Personal Narrative: Moving To Toronto

Since I have moved to Toronto, if I have made any accidental eye contact with strangers it would make me really uncomfortable. I understand staring is impolite but with a simple greet, “Hello or good morning” or even a smile, from where I come from is courteous or friendly. Needless to say, Toronto is the complete opposite.

On a day-to-day basis, my daily commute involves a 5-minute walk to the coffee shop then I would take the bus to the subway station, on my way to school. I’m pretty sure roughly 80% of the time people try to make eye contact with me. If my eyes do cross paths with some strangers, I would either smile or say “Morning.” Unfortunately, not everyone, agrees.

For this assignment, I decided I would count how many times people would reciprocate my eye contact or greet. If I crossed paths with someone, I made a point to make eye contact with them just so they could acknowledge me, and at the same time I tracked how many people looked at me with or without eye contact.

Therefore, I made sure that each person I passed had no distractions such as smart phones, listening to music, or even reading a book.

Since I knew my objective for this assignment, I wanted look further as to why society has changed and give me some professional more in-depth explanations as to why people lacking my acknowledgement was so low.

In the study, “To Be Looked at as Through Air: Civil Attention Matthers,” by Eric D. Wesselmann, a psychology professor at Purdue University, simply explains “Because social connections are fundamental to survival, researches argue that humans evolved systems to detect the slightest cues of inclusion or exclusions. For example, simple eye contact is sufficient to convey inclusion. In contrast, withholding eye contact can signal exclusion.” I believe Wesselman’s article supports my sense of social norms being neglected and the feeling of