In 1993, Trinkaus and his team of researchers visited a large supermarket in the Northeast and secretly observed customers on seventy-five separate occasions for a period of fifteen minutes each.
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They carefully counted how many people took more than the limit of ten items through the express line. To help ensure the scientific validity of their study, they observed shoppers at various times of the day over the course of several weeks, and recorded people’s behavior only when more than two other lanes were open (and they therefore had the option of taking their goods through a correct checkout). The results revealed that around 85 percent of shoppers in the express lines were breaking the rules by having more than ten items in their wagons. In 2002, Trinkaus repeated the same experiment at the same supermarket, and discovered that the percentage of deceptive shoppers had risen to 93 percent.
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Projected forward, these figures suggest that by 2011, no one in express lines will have ten items, or fewer, in their carts.
Trinkaus also noticed a new form of dubious behavior that had developed since his 1993 study. Several shoppers in the express line placed their items on the conveyor belt in groups of ten, and then told the cashier that they would pay for each group separately. One shopper managed to get twenty-nine items through the express line by using this sneaky approach. As soon as Trinkaus spotted this new form of deceptive behavior, he realized that it could be used as a potential way of identifying the types of people most likely to transgress societal norms. In line with his observational approach to research, Trinkaus asked his team to follow these people into the supermarket parking lot and make a note of their gender and the type of vehicle they owned. The result: About 80 percent of the transgressors were female van drivers.
This is not the first time that Trinkaus has uncovered evidence suggesting that female van drivers are especially likely to indulge in antisocial behavior. In 1999, he counted and classified the number of motorists speeding near a school, and noted that 96 percent of female van drivers exceeded the speed limit, compared to just 86 percent of male van drivers.
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In the same year, he had also been counting the number of motorists who failed to come to a complete stop at stop signs.
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In total, 94 percent of motorists failed to comply with the sign, versus 99 percent of female van drivers. In 2001, he spent thirty-two hours logging two hundred instances in which motorists had failed to keep a boxed intersection clear, and found that 40 percent of incidents involved, yes, you guessed it, women driving vans.
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A year later, he counted instances of people parking their vehicles in a prohibited fire zone at a shopping center. Again, female van drivers were the least compliant, accounting for about 35 percent of all violations.
Trinkaus has put forward two explanations to account for this aspect of his data. First, he has speculated that “women Chevy drivers are inadvertently carrying over from the workplace the now ‘in’ concept of empowerment.” According to this approach, women are still getting used to their newfound power in society, and may have developed an unconscious need to outdo behaviors previously associated with men, such as breaking speed limits, parking in restricted areas, and ignoring traffic signs. Alternatively, notes Trinkaus, these drivers may be ahead of the game when it comes to the moral decline of society, and are acting as an omen of things to come.
TESTING THE HONESTY OF A NATION
In 1997,
U.S. News and World Report
conducted a poll in which they asked Americans who was “somewhat likely” to go to heaven.
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Bill Clinton didn’t do too badly, with 52 percent of respondents thinking that he would be welcome at the pearly gates. Diana, Princess of Wales, fared a little better with 60 percent of the vote, and in second place came Mother Teresa with 79 percent. But who won the poll, scoring a massive 87 percent? Most people placed
themselves
on top of the heavenly A-list. Do we really live in communities and countries populated almost entirely by potential saints?
A few years ago, I was asked by the producers of a British television program called
World in Action
to help devise several tests that would examine the honesty of the nation. Rather than adopt Trinkaus’s approach of observing people carrying out minor transgressions, we decided to be more proactive and focus on serious acts of selfishness. Many of the tests took place in the most innocent of places, and most of the participants are still completely unaware that they have taken part in a scientific study.
Imagine that you walk up to an ATM. You are just about to place your card in the machine, and out pops £10. Would you take the money and run, or would you return it to the bank?
The first experiment was designed to discover how a random sample of people would react to this situation. The producers obtained special permission to take over the ATM of a well-known British bank for the day. They had an engineer remove all the normal machinery and replace it with a device that dispensed £10 whenever people stood in front of the machine. Our first unsuspecting customer walked up to the machine, and, on cue, out popped £10. Secret cameras recorded her every move. The woman proved to be remarkably honest. She immediately took the money into the bank, handed it to the bemused cashier, and explained what had happened. But such honesty proved to be the exception rather than the rule. Two-thirds of the subjects kept the cash, some returning several times to make the most of the opportunity. Our most dishonest participant returned twenty times.
Why had so many people been prepared to take money that didn’t belong to them? Perhaps the use of an ATM had skewed the data. People may consider it one thing to retain money given to them by a machine, but quite another to take it from another person. Then there was the fact that people thought they were taking money that belonged to a bank. Perhaps our unsuspecting participants saw the money emerging from the ATM as an opportunity to get even with an organization that is seen as making mistakes in its own favor only.
To test these ideas, the producers staged a second experiment. This time, people were given money by a person rather than a machine, and the faceless bank was replaced by a friendly shop.
Imagine that you buy a magazine in a shop, and pay with £5. To your surprise, the cashier gives you change for £10. Would you be honest enough to return the money?
