By Tiffany Burhoe Wilson
The aisles of Costco are crowded, carts filled with bulk food, and the sample vendors are setting out their bite-sized morsels.
A man stands by one of those tables, in his twenties, clean cut and looking like a college student, eating a sample.
He finishes his first sample of Costco Chicken Salad, reaches down and grabs another sample. And another. And another.
He continues to eat more and more samples from the same stand.
The employee behind the counter doesn’t say anything.
Jeff Mann, a senior majoring in Psychology, is the very man who ate his fill of Costco Chicken Salad samples.
He did this for a psych 350 class assignment: do something to break a social norm.
“I was pretty nervous at first, I didn’t really know what would happen,” he said. “After I went for the first sample, that is when the nerves started kicking in.”
People’s reactions were not what he was expecting, he said.
“[The employee] didn’t give me a funny look; it was as if it was normal,” Mann said. “I didn’t notice anybody look at me funny or ask me questions.”
He said that after he had done his, he felt he could do anything.
“I think norms restrict them only to the point that they are afraid,” he said. “If you don’t care what [people] think of you, then you won’t follow the social norms.”
Martha Harper, a junior majoring in psychology, violated personal space to fulfill her assignment. She said when she first met someone, she would kiss them on each cheek.
“I felt weird violating the norm,” she said. “But at least I got a laugh out of it.”
The next time she ran into a person the second time, they kissed her on the cheek in greeting.
“I learned that social norms play a bigger role in our lives than we think, in the way we act. It was interesting to see how much of our lives are dictated by society.”
Because of this assignment, she thinks of things more critically now, she said.
“I think just about anyone should [violate social norms] Social norms in a lot of ways restrict us from doing things,” she said. “We don’t step out of our box, or our comfort zone because that is not what you do.”
Social norms are the accepted ways of doing things, that aren’t written down, said Matt Spackman, a BYU psychology professor.
“We are usually not aware of the norms,” he said. “The assignment is designed [to help] students recognize that these norms are out there, and how powerful they are.”
Student’s don’t realize how hard the assignment is, until they try to violate a norm, he said, because these norms dictate our behavior so strongly.
I learned that when people do things that is out of the ordinary, the average bystander is not going to know what to do, what to say or how to react, said Mann.
“I have gone back to Costco and eaten more than one sample,” he said.
