Social experiements of the non sinister kind
A great thing about having an interest in the science of human behaviour is that you can conduct little social experiments as you go about day to day life.
Here are two I have been doing recently, both at tube stations. When coming up from the train in a station with a non-moving staircase between the up and down escalator, I usually find that no one is walking up. But I find that if I walk up by the time I reach the top I can turn and see four or five people have followed in my wake. I undertake the second experiment at the RSA’s local station, Embankment.
There are two cash point machines side by side. Although both cash points accept all major cards, usually two separate queues have formed. This can be inequitable in that if you happen to be in a queue behind someone who is very slow or undertaking a complex transaction, you reach the machine after someone who arrived later then you in the parallel queue. So, whenever I queue I stand between the two existing queues, forming a new single line in which the front person goes to the next available cash point. Interestingly, although my intervention changes the previous queuing pattern, on every occasion so far new queue joiners have joined my new more equitable single line rather than by-passing me to reassert the single queue pattern.
The experiments show how small interventions can encourage behaviour which is on the one hand, good for public health and, on the other, more equitable and rational.
The conclusion some readers might reach from this is that I am simply a very sad person. But for those who find any of this interesting, my invitation is to develop and report on your own mini social experiments (preferably ones which seek socially benign outcomes; we don’t want hundreds of little Stanford Prisons out there!).
Imagine if tens or hundreds of thousands of us were everyday pursuing our own experiments into how to encourage pro-social behaviour; so much learning, so much positive social reinforcement – a revolution of tiny and clever kindnesses.
Small kindnesses
My reader said last week’s blog was a bit dull and wonky so this week I will speak from the heart.
It’s only really today that I can bear to talk about it, but on Monday me and my two sons watched our beloved West Bromwich Albion lose to Derby in the Championship play-off final.
For those of you who don’t know, this is a triple whammy: it means the whole the season has come to nothing, the club loses out on £50 million plus of TV and sponsorship revenue, and the team will almost certainly lose three or four of its best players to Premiership sides.
I wish I could say that it was still a great day out, after all Wembley is fantastic and we enjoyed the excellent hospitality of T-Mobile (a far sighted company which sponsors both West Brom and the RSA Coffeehouse Challenge). But I’m afraid whoever it was that said it is the taking part that matters never had a team in the play-offs!
And yet in seeking comfort out of adversity there are insights to be had. My boys were completely distraught and so I had to be the grown up. As I said to them, “After you’ve lost this match the team can never hurt you as much again.”
I have started going to Albion games with my friend Adrian Chiles. He is so emotionally tied up with West Brom, and has been all his life, that on bad days I always know there is someone suffering more than me. But there was something else – the reason I think all this is a suitable subject for my blog.
One of the Albion’s favourite players over the years is a central defender called Darren Moore. His universal nick name is ‘Big Dave’ which is apparently a reference to an advertisement for chips from the 1980s.
Anyone who has seen his play can quickly see his strengths (power, size, experience, ability to score headed goals) but also his limitations (he is not exactly nippy and has the turning circle of a family estate car). But the reason fans love him is that he plays every game as if it was his last, is a committed team player and although he is tough and not afraid to give away free kicks there is not an ounce of malice in his huge frame.
Anyway, last season ‘Dave’ left us and went to Derby, and so on Monday he was on the wining team. At the final whistle Derby players were as elated as ours were deflated. They ran around like madmen, jumping on each other, punching the air and grabbing scarves and banners from the crowd.
All, that is, except one man. As the Albion players sank to the ground, many of them in tears, Big Dave was there to comfort each one of them in turn. He must have hugged our distraught left back Paul Robinson for a full 30 seconds (if that doesn’t sound long try doing it with a consenting colleague). All this when he could have been lapping up the adoration of 33,000 of his own fans.
Watching this reminded me and my boys of a simple truth; like all sport (and life itself) football picks us up and knocks us down, we can’t win every time, but it is in our power to be gracious in victory and philosophical in defeat.
More than that, in Big Dave’s deliberate walk to the West Brom end I saw on Monday the incredible power of small acts of kindness.
So here is a challenge to our Fellows – why doesn’t someone out there start a web site to celebrate small kindnesses (smallkindeness.com?). As a counter to the dystopian vision projected by the mainstream media, this could be place for us to record and celebrate the small things that strangers do to make our world better.
A place to thank or even get to know the person who helped us pick up our dropped shopping, or drew us a little map to get us to our tricky destination. And beyond the happy anecdotes (a good thing in itself) maybe we could find out more about why we do the right thing and how we might be encouraged to do it more.
So from West Brom back to my obsession with pro-social behaviour. I may be talking nonsense but if it helps me stop thinking about playing at Blackpool when we could have been going to Arsenal it’s good enough for me.
RSA Animate
RSA Mobile
RSA Comment- RSA Projects Blogs
- Twitter @RSAMatthew
RSA Bookshop
The RSA Bookshop, in partnership with Blackwell's the UK's leading academic bookseller, offers Fellows and friends an opportunity to purchase books and to explore our speakers’ ideas in greater detail. Visit the RSA Bookshop.