For this assignment I broke the space bubble and the eye avoidance rules. I pushed passed the boundaries in concern to these rules with two of my close friends, one being a female, the other male. I bring up their gender because I feel like their reactions were a bit different concerning one rule due to it, because of what “rules” and “norms” society has instilled within them.
I was walking around campus with my female friend and decided to start this experiment by walking close to her and linking arms with her. Unfortunately this did not result in much of a reaction, we are best friends, so it did not come from left field. We ended up going to a small coffee shop on Broad Street, and when we sat down in a huge booth I sat right next to her. She looked at me, trying to figure out what I was doing but kept on with the conversation. Also, throughout the conversation I would not hold eye contact with her. I would glance her way but never look right at her. I’m sure this gave off an air of me not caring what she was talking about, or I was busy thinking about other things. I could tell she was not being her normal, comfortable self around be because I was acting weird. I might have been engaging in conversation in regards to verbal communication, but it was clear something else was going on under the conversation. She was distracted throughout the conversation. After a while she just asked me what on earth I was doing and I explained to her about the project.
I was hanging out with one of my guy friends at my apartment. When he came in and sat down I sat right next to him, normally I’d on the other side of the coach or in a different chair. He looked at me weird, and tried to continue to have a normal conversation with me. I could tell that he was extremely uncomfortable, he had no idea what I was doing. On top of that I kept avoiding eye contact with him which made the situation extremely awkward. I slowing watched my friend shut down. He did not know how to address he situation so his responses became shorter and shorter till our conversation dissolved. I finally had pity on him and told him about the assignment. His reaction, I believe, was relatively normal. Most guys I’ve been around are a bit standoffish to physical closeness other than with a partner; then adding my lack of eye contact which caused him to be unable to read my nonverbal cues through facial features, really took him out of his comfort zone.
I believe I would react much in the same way as my second friend, unless I was really close to the other individual and could pick up relatively quick that they are messing with me. With the spacial bubble I believe we are all aware that unless you are close friends with someone and physical closeness is a norm in your friendship you will make the other participant in the conversation uneasy. Also, physical closeness (as in sitting close to each other, grabbing ones arm, hugging) is something that is usually built up to in friendship, for me it has progressed as the friendship does. I felt that the the eye avoidance rule revealed the most to me. Before this project when I thought of people not making eye contact I thought of two things, either the person is really shy, or two the person is being rude. I had never given much thought as to what was occurring in the middle of that spectrum. Now I see that eye avoidance can hurt people and put them in such an uncomfortable situation that they shut down. This assignment was useful because now we have experiences to go with these rules. Everyone has heard the theory that sometimes you have to have that bad experience to really learn the lesson instead of just being told not to do it. This assignment goes right along with that; I feel like we really know why these rules are in place now that we have seen how breaking them can negatively effect our friends.
When looking for a video for this entry I found this video on how to keep conversations going. It mentions the importance of eye contact, how that can lead to trust. Its just a short video that summarizes several things we have talked about it class.
Great entry, it sounds like you had an interesting experience and learned much. The clip is also great too.
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