Social Experiments - CONDITIONAL AND CONTEXTUAL HUMAN BEHAVIOUR

Let me begin by first describing what my topic is about and how I came to it. “The Social Experiments” refers to some of the most bizarre experiments that I came across while surfing the web. The experiments are simple but provide us an insight into human behavior under different circumstances. While some are thought provoking, others give you an idea about how time and location define value, and so on. All of these experiments were conducted by different people or groups in different geographies. What’s most interesting is the fact that many of them form part of our day to day activities but we just don’t notice. They show how powerful a little observation can be. If we just analyze a particular sequence we can come up with thousands of interpretations and unbelievable insights.

Let me begin by introducing the first one from my list. This small experiment was conducted by the Washington Post for reading human perception with respect to time and place. Joshua Bell, one of the world’s best musician, played incognito at a metro station’s subway in Washington DC. On a normal January morning, he played his $3.5 million guitar for about 45 minutes. He played one of the finest pieces of music ever written with his intricate guitar. But no one noticed. No one appreciated. Nobody seemed to care. About a thousand people crossed by the subway in those 45 minutes since it was an office hour. Only after the first 3 minutes, one man slowed his pace for a few seconds but then walked away. A few minutes later some guy stopped to lean by the wall but then paced away looking at the time. He was probably getting late for his work. Then he received his first tip. Some woman hurriedly dropped a dollar in his hat without actually stopping to notice or acknowledge. It was actually children who paid most attention and a 3 year kid was found to be the best admirer. But they were mostly dragged away by their parents. The parents didn’t stop and asked their children to move too. In all, during the total 45 minutes duration, only 6 people actually stayed and enjoyed the music for a while. He received about $32 in tip from like 20 people but most of them didn’t stop. Even after he finished playing the applause was missing. No one complimented and it was all back to silence as usual. No one recognized it was Joshua Bell, the same guy who sold out to packed house just two days ago at a Boston theatre with tickets costing upwards of $100. He received a standing ovation there.

This small experiment brings forth important insights about human behavior, perception, taste and people’s priorities and raises many a daunting questions. How do humans perceive beauty and talent? How do we appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in unexpected context? And does time and location play a role in actually describing talent? Why a commonplace environment and inappropriate timing degrade the beauty of the performance? One important conclusion that can be drawn from this small experiment is to stand back, take time out for ourselves and think how many important things are we missing in our lives just because we are too busy to notice?

Another small incident that I would like to recall here is one that was conducted by some gentleman in the suburbs of south west California. He bought a new refrigerator for his home. He replaced the old one and thought of donating the old one. But since transporting the old refrigerator would have been tricky he simply put it out in his front lawn with a note stating – “Free refrigerator in working condition. You can have it if you will take it away.” He expected it to be gone the next morning but to his surprise it was still there even after three days. After some brain-storming he came up with a plan. He changed the note to – “Fridge in working condition. First $100 takes it.” And lo and behold, it was gone the next morning, stolen. The experiment, small though in magnitude brings forth an important outlook of human behavior. Unless there is some value attached, free things in life are usually deemed by people as useless. In this world of extreme commercialization, things only have a value when a price tag is attached to it.

Another experiment, bordering on the same lines as the one above, was done by me and a few friends back when I was working in 2012. We purchased two bottles of whiskey for one of our regular parties. One was a decent whiskey costing around Rs.1200 and the other was a cheap whiskey, relatively unknown, costing around Rs.250. As a practical prank, we asked the shopkeeper to change the tag of the cheaper whiskey to Rs.4800 and he did so. We then took the bottles to the party making sure the labels were intact and visible. After arriving at our friend’s house we made sure to let everyone know that we had brought a special bottle for them. The seed of our plan was thus planted. We started drinking and our friends went gaga about how great the “expensive” whiskey was. They expressed how its aroma, smoothness and everything was so much better in quality than the Rs.1200 whiskey. In fact they even praised the body and the color of the cheap whiskey. We later confessed our crime and got the eye rolling that we deserved. However our friends were still reluctant to accept the truth. The few of us who were partners in crime had hated the cheap whiskey all along but other friends were in awe of it. But the elephant in the room remained. Although one thing became clear to me that day. Our experiences are driven by the context and the environmental settings. It’s not a question of right or wrong, or good or bad. Maybe they really enjoyed the Rs.250 bottle thinking it was some expensive whiskey or maybe we were biased, right from the start, in our opinion since we knew it was a cheap whiskey. The human brain perceives events in light of their contextual settings and it weighs them with the environmental conditions in play. Perception is dependent, to a large extent, on what you are actually expecting to perceive and not only on experience.

