Quirkology (30 page)
Authors: Richard Wiseman
Five years after the study, I received a telephone call from my friend and brain-scanning scientist, Adrian Owen. He explained that he had just seen a documentary film about Spike Milligan, comedian and cofounder of the Goons (
The Goon Show
was a popular comedy radio program in Britain in the 1950s), and that the program contained a very early version of our winning joke. The documentary (the title of which,
I Told You I Was Ill,
was based on Spike’s epitaph) contained a brief clip from a 1951 BBC program called
London Entertains
with the following early Goon sketch:
The Goon Show
was a popular comedy radio program in Britain in the 1950s), and that the program contained a very early version of our winning joke. The documentary (the title of which,
I Told You I Was Ill,
was based on Spike’s epitaph) contained a brief clip from a 1951 BBC program called
London Entertains
with the following early Goon sketch:
Michael Bentine: I just came in and found him lying on the carpet there.Peter Sellers: Oh, is he dead?Michael Bentine: I think so.Peter Sellers: Hadn’t you better make sure?Michael Bentine: Alright. Just a minute.(Sound of two gun shots)Michael Bentine: He’s dead.
It is highly unusual to be able to track down the source of jokes because their origins tend to become lost in the mists of time. Spike Milligan had died in 2002, but with the help of the documentary makers, I contacted his daughter Sile, and she confirmed that it was highly likely that her father had written the material. We announced that we believed we had identified the author of the world’s funniest joke, and LaughLab made headlines again.
During the ensuing interviews, several journalists asked me a question that frequently occurs whenever I speak about LaughLab: What was my favorite joke from the thousands that flooded in through the year? I always give the same reply:
A dog goes into a telegraph office, takes a blank form, and writes: “Woof Woof. Woof Woof Woof. Woof Woof Woof Woof.”The clerk examines the paper and politely tells the dog: “There are only nine words here. You could send another ‘Woof’ for the same price.”The dog looks confused and replies, “But that would make no sense at all.”
I don’t really know why I like it. It just makes me laugh.
6
SINNER OR SAINT?
The Psychology of When We Help and When We Hinder
I
n the early 1930s, Richard LaPiere, a psychologist from Stanford University, spent several months driving up and down the West Coast of the United States with one of his Chinese students and the student’s wife.
1
The couple had been born and raised in China and had only recently moved to the United States. To them, LaPiere appeared to be a genial professor who had kindly found the time to show them around. In reality, they were unsuspecting guinea pigs in a secret experiment that LaPiere was conducting throughout the trip.
n the early 1930s, Richard LaPiere, a psychologist from Stanford University, spent several months driving up and down the West Coast of the United States with one of his Chinese students and the student’s wife.
1
The couple had been born and raised in China and had only recently moved to the United States. To them, LaPiere appeared to be a genial professor who had kindly found the time to show them around. In reality, they were unsuspecting guinea pigs in a secret experiment that LaPiere was conducting throughout the trip.
The idea for the experiment had occurred to LaPiere when the couple had first arrived at the university, and he had taken them to the main hotel in town. A relative rarity in the United States of the 1930s, Chinese people were frequently subjected to a considerable amount of blatant prejudice. According to LaPiere, he approached the hotel with a sense of trepidation because it was “noted for its narrow and bigoted attitudes toward Orientals.”
LaPiere went to the reception with his two friends and nervously asked whether they had any rooms available. To LaPiere’s surprise, the clerk didn’t display the prejudice for which his establishment had gained a considerable reputation, and instead quickly found them a suitable accommodation. Curious about the discrepancy between what he had heard about the hotel and his experience with the receptionist, LaPiere later telephoned the hotel and asked whether they would have a room available for “an important Chinese gentleman.” He was told in no uncertain terms that the hotel would not provide accommodation.
LaPiere was struck by the difference between how people
said
that they would behave and how they
actually
acted. But he realized that his experience in the hotel could just have been atypical. To investigate the issue properly he would need to repeat the same scenario with a far larger number of hotels and restaurants, and that is when he hit upon the idea of taking his two Chinese colleagues on an experimental road trip across the United States.
said
that they would behave and how they
actually
acted. But he realized that his experience in the hotel could just have been atypical. To investigate the issue properly he would need to repeat the same scenario with a far larger number of hotels and restaurants, and that is when he hit upon the idea of taking his two Chinese colleagues on an experimental road trip across the United States.
The journey involved driving 10,000 miles, and visiting sixty-six hotels and 184 restaurants. At each hotel and eatery, LaPiere had his student ask about the possibility of accommodation or food. LaPiere then secretly noted whether the request was successful. The results from this initial part of the study replicated his earlier experience. His two companions received pleasant and helpful service almost everywhere they went, leading LaPiere to conclude that “the ‘attitude’ of the American people, as reflected in the behavior of those who are for pecuniary reasons presumably most sensitive to the antipathies of their white clientele, is anything but negative toward the Chinese.”
