Hi Annette, I'm sure others will have a more sophisticated answer, but a few things came to mind as I read your post. First, people often display strange superstitious behavior--especially if they think "germs" are involved. Could it be that the tangled pile seems like it could be a newer, perhaps unused, more germ-free pile? I also wondered how hard it would be for the student to simply ask a few people why they did that, just to get an idea where to start. Carol
Carol L. DeVolder, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Chair, Department of Psychology St. Ambrose University 518 West Locust Street Davenport, Iowa 52803 Phone: 563-333-6482 e-mail: [email protected] web: http://web.sau.edu/psychology/psychfaculty/cdevolder.htm The contents of this message are confidential and may not be shared with anyone without permission of the sender. -----Original Message----- From: Annette Taylor [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sun 10/10/2010 9:00 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] behavioral dilemma A student in my intro to psych class asked me this question, which I think would have an answer someplace in social psych: He works at SeaWorld, a large amusement park. He prefaced his question by telling me that he fully understands that when people go to these places they are not 'themselves' but rather some zombie-like shell of themselves--they don't seem to show much thinking going on but rather turn off for the day. Now this relates to the question because it is more like automatic processing than thoughtful behavior that he is interested in. His job is outside a very large "show" that requires special glasses (like 3D but not 3D). His job is to take a HUGE pile of these glasses as people deposit them into a barrel, exiting the previous show, and to disentangle the pile and lay them out neatly on a table so that people going into the show can just grab a pair and go on in. The table is a half round and the glasses are laid out in a semi-circle, about 3 deep, and then his tangled pile sits near the back, center. As a person takes a pair of glasses his job is to disentangle a pair and place it out on the perimeter for easy access. He emphasized that this is a VERY large table, so that his tangled pile is quite far away. He said that a person has to be at least 5'10" tall to reach over to his pile. But if you are anticipating, well yes, he claims that about 50% of the people would rather reach into the tangled pile to grab glasses, rather than take the nicely laid out, easy access, disentangled and neatly folded and placed glasses along the edge of the table. He is just fascinated by this phenomenon but doesn't know where to begin to explain it or even how to study it. Kudos to him for being curious. He says he could study it if he could think of a task for it. His employers are pretty flexible about things like that. Any ideas on this list on what is going on? Any ideas on how to test the hypothesis that that is indeed what is going on? For example, he could make the tangled pile easier to access and the neatly folded glasses less accessible. But what hypothesis would that be testing? Frankly, I am also at a loss. I'm not surprised that people do something more difficult than the easy thing, but again, I have no way to explain it. I look forward to some help. Please don't make me go to that other list.... Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D. Professor, Psychological Sciences University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=12990.f9c1b5bf25d49031367434c598ee9250&n=T&l=tips&o=5526 or send a blank email to leave-5526-12990.f9c1b5bf25d49031367434c598ee9...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=5527 or send a blank email to leave-5527-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
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