Violating the Norms

Hi y'all!

It's been a while, hope everyone enjoyed their fall breaks! I've been good, just chugging on through classes and the usual routine, but I took some time this week to break from that routine, and I went boldly where most men usually don't go...not actually, but I did violate a social norm! So after studying the still face paradigm and how it affects babies, I thought, "hey, why not give this a try on people my own age!" Humans rely on social cues to adapt to various situations, and so i was curious to see what would happen when you take those social cues away.

In order to do this, I kept a straight face for as long as possible during my interactions with friends. This included:

• no smiling
• no nodding
• blank stares
• subtle hints of apathy with body language

and what I found out went a little something like this...I would first engage the person normally, so as to get a conversation going, then, as soon as they started explaining something to me or telling me a story I became stonewall Jackson, not a single emotion showed on my face, no response was given. Before the switch to still-face, the other person was speaking normally, but then all of a sudden, realized that I was not giving any reaction to the, "cool," things they had to say. This manifested itself in the following ways:

• slowed speech
• lowering of eyebrows
• looks of confusion 
• jittery movements
• loss of eye contact
• early termination of interaction

This was pretty constant across everyone I did this too. When we stop reacting to people, and they lose those social cues, people tend to be at a loss. The cool thing is though, after going still face, once I reverted back to normal, the conversation was able to continue as it normally had before the switch. I did get cursed at by some of my closer friends, but that is the cost of science! 

Anyway, hope all of you are well and have a great week!

Best,

Chris :)