Different people throughout the world exhibit divergent behaviors as well as cultural orientations because of their different backgrounds and upbringings. For instance, some cultures such as the Italian’s and German’s consider the shaking of hands and kissing as an important element in expressing one’s appreciation towards others.
On the other hand, hand shaking and kissing in the United States may be interpreted in terms of sexual connotations. I first encountered the German custom of kissing and shaking hands when I had accompanied my mother to Germany for a trip.
According to the Germans, I was only supposed to shake hands and kiss those people who I felt friendly towards. I stayed in Germany for duration oftwo months where I visited some of my cousins who reside there.We spent a considerable time together with my cousins as we were all age mates. While in Germany, we travelled a lot with my cousins and visited various places.
Initially,I was astonished when I noticedthem kissing their friends as well asstrangers. When I inquired why they were doing so, they argued that kissing was the German’s way of expressingonesappreciation towards those people they felt friendly. At first, I felt confused and uneasy when some of their friends occasionally kissed me after being introduced to them.However, after staying in Germany for a while, I soon relaxed since I learnt that kissing was a common habit in Germany.
Therefore, after taking the course on theories, research methods,deviance and social interactions, I opted to make use of the research methods that I learned in class to investigate the Americans’perceptiontowards hand shaking and particularly the habit of kissingstrangers. In my investigation, I used my nearby town as my target population and picked 10 people at random as my sample group.
Among the ten people that I kissed or shook hands with in town, seven were surprised by my actionsas I was a stranger to them.Some of them had to run away because they thought that I had lost my sanity. The other three people that I either kissed or shook handswithdid not have any problem with my behavior. They never took my behaviors as being weird since two of them were my close friends and the other one was a migrant from Germany.
I was nervous as I went on kissing and shaking hands with strangers in the town since I was aware that kissing and shaking hands to strangers is not a social norm in America and thus those people that witnessed my action in town avoided me like plague even some weeks later. Before embarking on my experiment, I had anticipated that the majority of those people that I used in my sample would not welcome my behavior since they would view it as being weird.
The results of my experimentvalidated my hypothesisbecause 70% of those people I kissed or shook handswith did not like my behavior. Some even went to an extent of fleeing after I kissed them. Others went further to report me to the police station, but fortunately I had applied for the permission to carry on my research from the local police station.
From this experiment, I came to learn that every society has its own pattern of behavior that it expects everyone to conform to so as to fit in that society. I learned that kissing and shaking hands with strangers was not a social norm for Americans. Instead, those people who kiss and shake hands with strangers in America are considered as social deviant.
Similarly, I learned that it is imperative to learn about the social norms of other societies as it will greatly help people to overcome cross cultural barriers. This is important especially at this era where the world is experiencing global integration due to the presence of technological advancement as well as international businesses.