Now, taking my discussion forward, I would like to pen down an interesting experiment that was conducted by one gentleman (let us say Mr. X) in his locality. He is a learned man in human psychology and philosophy. He did this social experiment during a recent sale when two of his neighbors consulted him for buying a TV. He suggested both of them different TV sets with costs almost the same around Rs.80000. One of them (let’s say Neighbor 1) was advised to go for a 3-D TV with a 42 inch screen and the other (let us say Neighbor 2) was advised to go for a LED TV with a 46 inch screen without 3-D technology. They went ahead with the purchases. Now Mr. X decided to pay them a visit and compliment them on their purchases. He told Neighbor 1 how he has made the right choice by going for a future technology and how his TV won’t need to be upgraded for the next 10 years. When he went to Neighbor 2 he commented on how 3-D was useless in the current Indian setting and that it won’t be a big thing for at least the next 5-7 years till when he can enjoy the bigger display. He will probably upgrade to a newer TV by then. Needless to say both of them were extremely happy and proud of their purchases. Next month, he invited a common friend over and asked to tell the neighbors the same thing except this time to opposite parties. The friend did as advised and as a result Mr. X got to hear a mouthful from both the parties. They now despised their TV sets and hated even to look at it. Both the parties were unhappy now and were almost ashamed of how they wasted their money.

This small experiment emphasizes a very important human trait. The happiness or sadness felt by people is mostly relative. It has a lot to do with relative states of our friends, relatives, neighbors and colleagues. If everybody is given a promotion then it won’t really make people happy. To feel successful it is necessary to for others to fail. We always want others to lose in order to win and attain happiness. This is the root cause to many of our sufferings. Another important implication of this experiment is the “social acceptance” factor. Everyone wants to be appreciated in the society he lives in. He wants everyone to like him and love him or even be jealous to some extent. Now as these things are not really in our control so how can we really be happy without being affected by what the society thinks?

Continuing further I would like to add one last experiment to my discussion here. This one emphasizes how one can play with the human mind and achieve desired results/outcomes by simply mincing his words to reform the message. I cannot exactly recall the source of this particular incident but I am sure I read it somewhere. It goes like this. One of the museums had a message board near the display articles stating – “Be sure to wash your hands if you touch any object.” Obviously not many people dared to touch the artifacts. On asking the curator why exactly was this message displayed and does the artifacts really contained any harmful chemicals, the reply received was rather amusing and startling. He told that there isn’t any actual danger but the fact is that this new message board works much more effectively than the old “Do not touch the artifacts” board. This small experiment brings out the inherent truth that people generally don’t follow orders unless they are forced to external fear of risk/danger or punishments. The same can be observed in almost all of Indian cities wherein the traffic laws are only followed if a policeman is in sight.

All this shouldn’t come as a surprise as most of us keep conducting our little experiments from time to time. Their reasons vary and so do the outcomes. We try to act smart, intelligent or influential just to gain social acceptance. As a student of human behavior, especially corporate, I do not find it hard to believe that much of what we do – we do to impress others. Those others, whom we don’t even know many a times. We shy away from asking for a discount or bargaining in a supermarket just to avoid the embarrassment of what others will think. Many a times we even tolerate or oversee nuisances to avoid creating a scene. This fear of embarrassment is one of the major reasons that the common people bear with the wrong-doings of the bureaucrats and thus lose their self-esteem.

Also an important conclusion thus drawn is that in this era of extreme consumerism all value is defined by “the price tag”. Brands openly play with this mindset and create a virtual class of distinctiveness. People associate their status with the brand of car they drive. How apt is that? It’s completely okay to indulge but it’s not right to judge before completely understanding the reference. The best professor in the university might be very casual about his dressing. He might not drive a very fancy car in spite of earning a great salary. An artist is judged not by his art but by the size of the stage he performs on. 

These varied social experiments provide us some great insights to human psychology and behavior. It is now up to individuals that how they interpret the findings above. One may look at things positively and develop a new outlook towards life. He may choose to live more casually and take time for himself. He may choose to go against the societal norm of the “price tag” status and be comfortable in his own skin. He may choose to be happy for what he possesses rather than be unhappy for things he doesn’t have. He may choose to be a citizen who exercises pride in following his moral duties rather than be forced to do so. One may also take note of things from the other side of the coin by playing with some of these twisted mindsets. He may choose to flash his brand of clothing in all ways possible. He may choose to always remain in a state of constant despair due to jealousy from his neighbor’s prosperity.

Here I would like to bring a close to my discussion with this ancient quote by David K. Reynolds – “No one really knows why humans do what they do.”