Many things factor into the power of social norms to guide and restrict our behavior. In class we walked about social customs influencing our behavior. As stated before, there is an unspoken custom that strangers should not walk pace for pace next to each other. One person either has to speed up and go at a faster pace or slow down and go at a slower pace. Another thing we talked about in class was normative influence and avoiding punishment. In this case, I felt awkward when I walked next to people because they would later ask me if I was ok. This is not a harsh punishment, but being called out and assumed to be creepy, made me conform and say it was for a psychology project. In this experiment, I was able to adjust and get used to the norm violation because there wasn’t any group pressure like we talked about in class.
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