Breaching experiment

In the fields of sociology and social psychology, a breaching experiment is an experiment that shows how people react when commonly accepted social norms or rules are broken. Breaching experiments show that people react in "unexpected" ways when social norms are broken. They allow to observe different kinds of social reactions when norms are broken. These experiments are also about being able to see and describe the social structure that makes these social reactions possible.^[1] The idea of studying the violation of social norms and the accompanying reactions is used in both sociology and psychology today.

The approach assumes that people make new "rules" for social interactions every day and that they are not aware of it.^[2] Erving Goffman published work that allows to study the construction of everyday social meanings and behavioral norms. His method involves breaking unstated but universally accepted rules. Harold Garfinkel extended this idea. He developed ethnomethodology as a qualitative research method for social scientists. In the 1970s and 80s, famous social psychologist Stanley Milgram developed two experiments to observe and quantify responses to breaches in social norms to empirically analyze reactions to violation of those norms.^[3][4]

1. ↑ Rafalovich, Adam (2006). "Making sociology relevant: The assignment and application of breaching experiments". Teaching Sociology. 34 (2): 156–163. doi:10.1177/0092055X0603400206.
2. ↑ Ritzer, George. 1996. “Ethnomethodology.” Pp. 373-399 in Sociological Theory. 4th Ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill| ISBN 0078111676
3. ↑ Stanley, Milgram; Sabini, John (1978). "Advances in environmental psychology 1, the urban environment". In Baum, A.; Singer, J.E.; Valins, S. (eds.). On maintaining social norms: A field experiment in the subway. Erlbaum Associates. pp. 31–40. ISBN 978-0898593716.
4. ↑ Milgram, Stanley; Liberty, Hilary; Toledo, Raymond; Blacken, Joyce (1986). "Response to intrusion in waiting lines". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 51 (4): 683–689. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.51.4.683.