Social Norm Violation: Unresponsive Listener Essay Sample

For this experiment I chose violating conversation norms to evaluate the reactions of others. Normally when people converse, they expect the listener(s) to give indications that they are understanding the words and ideas of the speaker. This includes head nodding or uttering sounds such as ‘hmm’, ‘aha’ or saying ‘I see’, ‘OK’, ‘Really?’ etc. I planned to break this norm and be an unresponsive listener. It felt awkward to break this norm, as I immediately sensed the difficulty in going against the custom. People react to listener’s reactions and comments to keep the flow of conversation. In this case, there were not any, and this deeply impacted the way my friend was telling me about his method of study. From an ethical standpoint, it did not feel ‘right’ to break this norm as it limited the speaker’s ability to communicate. I was anxious to see his reaction and feared that he might think that I was not feeling right. My friend kept stressing on one sentence, even repeated it several times because in his perception I was not understanding him. He was constantly looking at my face for gestures of approval. When I did not give him any he became frustrated and thought I was not paying attention. I received negative sanction because he finished the talk earlier than normal and went to talk to another friend. He did not receive what he was expecting and in a way he punished me by closing his talk. I repeated this experiment with a female friend and received almost similar response. The reaction for violating this norm is the same across both genders. Being deviant in this way was very uncomfortable for me, it was almost unnatural to violate this norm. It was evident from this experiment that it would be extremely difficult to hold normal conversations if I violate this norm.