Six months later, LaPiere conducted the second part of the study. To each of the hotels and restaurants that they had visited, he sent questionnaires asking: “Will you accept members of the Chinese race as guests in your establishment?” To help hide the exact purpose of the study, this question was one of many; the other items on the form inquired about whether each establishment welcomed Germans, French, Armenians, and Jews. The results made for disturbing reading. More than 90 percent of the respondents checked the “no, Chinese people are not welcome here” box, and almost all of the remaining 10 percent went for the “uncertain” option. LaPiere received only one “yes” response. This reply came from a hotel that LaPiere and his students had visited a few months before. The owner had added a short note to the questionnaire saying that the reason she would welcome people from China was because she had recently enjoyed a nice visit from a Chinese man and his sweet wife.
In LaPiere’s study, people said that they would behave in a way that was in keeping with the societal norms of the day, but they actually behaved quite differently. In more recent studies, researchers have obtained copious evidence for the same effect, with people claiming that they are not racist (in keeping with modern societal norms), but then behaving in a prejudiced way.
It all adds up to one simple point. Asking people to rate how nice they are is unlikely to yield a genuine insight into anything other than their ability to deceive themselves and others. Because of people’s reluctance, or inability, to report accurately whether they are nice or nasty, many researchers interested in these topics have done exactly what LaPiere did. They have stopped asking people to check the “saint” or “sinner” box, taken off their lab coats, put on trench coats, and carried out secret studies in the real world.
For the past twenty-five years, John Trinkaus, a professor from the City University of New York, has dedicated his academic life to the scientific observation of ordinary folk going about their everyday business. Trinkaus has investigated a huge range of topics and published his findings in almost a hundred academic papers. He has visited railway stations and noted the color of sneakers worn by men and women (79 percent of male sports-shoe wearers chose white, versus just 34 percent of female wearers);
2
compared the number of times television weather forecasters
said
that their predictions had been accurate with the number of times they were
actually
correct (only 49 percent of their allegedly accurate predictions were right);
3
traveled to inner-city neighborhoods to document the decreasing numbers of people wearing baseball caps with their peaks turned to the back (it is dropping at a rate of 10 percent per year);
4
and plotted verbal trends in providing an affirmative response by counting the number of times interviewees on television talk shows used the word “yes” when answering questions (of the 419 questions analyzed, “yes” was used 53 times, “exactly” 117 times, and “absolutely” 249 times).
5
2
compared the number of times television weather forecasters
said
that their predictions had been accurate with the number of times they were
actually
correct (only 49 percent of their allegedly accurate predictions were right);
3
traveled to inner-city neighborhoods to document the decreasing numbers of people wearing baseball caps with their peaks turned to the back (it is dropping at a rate of 10 percent per year);
4
and plotted verbal trends in providing an affirmative response by counting the number of times interviewees on television talk shows used the word “yes” when answering questions (of the 419 questions analyzed, “yes” was used 53 times, “exactly” 117 times, and “absolutely” 249 times).
5
Trinkaus’s investigations into sports shoes, weather forecasts, baseball caps, and the use of the “yes” word are all brilliantly obscure. However, some of his other research has serious implications, not least his investigations of the surprising predictability of human nature.
6
Trinkaus asked hundreds of his students to think of any odd number between 10 and 50, and found the majority chose 37. When asked to name any even number between 50 and 100, most said 68. Trinkaus then took this aspect of his research into the real world, asking a hundred people who owned attaché cases with number locks to tell him the combination.
7
He discovered that almost 75 percent of owners had not changed the factory settings on their cases, and they could be opened with the numbers 0-0-0. In his book
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman,
8
the physicist Richard Feynman describes how he used the same type of predictability to gain access to top-secret documents when he was working on the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. On one occasion he opened a colleague’s safe by trying various combinations he thought a physicist might use (the winning numbers were 27 18 28, after the mathematical constant
e
=2.71828). Feynman also discovered that no one had bothered to change the generic factory settings to one of the largest safes on the base, which could have been opened by an unskilled thief within minutes.
6
Trinkaus asked hundreds of his students to think of any odd number between 10 and 50, and found the majority chose 37. When asked to name any even number between 50 and 100, most said 68. Trinkaus then took this aspect of his research into the real world, asking a hundred people who owned attaché cases with number locks to tell him the combination.
