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We decided to explore the idea of social deviance which is any transgression of socially established
norms There are two forms of deviance: formal deviance, or crime, which involves the violation
of laws and informal deviance, or minor transgressions of these norms We wanted to investigate if
and how people react differently the subsets of deviance, formal and informal. So, we set
up a camera in front of the tower and filmed people's reaction to these two types of deviance.We
primarily used Goffman's theories of impression management to analyze passerby's reactions.
How they "save the face" of the individuals breaking social norms. Through avoidance,
studied non-observance, or the corrective process. first we recorded reactions of somebody
littering which is a type of formal deviance In the first trial people observed the deviant
behavior but did not do anything about it, employing avoidance to save face. One can
even note the girl in the white coat looking back to acknowledge the litter but does nothing
to correct the situation In trial two a group of people practiced avoidance noticing the
litterer but doing nothing, the man in the suit at the end of the clip walks directly
over the trash without acknowledging it, employing studied nonobservance. In trial three several
people still practiced avoidance and studied non observance; however, one person came back
and picked up the trash while saying demeaning comments about the litterer loud enough so
she could hear it, utilizing the corrective process; calling out her deviance in hopes
that she would save face.In the last trial we littered in the middle of a large group
of people and the reactions were much the same, some people practiced studied nonobservance
but the majority used avoidance even pointing out the litterer when his back was turned.
Not bringing his deviant act to his attention to start the corrective process you can note
the lady in the plaid jacket physically pointing at him to her friend off screen.
to test people's reactions to informal deviance we pretended to sleep in front tower In the
first trial the majority of people practice avoidance and studied nonobservance sometimes
glancing over at the sleeper. Notice the person in the grey jacket and blue hat as he quickly
takes a picture of the deviant behavior and the girl in the grey beanie as she does the
same this reinforces the functionalist theory that by stigmatizing the behavior it is less
likely to be repeated the lady in the white jacket asks her if she's
ok trying to correct the situation. In trial two note the man in the black fleece doing
a double-take but not informing the sleeper that they are being deviant. Also note the
lady in the pink backpack stopping to take a picture of the deviant behavior and the
girl in the pink jacket taking a picture and bringing the deviant situation to the attention
of the sleeper In the last trial there were less people around so it was easier to track
the reactions of individual passersby. the lady in the white jacket walks up the individual
appearing to start the corrective process but at the last moment she turns around and
decides against it. In this next clip you can see two individuals taking a picture at
once from different angles employing the functionalist theory that stigmatizing the behavior will
prevent people from doing it in the future. We concluded through our trials that although
except for a few instances most people reacted with avoidance and studied non-observance
to both types of deviance; people reacted uniquely by taking pictures of the informal
devance. At the beginning of the experiment we anticipated more people utilizing the corrective
process, and that there would be a larger reaction to the informal deviance than the
formal deviance. Although there was slightly more reaction to informal deviance; from the
experiment we conducted, there is not a significant difference in people's reaction to informal
versus formal deviance. However we must take into account that our formal deviance was
not extreme and we had a small sample size.