ACCOUNTS AS ASSEMBLED FROM BREACHING EXPERIMENTS *

A good deal of recent sociological literature has been involved with statements and explanations of the so‐called “breaching experiments” or “incongruity procedures” originally introduced to sociological literature by Harold Garfinkel in his article “A Conception of, and Experiments with, ‘Trust’ as a Condition of Stable Concerted Actions.” The recent literature has essentially explained the breaching experiments as demonstrations of a means of eliciting social order through the disruption of taken‐for‐granted realities. An area, however, which has not been explained is the mental state of the persons who voluntarily involve themselves in these breachings. Persons who do these experiments almost unanimously remark that conducting these breachings creates anxiety and dread for them. Although there are numerous occasions in everyday life when persons find themselves in untoward positions, the breaching experiment can be used as a method of creating experimenter anxiety which is localized and pinpointed in such a way that it can be researched. This paper produces a sociological explanation of this breaching experiment anxiety. It offers therefore some insights into the influence of social situations on individuals' mental states, as well as a better understanding of the social dynamics behind the accounts people provide to explain their behavior.