Amateur Psychology Experiments are Fun

(Programming Note: From time to time, I'll be using this blog to post anecdotes from my simple life as a way to keep them from morphing unrecognizably as old age tightens it grip on my feeble neurons. I apologize in advance if they're not very entertaining.)

I stayed in my college town during the summers - rather than take classes, I would find student work on campus. Sometimes I ended up working food service, usually washing dishes. In the summer, the University would host various week-long academic or sports retreats for schoolkids. One day, the dishwashing machine was down, so we were giving out food on paper plates with plastic utensils. That left about five of us idle in the dishroom, watching kids dump their garbage in the bins and stack their trays on the shelf.

The trays were blue and red in equal proportion. We always left a small stack of trays on the shelf, so it would be obvious to the kids where they go. This gave me an idea for an experiment. We made two stacks, one red and one blue, and then watched what happened.

Most of the time, the kids would put their tray on the correct stack, assuming that there was some rule or custom where the stacks had to be monochromatic. Some kids would carelessly put their try on the wrong stack - we began handicapping the odds of those kids getting into college themselves. Sometimes, the chaperones would notice this, and gently chastise the child, showing them how to put the tray on the right stack! It was hilarious.

Even more entertaining, though, were the kids who would look around furtively for nearby chaperones, then put the tray on the wrong stack intentionally. Some would even glare at us defiantly. The most fun, for us, was speculating on how long a prison term such malcontents would end up serving.

Human nature at work.