Sociology Experiment!

We worked on a sociology experiment, largley involving deviant behavior and what the public would do in response. I had a small group that held up free signs during the day at about 11:30 and dressed in out of the dorm outfits, dressed in "goth" or eclectic outfits to get attention and walked into a Subway that we filmed with people's responses to the girls outfits, their behavior and reactions over two days of filming. I have three other videos currently in my camera, but the first video had trouble loading.

Government/Sociology
Social Experiments

Purpose: How do members of our community respond to deviant behavior?
Research Problem/Question: The basic question my group addressed was: If you held up a sign with the words ‘Free Hugs’ on it would people respond and take you up on it? In addition, we made it more complicated by dressing Heidi in a punk fashion, boots, and purple netting arm cuffs with a black shirt and purple pants, making her entire outfit purple and black and Taylor dressed as a preppy person in a collared shirt and jeans. The question thus became more detailed and complicated when we added those elements and it became not only; would people respond to a free hugs sign? But if they do, who would get more hugs? Taylor dressed as a prep or Heidi dressed as punk?
There would be no downside to leaving this question unresolved, just an upside to people’s day and an increase of positive time instead of that lack of time that was wasted by bothering both the unsuspecting few people who had the misfortune of passing by my group and I as we made their day stranger.
The purpose of our research was exploratory, to find out how the public would respond and even if they would notice. It was an exploration into the fact that if you stand on the side of peoples world’s with something that wasn’t quite normal, Would they notice? Would they respond?
Operation: The variables to consider are the ones written above, the difference in a person’s dress and the oddness of the out of the norm ‘Free Hugs’ sign. My group and I, which as a spur of the moment decision became Sam, Taylor, Heidi and I, a collaboration of an unlikely group due to different circumstances. I believe this affected the experiment because we could have collaborated more and been friendlier attracting more people instead of awkwardly trying to perform this experiment instead of ignoring each other or pairing into pairs.
We walked from High Tech High International to the nearest shopping center which consisted of Subway, a Mexican restaurant, Starbucks, a wine bar, Oggi’s, a massage parlor and TCBY Berrio, a frozen yogurt shop. Taylor and Heidi stood side by side holding the free hugs sign as Sam recorded observations on paper and I filmed what we saw on my digital camera. We also had Taylor and Heidi walk into Subway and order sandwiches as I recorded the people’s reactions to seeing them. Heidi danced around while waiting in line for her sandwich, which yielded little if any results or reactions from people other then the Subway employees with whom had to look at Heidi and Taylor because it was their job to get orders for sandwiches, and add items to sandwiches while communicating with people without judgment. In other words, no one looked except one person that Taylor claims. We intended results but instead ended up in a fairly controversial conclusion over results which some of us believed that there were people that looked, and others believed that there were few if any that even noticed or bothered to look at them.
Hypothesis: (Before you tested) Our hypothesis was that people would respond to the Free Hugs sign and choose either Taylor or Heidi by hugging one of them more then the other.
Independent vs. dependent variables?
A main component and variable involved in this experiment was that we chose a shopping center in the afternoon, (a prime spot to disrupt the normal environment that occurred there and crossed people’s days) that we were sure would be busy with businessmen and women. My self developed guess was that people would look at the girls strangely but choose Taylor for hugs as opposed to Heidi because to me, it seemed as though Heidi’s style of dress would have intimidated the public because she wore dark colors in full daylight and the way she appeared it seemed to the average passerby that she wasn’t very nice or that she was a very independent person. So my self developed guess was that Taylor would be the one to get more hugs because she was in simple colors and a ‘nicer’ mode of dress.
Research Methods – Mode of Observation: We used a digital camera and a notebook to record our observations. We also used participant observation by recording what people’s reaction’s were to Taylor and Heidi’s dress and strange sign, which ended up recording no noticeable results by anyone. Our sociology experiment was also experimental, although thought of at the last minute we wanted to see how people would react. Our experiment ended up being a dud, however, because we should have chosen more of a crowded environment in order to get more results. The type of people we chose was not selective, we were willing to have anyone in the public come up to us, in otherwise, and we chose the entire population as our main objective to observe. We ended up focusing on a smaller amount of people or small sample in the local Subway in that little shopping center and mainly chose to focus on the subway employees reactions and the people in the restaurant, which as I have stated previously ended up becoming controversial amongst our small, but seemingly divided group later on as we discussed our observations and results.
