Nonverbal Communication

2 Pages 474 Words

The location I chose to perform my violation of a cultural norm was in an elevator. I used the elevator that is located in my dormitory’s building. After trying to decide which cultural norm to experiment with, I came to the conclusion to invade someone else’s space. The plan I created was to move closer to someone, in the elevator, than the normal space required, while communicating with this person.
It was real difficult to engage in this kind this behavior. I have never performed an action similar to this one. People assume that other people will respect and follow the normal rules to communication. It took all my power to make myself break one of those rules. I have to say, however, I was real anxious to see how the person was going to react. Having never performed this action before, I had no idea what to expect or how the person was going to act.
The reaction of the person I performed my experiment on was one that I could have anticipated. When I first began to move closer to the person they performed no reaction. They showed no look that they acknowledge my changed behavior. After noticing this I decided to move even closer to the person. This time the person saw that I invade their space and took a small step back. Even though I didn’t know what to expect form this experiment, I had an idea that the initial reaction by the person would be to move back. I wasn’t satisfied with the person just moving back. I wanted the person to show a more defined reaction that would show they didn’t appreciate what I was doing. After the person stepped back, I took a step towards them once again. The person repeated the same movement they did before. I decided to take one more step forward and the person reacted verbally. The person, who had no idea who I was, asked me “what the heck I was doing.” At this point I could tell this person wasn’t pleased with me, and I decided to explain my experiment to them. The person�...