Sociology of Deviant Behavior

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Even though this experiment was very strange and very obnoxious, it was a perfect portrayal of deviant behavior. I’m sure those three young ladies did not expect that to happen while they were trying to relieve themselves. I felt bad putting them through such uncomfortableness, but the outcome after every trial was even more interesting than the other. I’ve seen the three young ladies around campus a couple of times and they all avoid eye contact with me. I came to the conclusion that they never had something like that done to them, they were so used to people waiting outside of the stall or moving to the next stall over. They weren’t used to the invasion of privacy in a public setting like the school bathroom.

As I was performing my deviant act, I noticed that it definitely goes hand in hand with stage six of Adler & Adler’s seven stages of deviant identity career, where one is treated differently after their deviant behavior is viewed negatively. The three young ladies avoiding eye contact with me, not speaking to me, and just their reactions during the experiment in general proved that they viewed my act of deviance negatively. Also Lemert’s break down of secondary deviance where one commits a deviant act and such acts are reacted to by others as deviant relates to my experiment as well. I’m sure the girls automatically thought something was wrong with me once I started banging on their bathroom stalls, they all knew that it was not normal and very inappropriate. The backlash from this experiment was very unpleasant and it did make me very uncomfortable knowing that I made those girls uncomfortable, but it did amaze me how quickly I was classified as strange or deviant.