7
He discovered that almost 75 percent of owners had not changed the factory settings on their cases, and they could be opened with the numbers 0-0-0. In his book
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman,
8
the physicist Richard Feynman describes how he used the same type of predictability to gain access to top-secret documents when he was working on the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. On one occasion he opened a colleague’s safe by trying various combinations he thought a physicist might use (the winning numbers were 27 18 28, after the mathematical constant
e
=2.71828). Feynman also discovered that no one had bothered to change the generic factory settings to one of the largest safes on the base, which could have been opened by an unskilled thief within minutes.
My favorite piece of Trinkaus research is described in a little-known paper titled “Gloves as Vanishing Personal ‘Stuff’: An Informal Look.”
9
Here Trinkaus begins by noting how his personal belongings, including single socks, umbrellas, and one glove from each pair, often seem to disappear. He then goes on to explain that he has managed to overcome the problem with umbrellas by purchasing several inexpensive ones from a street vendor (who, according to his observations, charged 50 percent more for them on a rainy day than he did on a sunny day), but is reluctant to apply the same approach to gloves. Eager to get to the bottom of the vanishing gloves mystery, Trinkaus monitored his missing mittens during a ten-year period, carefully noting whether the vanishing glove belonged to his left or right hand. The results revealed that left-hand gloves went missing more than three times as often as right-hand gloves. This caused him to speculate that he might be removing his right glove first, pushing it down into his pocket, then removing his left glove, and pushing it on top of the glove already there. If this was true, then his left glove would be nearer the top of the pocket, and more likely to fall out.
9
Here Trinkaus begins by noting how his personal belongings, including single socks, umbrellas, and one glove from each pair, often seem to disappear. He then goes on to explain that he has managed to overcome the problem with umbrellas by purchasing several inexpensive ones from a street vendor (who, according to his observations, charged 50 percent more for them on a rainy day than he did on a sunny day), but is reluctant to apply the same approach to gloves. Eager to get to the bottom of the vanishing gloves mystery, Trinkaus monitored his missing mittens during a ten-year period, carefully noting whether the vanishing glove belonged to his left or right hand. The results revealed that left-hand gloves went missing more than three times as often as right-hand gloves. This caused him to speculate that he might be removing his right glove first, pushing it down into his pocket, then removing his left glove, and pushing it on top of the glove already there. If this was true, then his left glove would be nearer the top of the pocket, and more likely to fall out.
Trinkaus’s work into vanishing gloves has inspired other researchers to investigate similar topics. In 2005, Megan Lim, Margaret Hellard, and Campbell Aitken, researchers from the MacFarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research in Melbourne, conducted an experiment to discover why teaspoons in communal kitchens disappear with annoying regularity (or, as they phrase it in their scientific paper on the topic, to answer the age-old question “Where have all the bloody teaspoons gone?”).
10
The team secretly marked seventy teaspoons, placed each of them in one of eight communal kitchens at their institute, and tracked the movement of the spoons over a five-month period. Eighty percent of the teaspoons went missing during this time, half of them disappearing within the first eighty-one days. Additional questionnaire data revealed that 36 percent of people said they had stolen a teaspoon at some point in their lives, and 18 percent admitted to such a theft in the previous twelve months.
10
The team secretly marked seventy teaspoons, placed each of them in one of eight communal kitchens at their institute, and tracked the movement of the spoons over a five-month period. Eighty percent of the teaspoons went missing during this time, half of them disappearing within the first eighty-one days. Additional questionnaire data revealed that 36 percent of people said they had stolen a teaspoon at some point in their lives, and 18 percent admitted to such a theft in the previous twelve months.
This latter result argues against the notion that the vanishing spoons are being sucked into another dimension, and instead supports a more mundane explanation: People steal them. The researchers also note that the institute’s level of disappearing teaspoons, multiplied by the entire Melbourne workforce, suggests that 18 million teaspoons go missing each year in Melbourne alone, and that if these spoons were laid end to end, they would stretch around the coastline of Mozambique. Unlike the Trinkaus research into vanishing gloves, other researchers have started to replicate the “disappearing teaspoons” study across the globe. In one of the most recent pieces of follow-up work, French academics reported that 1,800 teaspoons went missing over a six-month period in a large cafeteria.
11
11
The stealing of teaspoons indirectly brings us to Trinkaus’s work into dishonesty and antisocial behavior. As we shall see later in this chapter, many of the other researchers interested in these types of behavior are drawn to serious acts of stealing or selfishness. Trinkaus has managed to develop his own unique approach by focusing on relatively small-scale social transgressions, such as parking in restricted areas or taking more than ten items through the supermarket express line. His findings have revealed a surprising insight into just how common these occurrences are, how they can be used to chart the moral decline of society, and the relationship between them and female van drivers.
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