fast bloke

The "Number One" Social Norm

Very few social norms are completely rigid; most are violated, at least occasionally or under special circumstances. Riding in an elevator, for example, people will speak to each other instead of simply looking at the door if they already know their fellow riders. Occasionally, even strangers will strike up conversations during an elevator ride. Other norms, like eating with utensils or not sitting on the table, are sometimes ignored as well. Although the violators may be looked down upon, these violators do exist. However, up to the time of my experiment, I had neither seen nor heard of anyone breaking the strict laws of urinal etiquette. For the benefit of my female readers, I must first try to explain the tacit yet complex code that governs men’s room interactions. Central to urinal etiquette is the ‘veil of silence’ that descends upon men in public bathrooms. Female friends have, on occasion, reported actually speaking to each other between stalls, which is frankly inconceivable in the men’s room environment. Male best friends, or even brothers, upon meeting in the bathroom will usually ignore each other completely, perhaps acknowledging each other with a subtle nod. Strangers in the bathroom will never speak to one another, unless politeness dictates a curt ‘excuse me.’ Even these small recognitions are lost when either party is actually using the urinal. At the urinal, people will not make eye contact, and almost never even look to either side. Usually, while urinating, men look straight ahead, scrutinizing the tiles or wallpaper. Looking down, except when zipping or unzipping, is also frowned upon. Another key aspect of urinal etiquette is that of urinal selection. The rules of selection are most obvious in a nearly empty bathroom. If a man is to enter a standard four urinal bathroom while another man is using one of the end urinals, the first man will usually select the urinal two away from the occupied urinal. Choosing the urinal immediately adjacent to the occupied urinal might be seen as a sexual advance, while choosing the farthest away urinal might be seen as an act of blatant homophobia, or some expression of contempt for the individual already urinating. Knowing this, men entering an empty bathroom will even consciously choose an end urinal so as to make urinal selection as painless as possible for anyone who might enter while the first person was still urinating. In bathrooms of other sizes, and in increasingly crowded bathrooms, even more complex formulas govern urinal selection. However, in all situations, the basic principle of creating distance between individuals applies. This basic principle was the first that I violated. Armed with this knowledge of basic men's room conduct, I set upon my mission of systematically breaching this and each of the other tenets of bathroom behavior.

I began my research in the Commons bathroom, beneath Woolsey Rotunda. This bathroom proved to be an ideal site for field research, since the bathroom is rarely crowded, often used only by one person at a time, but still visited fairly frequently. The bathroom consists of a row of eight urinals, facing four toilet stalls at the far end and a couple of sinks closer to the door. In my first set of trials, I decided to violate the situational norm by selecting a urinal directly next to someone else. I waited by a column in the Rotunda, across from the stairs to the bathroom. When a subject would enter the empty bathroom, I would follow him down several seconds later, and take the urinal immediately next to the one my subject was using. Although the reaction that this caused varied, all of the subjects made small moves to create personal space, rotating slightly to face away from me; several subjects also cleared their throats. However, only in one of my five trials did the person I was next to demonstrate unambiguous discomfort. Within ten seconds of my taking the urinal next to him, he zipped his fly and hurriedly walked out of the bathroom without urinating.

I decided to up the ante in my second set of trials by simultaneously violating a second urinal norm, silence. The normative social influence of the situation was so powerful that I myself felt noticeably uncomfortable during these trials. In this experiment, as in the last one, I followed the subject down and assumed a position next to his. In this set of trials, however, I also addressed the subject with either a quasi-rhetorical remark (‘The weather is really terrible today”) or a direct question (“What are they serving for lunch today?”). None of the four subjects that received the indirect remark responded verbally, but the remark seemed to trigger an even greater level of discomfort than my presence alone. One of the subjects chuckled nervously (similarly to the nervous participants in the Milgram ex[eriment), while another stopped urinating within seconds and walked out quickly without washing his hands. The direct question created an even greater reaction. Perhaps this is because the question brought the norm of urinal etiquette into conflict with conversational norms. Usually, not answering a direct question is considered impolite; in the men’s room, however, the ‘veil of silence’ is rarely broken. In the case of two of the four subjects that I questioned, the conversational norm took precedence. However, while responding, both of these subjects looked deliberately away from me. (It should be noted that, despite speaking, I looked directly ahead for these trials.) The other two subjects, those who ignored my questions, also turned to look away from me.

In my third set of trials, I decided to break the third major principal of urinal etiquette by looking at my subjects. Although I intended to run four trials this way as well, I ended up running only two. The second subject, a middle aged physical plant worker, reacted so strongly that I decided to terminate this part of the experiment (mostly for my own safety). The first subject responded to my glances in a manner similar to that of the subjects in the previous set of trials. He coughed nervously, rotated away from me, and left the bathroom very quickly after finishing. The second subject, however, confronted me directly. “You little ****** – what the **** are you looking at?” he exclaimed. In this trial, I was the one beating a hasty retreat! Fortunately, I escaped unscathed, and with a greater appreciation of the strength of the social norm of urinal etiquette.

Obviously, the normative social influence of urinal etiquette is quite strong. The more interesting question is why. In my opinion, the source of these norms is the biologically driven instinct of self preservation. Culturally, we are conditioned to feel most exposed when naked; pants unzipped, using the urinal, people feel particularly vulnerable. Without any physical divide between the urinal user and others, the urinal user creates personal space in an effort to feel safe. This space can be both physical, in the sense of choosing urinals farther away from each other, and cognitive, by ignoring all of the social norms that acknowledge another’s existence (i.e. eye contact or conversation). Unlike in other social situations, where an invasion of personal space would simply trigger movement away to reestablish a comfortable boundary, the urinal user is fairly stationary. Except for shifting body orientation, there is very little that can be done to reestablish personal space once that space has been violated. This explains the stronger reactions from the subjects that I spoke to or looked at; their personal space violated once physically, violating their cognitive personal space moments later constituted an inescapable double invasion. Clearly, the issue of personal space is at the root of urinal behavior

To gather further support for this theory, I decided to run one further trial. This time, I used the bathroom next to Davies Auditorium. This bathroom is smaller than the Commons bathroom, with only three urinals, all of which are separated physically by wood dividers. In the four trials I executed in this bathroom, I also took a urinal next to the subject, and again addressed the subject with the same quasi-rhetorical remark as before (“The weather is really terrible today.”). In this case, however, three of the four subjects responded (as compared to none in the Commons experiment). The subjects here, even the one that did not respond, showed relatively lower levels of discomfort. Also, until I spoke, none of the subjects appeared nervous or uncomfortable at all. In this situation, the physical wooden dividers between the urinals created the personal space lacking in most urinal situations, thereby negating the strong reactions usually caused by my urinal etiquette violations. Such results support the theory of bathroom behavior as an attempt to generate personal space, perhaps driven by the desire for safety.

fast bloke

Now for the test


http://www.youfunny.com/funpages/f-48.htm


Opps - just realised I've got me forum etiquette wrong..... mods - feel free to boot this to the MF where it should be

muppet paster

Muppet!