Sociology class performs social experiments

Sociology is a class offered to seniors and instructed by Abby Maska.

As an assignment, members of the class had to perform their own social experiment in order to see what reactions they’d get from people.

Senior Jace Armstrong chose to do his experiment over people’s reactions when he ate food off of their plates or from their hands.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8GwNU5sRZY&feature=youtu.be

Armstrong said he was required to preform the experiment three times in different public situations.

“The weirdest place to do my experiment was in McDonald’s,” Armstrong said. “There were a lot of people and I was trying to complete it without bringing too much attention to myself.”

Armstrong chose to do his study at McDonald’s, his home and the school cafeteria.

“We have social norms to keep people content,” Armstrong said.

Senior Cassy Quinby and her partner, senior Jacob Alexander, also participated in the experiment.

“Our experiment was not wearing shoes in public places,” Quinby said. “We walked around without shoes on at Walmart, Dillions and here at Hays High.”

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Quinby said she didn’t receive the reactions she was expecting to.

“Our best reaction that we received was when a lady noticed and then she turned around and looked again and then she started laughing,” Quinby said.

From this experiment, Quinby said she learned that it was more uncomfortable for her to break a social norm than for others to see her breaking a social norm.

“Not many people notice when other people aren’t wearing shoes,” Quinby said.

 

Seniors Raina Basso and Peyton Augustine did their social experiment over standing in restaurants to eat instead of sitting.

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“It was really hard to do this,” Augustine said. “We got a bunch of weird looks, and some of the people even looked angry.”

Seniors Kara Brooks and Hannah Unrien decided their social study would be over hugging people as a greeting.

Everyone was hardcore judging me,

— senior Kara Brooks

“The weirdest place we did the experiment was at Starbucks in the Union,” Brooks said. “I ordered a cake pop and then walked around the counter to give the barista a hug. There was a long line behind me and I had to walk past them all to get behind the counter. I thanked her for the cake pop and told her to have a good night and she was super flustered.”