Activity 7 - Nonverbal Activities

I thought this "experiment" was really fun! I've taken Jen's nonverbal class so I kind of thought that our activity would be something like this. I thought that it was going to be really hard to mess with people that I new, but it really was not that hard. Many of the people that I messed with had no idea what I was doing until after I debriefed them. After I told them that it was for a class and that I was not just a weirdo they were a little bit more understanding.

I started by doing the "Back Me Up" activity. I really thought that I could do this to several people to get the response I wanted. I ended up doing this activity at work. with my boss. I thought that it would be really funny to do this with my boss because I knew that he would have no idea what I was doing - so he would be the perfect person. That's what I thought, but he was actually not the perfect person. When we were having a conversation at work, I turned myself so that his back was to the wall. Then I proceeded to inch closer to him while we were talking. Every time I moved closer, he moved back toward the wall. I did not have to move to many times before he gave me a look - a look that was asking me "what the heck are you doing?" Once he gave me this look, I had to tell him what I was doing. After I told him this, he understood and thought that it was funny.

I did the first eye contact activity first. My cousin is visiting my family this week so he knows that I am not weird. When we started our conversation, I began using eye contact in a completely normal way. I thought I was, but I am a person who naturally uses eye contact a lot. At first he did not even notice that I was doing this but after a while he started to try and avoid my gaze. I kept moving so that he would continue to notice that I was trying to keep eye contact with him. Soon, he started to look at me as if I was doing something wrong. I had to debrief him then and tell him that I was doing this for school. He did not find it as weird then.

The last activity I also did while I was at work with one of my guy friends because I wanted to see if a guy would pay attention to something like this. When the conversation began, I used eye contact. I quickly started looking around and at the floor so that I was not looking at him. I was surprised at how quickly he caught on that I was not keeping eye contact. It did not even take him two minutes. He wanted to know what I was doing because as I said before I usually keep eye contact with the person with whom I am talking to. First he asked me if I was feeling alright. I told him I was and he then proceeded to ask me if why I was avoiding him. I had to debrief him after that because I knew he was confused.

I thought these activities were really interesting because people really had know idea what I was doing. I thought it was fun to see their reactions before I explained what I was doing and also fun to see their reactions after I explained.

What was the outcome of your "experiments?
Did you find that people were alright with the activities that you were doing to them.
How did they react after you debriefed them?