Of all of the activities that we have had to do for this class, this one has been the most uncomfortable for me. I am not the type of person who is good at initiating conversation to begin with, and my goals in communication tend to be involved in keeping harmony; except in academic discussions I tend to get very forceful in those. The entire idea of intentionally making people uncomfortable did not sit very well with me. I tend to have a hard time interpenetrating nonverbal behavior, in the correct time frame for an appropriate action, and as such my responses tend to be off or too delayed, and it makes things uncomfortable. The entire idea of adding more unease to that was drastically unpleasant.
However, an assignment is an assignment, so I went ahead. The first conversation that I had was with a very good friend whom I shall call friend B. For this one I chose to do the two minute stare. I chose to do this one because with this friend it wouldn't turn unpleasant, but would end up being hilarious. She noticed withing the first 30 seconds that I was staring and in response began to stare back. It ended up being a staring contest where we were trying to get the other to crack up and we both succeeded. The staring started across a table and ended up with her pulling her chair in close and with our faces almost nose to nose. After the contest that had developed ended I told her about the assignment and she listened for a sentence and then started talking about her job which she hates.
This one went well, but I also chose a friend that I knew would think of the assignment as a game and think nothing of it. Anyone else would have been really unnerved, especially coming form me, as I am far more likely to make too little eye contact as opposed to too much.
The second conversation was with another friend, friend M. This was the no eye contact conversation. She noticed this quickly and kept asking me if everything was all right. This ended up being the entire rest of the conversation, was her asking me to tell her what was wrong. When I debriefed her, she laughed in a relieved fashion and then got angry about making her think that something was wrong. The anger lasted for only a few moments and then she asked me to tell her all about the class.
This conversation felt really lousy. The lack of eye contact really disturbed my friend and worse made her worry about me. It did not feel good to mess with someone and upset them, even if it was for a class.
The third conversation was with my roommate. This was the try and back someone into corner conversation. It didn't work. My roommate kept moving forward subtly as well, so she would get too close and then step back and it ended up being that I just got really close and she asked what the heck I was doing. At that point it had been two minutes and I told her. She was alright with it, but really unhappy about that being an assignment.
This assignment has easily been one of the most uncomfortable things that I have ever been asked to do. I really do not like to add to my natural social awkwardness. However it was interesting to see different reactions, most people that I encountered were only grudgingly accepting of it as an assignment and the other honestly didn't care.
What kinds of reactions did you encounter when trying out this assignment?
What do you think that the reactions tell us about nonverbal normative behavior?
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The person I did it on was a friend of mine, so at first she thought I was nuts. She kept looking at me like what the heck are you doing. It was pretty funny and gave us a good laugh. I think peoples reactions are interesting they look at us like were nuts and they cant figure out what we are doing. If I was put in that situation I would stop what was going on, and walk away probably.
ReplyDeletePeople naturally have a personal bubble. When you enter it, people have all sorts of differant responses. Just because they are out of the norm, other people are in discomfort to. I did do an activity in a class once where first you were across the room and trying to have a conversation. Then you moved three steps closer. Then elbow to elbow and the last step was to hold a conversation with the person with your toes touching. I did not know my partner and he was the opposite sex so it was really reallyu uncomftorable.
ReplyDeleteI expected dramatic reactions and was surprised at how hard it was too make people feel comfortable. Apparently, people I know don't care about my invading their personal space. I guess that's a good thing, but it didn't give me a lot of good writing material.
ReplyDeleteI think if I had read this assignment prior to work and tested it out there, this would have been a whole different ball game. I think people are more space conscious at work. Although, we are packed so tight in the teacher's lounge that I don't think you could offend someone during lunch time. Doing this assignment in a classroom, hallway or at another teacher's desk might have provided more dramatic results.
Because I tried the three different experiments on a good friend, I don’t know how accurate her reactions were to them. She knows the amount of eye contact I always give her while she’s talking and anything different than that, was somewhat alarming to her.
ReplyDeleteThe reactions we found demonstrate the importance of nonverbal communication. My friend shut down and gave up on a story she was telling because I was not looking at her while she told it.
I tried this assignment with my best friend from college. She came over to my home to sleep because she missed the last train. I was on my bed and she was on futon on the floor. We were going to sleep but kept talking. I stared at her then and I talked and she was listening to me. I couldn't help laughing because I felt wierd and she asked me what was funny. But I didn't tell what was going on until I finished doing that for two minutes. She said she felt that I was looking at her too much but she didn't get mad. She told me that it was kind of OK because she thought I really wanted to tell her something important.
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