Stereotypes is a form of social norms. Stereotypes can be define as one type of assumption given to a particular groups whereby the assumptions made are just based on the basic or prior assumptions. According to Forsyth (1999), a prescriptive norm involves certain behavior that people should perform. For those people or individuals that violated the norms practiced by that particular society or groups, they are considered as bad person. This is what we trying to examine. We wanted to figure out the responds given by our target groups. How they looking at our approach, and if they are giving responds out of it, what would it be. "It is through them (social controls) that human society regulates the behavior of its members in such ways that they perform activities fulfilling societal needs," (Davis, 1948). A study before was conducted by Brauer and his friends (Brauer et al., 2001) about the factors that increases or decreases the likelihood that bystanders will apply social control. Thus, our purpose in conducting this experiments is to know how the target response towards our attitude when we doing something that against the norms.
For our social psychology experiment we decided to test if talking loud in a quiet environment will get people to respond to that break in the social-norm. Our job was to go inside a library and start to talk loudly at the person which is one of us. Our experiment proved that social norms can sometimes be difficult to break successfully. This experiment helps us prove the power of social norms, social roles, stereotyping, and fundamental attribution error.
In our experiment, we did not have a control group, but even so, we still analyzed the end result of the experiment group to just the social norm. The social norm in a library would be to be quiet and not bring much attention to yourself. But when you break that social norm, most people will start to stare at you or will just give you a quick look.
