Aim: To experience cognitive dissonance, where I'd feel uncomfortable because my actions don't match my beliefs, by breaking a social norm.
Specific objective: Pull up a chair next to a stranger in a cafe, invade their privacy, and strike up a conversation. To make it harder, I decided that that stranger would be a guy.
Process: I walked into a fairly busy Starbucks. 9 PM on the dot. Step one was to scout out my experiment monkeys, step two was to buy a drink.
Potential contestant in the outside patio. Cute, probably an undergrad, with a serious expression on his face. He immediately looked up as soon as I saw him, and his eyes followed me inside. I couldn't hide a smile. Yep, actions matched beliefs so far.
As I stood in line for my grande Caramel Macchiato, I suddenly realized I didn't have a speech prepared. What could I possibly say that won't make me look and feel like a stalking creeper? I suppose that would prove the point of the experiment in the end, but I had to start with something moderate. Hey, mind if I sit here? So he'll reply with no, go ahead. Then what? I suddenly felt a bit weak in the knees as I imagined the completely awkward scenario of me staring into this random guy's slightly annoyed face. Did I just say weak in the knees? This rarely happens to me. I would be interrupting his reading. So what, I told myself. With that slight push of confidence, I advanced my place in line.
But what if he says no, I'd like to be alone? That would be the worst case scenario. I could see myself turning bright red, making an apologetic fake smile, grabbing my keys and running like my life depended on it. Complete rejection. I felt I couldn't deal with it, not at that moment. Like a magnet, my legs pulled me out of the line to the Starbucks mugs on the shelf. Oh my god, what am I doing? I looked outside again. He was looking at me. Holy crap. Damn, he was cute. Okay, I'll walk right up to him, and then...
What if, instead of answering, he'll just look at me like I'm a complete freak? I racked my brain for something to say in case that happened. I'm just waiting for my friends, and there's nowhere else to sit. No, that's a pathetic joke of an excuse and I would forever call myself a chicken. I just don't like sitting by myself. A lie, but at least I'd come off as confident.
I ordered my drink and stood shaking at the pickup counter. He's listening to his headphones and studying something on his laptop; I would be interrupting something very important. He may have a midterm tomorrow. And the place really was packed - everyone on the outside patio would witness my little act of bravery. How would they react? How would they react if I got rejected? I can't do it. No, I must. The paper's due tomorrow (it was actually due today, but I didn't go to school) and I'll probably never see him again.
Clutching the latte in hand, I walked up to the door and froze. Literally, I froze. It was 9:30, I had already missed the new Scrubs, and I was a chicken. Slowly, the chairs began to clear out. Now I couldn't use the excuse that there was nowhere else to sit. Wait, that wasn't my excuse in the first place... What the hell was going on? My legs felt like butter. I stood there for another 15 (!) minutes before finally, finally sitting at a table next to the poor guy.
And what does he do? Completely ignore me. Everything I wanted to say flew out the window. I just sat there gawking for a while, stared at him, got my purse and left. And that was that.
Once in the car, I beat my forehead against the wheel a few times. I was alone in a pitch-black parking lot so no one heard, or at least paid attention to, the successive train of honks. I honestly could not believe that 1) I chickened out on saying Hi to someone I would never see again, and 2) I wasted almost an hour of time I could have spent watching one of my favorite shows. With absolutely no energy or willpower left, I drove to another Starbucks to try the experiment again, but this time with girls.
I wasted $2 buying another drink. A tall Americano, tasted like crap even with the milk and sugar. Two girls, also probably college-aged, sat in two chairs with a third facing them. Perfect. All I had to do was walk up, make light conversation, and be on my way... But as I forcefully pushed my legs to the empty chair, something in my brain flipped a switch. I lightened my pace, threw my head slightly back, and deepened my voice.
"Hey, mind if I sit here for a bit?" I didn't wait for an answer, plopping down on the stool with a friendly smile.
"Sure, no problem! We're just talking about relationships, so if you have anything to say, feel free to jump in." The girl to my right seemed genuinely sweet; the one across from me didn't even look in my direction.
"Oh, well, I've been in an off-and-on relationship for the past two years, but now I've shown him the door. Us girls have to take control of the situation, you know? I'm Lisa, by the way," I nonchalantly sipped my Americano.
"That is so true. What about when a guy is with you, but doesn't want to be called a boyfriend?" The one on my right inquired. Wow, they were really buying this crap.
"Pfft - one reason. He wants to stay on the market." I leaned back and threw a quick glance around the room, to add some weight to my tone of argument.
"Really... that's very interesting," the one on the right titled her head. We spent the next 20 minutes talking about her "boyfriend" Hugh, their Valentine's date, my own scumbag of an ex-boyfriend, and whether the movie He's Just Not That Into You makes a legitimate point. I told them I was a sophomore at Berkeley and that I liked my classes very much. "It only gets hard around midterms," I added, hoping I got the correct word. I told them about my classes, my major of Political Science, my favorite professor, my trip to New York over winter break, and how my uncle actually teaches at Stanford University. I found out the nice one on my right just finished undergrad and was now applying to grad school with a major of neuroscience. The other bitchy one still goes to UCSF and can't spell molecular. When they started questioning me with genuine curiosity about the campus, I grabbed my keys and ran for the door. 10:30 on the clock. Not too shabby.
Results: Not only could I not complete my original objective, that was one of the hardest things I've had to do in my entire life. On top of that, I felt so ridiculous and wrong doing this experiment as myself, I had to create a different persona for whom it may actually be a regular thing to sit next to total strangers as if I had no friends of my own.
Conclusion: 1) Bawk. Bawk baawk. 2) I never imagined it would be this difficult to break a simple social norm. Nevertheless, this inspired an idea: purely for blogging purposes, I'll try to break a different social norm every month for a year, building up more courage each time to try something outrageous. Hopefully by the end of this, I would have enough balls to do what I had planned originally.
That guy really was ridiculously cute. Pity.
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