I’m working on a sociology question and need guidance to help me study.

Social interaction represents one of the central building blocks of society. Despite being unscripted, these interactions have strict unwritten rules. Breaking those rules, or being deviant, is a critical way of discovering what the norms are and what is the range of reactions to norm violations. Before you begin, please review the section on “Values, Norms, and Sanctions” in the Culture chapter and take a look at page 436 in the textbook(“Encounters with Strangers”), particularly the concept of “civil inattention”.

You will conduct an exercise that violates social norms and write a short paper about the experience. This exercise may be performed alone or in a group (of your choice) of four or fewer participants. **The norm violation can not include illegal activities or those that might risk someone’s safety, health, or well-being (i.e., violating masking requirements in a pandemic). In addition, don’t complete breaches where the violation is that you make someone else sad or angry (ex. telling your friend they look ugly, etc.) because that is mean. ** In our current pandemic world, I would strongly encourage you to conduct your breach on social media, such as something that defies our new norms of online courses, such as brushing your teeth during Zoom class. If conducting your experiment as a group, each group member will perform the breach once. When not performing the breach, the other group members should observe the interaction and write an observation log documenting people’s reactions to the breach. After completing your breach, you should write a brief research report that discusses your research and what you found. You may conduct your breach as part of a group, but each person must individually write and submit a research report.

RUBRIC