To discover the level of public honesty in this scenario, the producers took over a branch of a national newsagent in the north of England and transformed it into a laboratory for the day. In the first part of the study, the cashier was instructed to give customers too much change. When a customer paid with £5, the cashier returned change for £10; and whenever a customer paid with £10, that person received change for £20. As our first unsuspecting customers entered the shop, the team waited to see whether they would be honest enough to own up to their unexpected windfall. Everyone took the money; many left the shop slyly smiling.
As with all research, it was important to rule out other ways of interpreting the results. Perhaps it wasn’t that people had been dishonest but that (despite smiling) they hadn’t noticed they had been given too much change. The study was repeated, but this time the cashier was asked to count the change aloud. The next set of customers entered the shop and the cashier carefully counted too much change into their hands. Those paying with £5 were given change for £10, and those handing over £10 received change for £20. All the customers took the money without saying a word.
To further emphasize the mistake, in a penultimate part of the experiment, the cashier was asked to count the excess change into the customer’s hand, look slightly confused, and then ask the customer the value of the note he or she had used. Surely this time people would be honest enough to own up? Almost no one told the truth. Interestingly, the shoppers often didn’t lie straight away but checked that the cashier had no way of knowing which denomination they had used (“Can’t you look in the drawer?”) before calling the situation in their favor. Only one person pointed out the cashier’s error. In an interview afterward, he said that he was a Christian and that Jesus wouldn’t have been pleased if he had held onto the cash. Try as they might, team members could not come up with a way of testing his claim.
In the final part of the study, one member of the team stood outside the shop and posed as a market researcher. When customers who had accepted too much change emerged from the shop, they were asked a few questions about honesty. Did they think journalists were honest? Could the Queen be trusted? Finally, the most important question of all: “If you were given too much change in a shop, would you own up and return the money?” Until the final question, everyone’s answers were fast and clear. No, they didn’t trust journalists. Yes, they thought the Queen was honest. Then people suddenly became evasive. Even though they had just committed the dishonest act in question, they produced much longer and vaguer answers: “I can’t remember the last time that happened to me,” “I don’t usually look at my change,” and “I never really check my change.” People couldn’t even bring themselves to be honest in an anonymous survey.
The findings presented a fascinating, but depressing, view of human nature. Unethical behavior was alive and well in modern-day Britain. Although the vast majority of people claim to be upstanding citizens, most of us are more than capable of dishonesty if the situation is right.
However, it was not all so disheartening. A third and final set of studies revealed that when it comes to being selfish or selfless, small and subtle changes make a big difference. The first stage of the newsagent experiment was repeated, but rather than a branch of a large chain of newsagents, the location chosen was a small corner shop. Like the cashier in the newsagents, the owner of the shop was asked systematically to give his customers too much change—if they paid with £5, they were given change for £10, and if they paid with £10, they were given change for £20. This time, the results were very different. Whereas before, everyone had taken the money and said nothing, now half of the people instantly returned the excess change. It appeared to be acceptable to take money from a large company but not from a small local shop. When interviewed afterward, many of the honest customers said that it simply wasn’t right to steal from someone who was like them. Their comments provide support for one of the key theories that influences when we give and when we take. It is all to do with the psychology of similarity.
NIXON, HORN-HONKING, AND THE MAD MONK OF RUSSIA
Richard Nixon made several inadvertent contributions to psychology. In 1960, he took part in the first-ever televised presidential debate. Radio listeners thought that Nixon had won, but television viewers gave the verdict to John Kennedy. Why? Because Nixon had refused makeup beforehand and his face appeared pale, sweaty, and anxious throughout the debate. Researchers discovered that television viewers focused on what they saw rather than on what they heard, and so came to a decision opposite to that of radio listeners.
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Then there is the famed “Nixon effect.”
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When giving his resignation speech after the Watergate scandal, Nixon appeared calm and collected. However, researchers analyzing his facial expressions noticed a “furious rate” of eye blinking (well more than fifty blinks per minute), suggesting extremely high levels of anxiety. Subsequent analyses of blink rates during eight televised presidential debates showed that the candidate who blinked the most frequently lost the forthcoming election in seven instances.
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Nixon’s presidency also proved extremely helpful to researchers examining the psychology of altruism. His stance on Vietnam resulted in some of the largest peace demonstrations of the era. In April 1971, more than 200,000 protesters descended on Washington to stage a rally. The media focused on the possible impact of the event for international policy, but Peter Suedfield and his colleagues, psychologists from Rutgers University in New Jersey, saw it as an opportunity to carry out a secret study investigating similarity and helping.
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A few months before, the researchers had told an actor to grow his hair long and to cultivate a moustache. Toward the start of the rally, they gave him a “Dump Nixon” placard, and they ensured that he was, in the words of their subsequent paper, “attired in hip garb.” A female experimenter led the actor into the crowd. At a predetermined moment, the actor suddenly sat on the ground and held his head in his hands, pretending to be sick. The experimenter then approached an unsuspecting genuine protester and started to work her way through a well-rehearsed script.
Initially, she asked the protester to assist her ailing friend. If the protester was willing to lend a helping hand, she then asked for help in moving her friend away from the crowd. Those who agreed were then asked to help take the friend to the nearest first-aid station. If the protester went along with that request, the actor would ask for help in making the seven-mile trip home. Finally, those protesters who indicated that they were prepared to make the trip were asked to provide the necessary bus fare. At this point, the allegedly ill actor made a sudden and unexpected recovery; the protester was thanked and told that his or her assistance was no longer necessary.