{"id":34089,"date":"2011-03-04T13:41:58","date_gmt":"2011-03-04T18:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=34089"},"modified":"2013-11-14T04:33:23","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T09:33:23","slug":"doing-nothing-an-experiment-in-norm-breaking-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/03\/04\/doing-nothing-an-experiment-in-norm-breaking-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Doing Nothing: An Experiment in Norm Breaking"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nWhat is a norm? \u00a0How important is it that we follow them? \u00a0And what happens when we break one?<\/p>\n

Nathan Palmer, a lecturer at Georgia Southern University and founder of the blog Sociology Source<\/a>, recruited his entire class of 262 students to go into the world and do nothing (an idea he borrowed from Karen Bettez Halnon<\/a>). \u00a0It was sort of like a flash mob in which absolutely nothing happens.<\/p>\n

Palmer’s aim was to reveal a norm (in this case, that we all must always be doing something<\/em>), expose his students to the feelings one has when breaking a norm (even a consequence-less one like this), and show them the range of reactions that observers have to norm breaking. \u00a0And he recorded the whole thing for us:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Read Palmer’s entire write-up of the experiment at Sociology Source<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is a norm? \u00a0How important is it that we follow them? \u00a0And what happens when we break one? Nathan Palmer, a lecturer at Georgia Southern University and founder of the blog Sociology Source, recruited his entire class of 262 students to go into the world and do nothing (an idea he borrowed from Karen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,403],"class_list":["post-34089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-deviance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34089"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59050,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34089\/revisions\/59050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}