The Pumpkin Pie Experiment
In 1789, President George Washington proclaimed a “day of public thanksgiving.”
In 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day that would be celebrated on the last Thursday in November.
The date moved around some, including in 1939 when department store moguls successfully lobbied the U.S. government to move the holiday to a week earlier to extend the Christmas shopping season. In 1941, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the United States Congress set the date as the fourth Thursday of November and it’s been there ever since.
The three pillars of the traditional Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving dinner are turkey, cranberry sauce, and pies made from pumpkins, the first plant to be domesticated in the Americas.
This year, arrange things so that you are the one to serve a piece of pie on a plate to each person at the table
Make sure you set the plate down so the piece of pie is pointed away from the one who will eat it. Watch closely. What did you just see?
How many people turned the pie towards themselves before eating and how many ate their pie “backwards?”
This is my favorite example of implicit norms, things we do without knowing we’re doing them
We do them without thinking about them, either. No one says out loud or to themselves, “I’m going to turn my pie around now.” When asked why they pointed the pie at themselves, most ad libbed a likely explanation on the spot.
Harold Garfinkel introduced me to implicit norms by pointing out the best way to trigger them is by violating them.
We experienced this while watching banquet waiters placing pieces of pie on those big tables at conventions. Hurriedly and somewhat haphazardly, they set one at every place, not bothering to align them. Everywhere we looked, people were turning their plate so their pie pointed at them. After that, every time I had a piece of pie, I‘d eat it “backwards,” often to the consternation of others. I found it’s a quick way to identify obsessive-compulsives because they can’t resist reaching over and turning my pie around for me, “like it’s supposed to be.”
Breaking the rules to study them
Garfinkel’s breaching experiments examined people’s reactions to violations of commonly-accepted behavior. Here’s a video showing how much disturbance is caused when 250 students stop and do nothing in a public place.
Try some breaching experiments yourself
Say “good-bye” instead of “hello” when greeting others. Sit on the floor where people are walking. Stand too close to someone. Eat with the wrong end of your fork. Observe how those around you react.
The author is a researcher, writer, and teacher who looks at old things in new ways, sees the commonplace in greater detail, and explains complex subject matter in simple, conversational language. More than 400 of his free articles are posted on this site.
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