Free Hugs @ UW-Madison
On Tuesday, December 6, 2011 I stood in library from 11 – 1:30 with a free hug sign and completed my project. By doing this, there were a variety of observations that I made that affected me, the individuals who saw me, and the importance of my project.
The free hugs campaign was one of the most awkward things that I had ever done. I stood in the cold for two and a half hours holding a sign that openly invited people to come up and hug me. A classmate, Carmen, decided to join me, but that did not help with feeling of nervousness that I had as my classmates passed by me wondering what I was doing. When I started the project, I made the decision that it would not be appropriate for me to talk to people or try to verbally encourage them to give me a hug. If I were to do this, then I would be aiding them make a decision. Free Hugs, to me, is all about people evaluating their current happiness and deciding that they need a hug, without being coaxed into giving a hug. They have to feel that the hug was right for them, that they wanted to do it. By not talking, the degree of awkwardness was multiplied because I could not joke away what I was doing. I tried to explain the real purpose of my hugging and wanted limited my explanations to “It was Tuesday” as the reason that I was standing in the cold. When I presented this project to my friends and classmates, it seemed as if there would surely be a degree of dismissal by the people that I was attempting to hug. It is not commonplace that a person wants to hug you, so I was entirely anticipating an incredible amount of rejection. Much to my surprise, rejection was not the most common of the three reactions that I noticed, which gave me quite a bit of confidence. I believe that everything in life has a lesson or benefit for every person and I was not without benefits on free hug day. Apart from the obvious benefits of the hugs, I learned a small amount of confidence, as I had to fight off the feeling of awkwardness of soberly hugging random strangers. From this experiment, I feel that I am capable of injecting myself into a wider variety of social situations, because I had interface with so many people as I was hugging them on that day.
The subjects of my project, or the people who walked through library mall between 11 and 1:30 on 12/6/2011 can be categorized into three distinct groups. Each group reacted in a certain way that is easily characterized. An astonishing observation is that the three groups of people that I had encountered on FreeHug day did not follow any social stereotype. The members of each group spanned the breath of gender and age backgrounds, much to my surprise.
The first group that I noticed is the group of people who gave me hugs. There were a variety of hugs given, which included bro-hugs, single pat, full embrace, and one very excitable girl who jumped into my arms. Like I said before, I tried to limit the influence that I had on the decision that people made to give me a hug, so these people chose to come up to me. Some of them had a less difficult decision than others, because I previously knew them, but out of the hundreds of people that I saw in the two and a half hour span, I received nearly 90 hugs. All of these people had made the decision that a free hug was worth their time and the benefits that would be gained superseded the awkwardness of hugging a random person with a sign. These people generally came up to me with a smile and left with a smile, suggesting that I had either given them a reason to be happy or I was able to perpetuate a happy thought. They often said good things, which proved that they were happy with my project and that it was truly useful as a tool to make people happier.
The second group of people that I encountered was the ones who smiled at me, but did not come up for a hug. I think that they elected to do this because they felt that it would be too awkward to hug someone or they did not have the time to stop. While I was giving my free hugs, I tried to watch the facial expressions of everyone that passed by in order to determine what they thought of my free hug giving. When I initially began thinking of this project, I thought that the only people who would receive benefits would be the people that I hugged, but as it turns out the effects of hugging went beyond the physical action. I could positively affect a person’s day by the mere suggestion of something good. This is incredible, because it reinforced the belief that an “idea” is all that a person needs to make another person happy (I think that I am going to use this as justification as to why I do not buy any Christmas gifts this year, he he.)
The final group of people that I noticed while giving out free hug consisted of people who either did not understand why I was doing it, or did not appreciate it. Several people had disgusted looks on their faces as they passed me. There was a group of girls who decided that it was appropriate to audibly ridicule me as they walked by. I feel like there are two reasons that these people did not appreciate what I was doing. First, it was unknown to them and people generally fear the unknown because they do not want to give the time or energy to understand it. The second was that they did not believe that freehugs were either effective or socially acceptable. Unfortunately, there is not much I can do about their perception of accepted social norms. These people did not distract anyone from what I was doing and it should be accepted that not everyone will appreciate what you are doing. There are a variety of reasons why someone would choose to not appreciate hugs, so those people have to be targeted in a more specific way.