Findings (Analysis and Interpretation): Instead of people coming up to hug either of the girls, they were both ignored. It is well known that people shy away from what intimidates them and what they don’t know. That is why I think, besides bothering and interrupting their day, no one wanted to hug either of them (the girls) as a hug is a physical touch and something personal to the majority of people. It doesn’t matter if they are “free”, no one wanted to get that close strangers, especially on their lunch hour. That is my logical analysis and interpretation basically that by observing the quietness and the fact that they were alone without any attention from passersby backs up my theory and that probably having someone with a pink camera standing near them recording, but appearing to be taking an everlasting picture didn’t help the hypothesis by attracting people but rather drove them away.
Summary and Conclusions: In all fairness I believe an important variable to consider is by choosing people’s lunch hour or rather the hour following, was not the right time to go for the experiment. We were given class time on a Thursday afternoon for one hour to complete this sociology experiment. While I am not complaining, I believe that we should probably have gone downtown to test our hypothesis as the lunch hour at which businessmen and women have more of an ambiguous lunch hour and passersby frequently walk around town. Whereas unbeknownst to our group the area we chose had people quickly leaving back to their offices and scarcely noticing us or looking our way.
As I have stated previously in my interpretations and observations during our experiment, I believe that it did not turn out the way it was supposed to because we chose the wrong time of day, we were in the wrong type of environment, with the wrong type of people, in a shopping center with just a few fast food restaurants and a massage parlor where not many people leave or enter during the day except their lunch hour and both teenagers and kids were at school. We had a limited amount of people to have members of the community respond to our deviant behavior that really wasn’t all that bad. I believe that the results relate to social policy and the greater world beyond academia because it teaches us, or rather should teach those who believe in humility and respect that just because you choose to wake up in the morning or become deviant and bother civilians that the majority of public does not respond well to people who try to bother them or interfere in their day and daily routines. It does nothing but bother people to try and be “deviant”. What is the purpose in that? Why bother people? In the name of sociology and experiments, scientists and sociologists should have enough respect for people not to bother the public by forcing them to become part of an experiment that exploits their daily lives when they are least expecting it and only telling them that they were in an experiment after the results and observations are obtained.
I feel personally, that if you are a sociologist and someone that wants to get the attention of the people in your town that it should be for something big and important that affects more then one person with the amounts of people participating. Recording the amount of people who show up to support a cause by running in a marathon and recording their reactions of the cause they are so dedicated for, recording the reactions of patients in a hospital when volunteer groups come in or the emotions of volunteers helping out would be a great test and experiment of who they people are that choose to help out, what do they get out of this, what do the patients receive when they smile at visitors, what are the emotions in a crowd at a protest for and against their passions and something they stand for, what are the reactions of people who witness protests and speeches like the one that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke which according to many documentaries affected many people.
In conclusion, I felt that this experiment was absolutely pointless, further proving my original thoughts that you shouldn’t bother someone’s day, no one wins, no one is happy, it just bothers people. I believe that it was a ridiculous assignment. While I enjoy writing, this should have been more of an ambiguous social experiment with more then 2 hours. I believe that if you are studying the people and reactions of the public, it should be historical and affect those who watch the results. An example of that is the reaction that was given by the classmates of mine who watched a documentary about the violence against blacks that occurred in the 60’s by police. Watching the reactions of people that were being beaten and hurt, but, seeing the victims smile as they got arrested really was a true test of their character and it was on filmed on camera. No one told the mass of people to remain resilient and determined, they just were, but, the documentation on film, underscored the message that future generations were able to see that no matter what hardships they face, even when they think that no one cares or no one is watching, that a person’s, anyone’s reaction matter a great deal in sociology, just in the right context.
If I was the head of a federal agency, I feel that partaking in sociology experiments by disrupting society would be a waste of my time, talents, federal money and an absurdly misdirected exercise. Unfortunately, while personally I feel that filming can elicit positive results and feedback in the right context, the U.S government would not know what to do with these results if they had commissioned this type of study.