looking for reactions such as staring, getting looks, even laughter or questioned by someone. I will monitor five different groups by doing the experiment five different times. The control group for this experiment will be the group where I stand the right way facing the door this is the group which will be compared to the experimental group that will get the variable where I will face the back wall instead of the door.

My variable for this experiment will be me standing the wrong way. My hypothesis for this experiment is that even if I stand the wrong way in the elevator and go against the social norm then people still won’t really react. I expect the outcome to still be the same as me standing the right way which wouldn’t get any reactions. I believe this will be the results because of the fact that the people in N.Y.C. tend to mind there own business and not really react to actions that go against the social norms because the environment has made them like that and because they have seen even worse. I believe the people in question who are being monitored affects the experiment and changes the results.

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