My Psyche Experiment

[DeathBug]

Reprinted here is the final report on my psyche class experiment; I thought some might find it interesting.

___________

Reading the Fine Print

Introduction

There?s an old adage amongst business people that goes ?Always read the fine print?; in many cases, it?s easier for a person signing documentation to simply gloss over details, even though another adage reminds us that the Devil is in them. These adages exist for a reason: it?s simple common sense to know exactly what you?re signing before you?re legally bound to it.

However, is the common sense truly that common? Our group set out to test that. We wanted to see how likely the average person is to follow through with the conventional wisdom, and read an entire legal document, in this case, a petition.

Our background investigation into similar research was surprisingly unfruitful. While there were instances of testing an average person?s awareness, these experiments aren?t comparable to ours because it was the subject matter of the petition that contained the questionable material, such as banning dihydrogen monoxide and ending women?s suffrage. Our experiment, as you will see, had an inherently deceitful petition.

Method

The petition is simple, on the surface: we wish to increase the penalties on those who speed in school zones during the posted hours. The cause is simple, noble, non-offensive and a bit generic; it requires little thought on the part of the person signing. Our petitioners will each present the cause in the same manner, (?Would you like to sign to increase penalties on those who speed in school zones??), and hand the subject a copy of the petition to sign.

However, the actual petition paper contains the crux of the experiment the first half of the paper clearly explains the cause we petition for, referencing the law and such. However, the second half of the page explains to the reader that this is, in fact, an experiment, and instructs them to please return the paper, unsigned, to the petitioner. The transition is seamless between the two subjects; the only way to understand what?s going on is to actually read the entire petition.

Our hypothesis is that the vast majority of those petitioned won?t read our actual petition, and merely sign on the basis of our explanation to them. This sloppiness can be a result of many factors, including naiveté, impatience, or general ignorance of details. The end results, however, will be the same: most people won?t read the document they sign.

An interesting thing happened in our first experiment, however; the initial experiment trial yielded overwhelmingly favorable results for our hypothesis. Because the nature of the project stresses the ability to discuss our process, we decided to change it, to allow more material for discussion in the final report.

Because the initial petition was formed with the public interest in mind, we felt that it would be interesting to create a second petition that was beneficial to a majority of the people we were likely to petition, though it may not be so for the rest of the community. So, our second petition proposed to lower the Florida drinking age from twenty-one to eighteen years old. It didn?t much affect the outcome regarding our hypothesis, but the process became much more interesting, to say the least.

Because our hypothesis we very general, we wanted a large cross-section of the population to be our subjects. Our only set requirement was that subjects be sixteen or older; otherwise, we wanted the sample to be as random as possible. We ?petitioned? at the Brandon campus of HCC, in two groups of two. We petitioned twice, both times in the early afternoons on consecutive Wednesdays.

{Name Witheld}and {Name Witheld 2}petitioned on the first Wednesday; Eric Wilson and {Name Withneld 2} petitioned the following week. One member of our group played as the petitioner, while another collected demographic data. Each group petitioned for two hours, alternating the role of petitioner and observer every half-hour. We walked the length of both floors of the campus several times, but didn?t enter any rooms. We were interested in discovering if there is a correlation between a person?s age, gender or race and their likelihood to read the petition.

Our independent variable was our façade petition, which explains its true purpose in black and white to anyone who reads it. The dependent variable was the subject whom the petition is given to. If the subject actually read the entire paper, they would have returned it unsigned; if they hadn?t, they would have signed it.

Included with this report are both of our petitions, and the script we created to introduce our petition to our subjects.
Results

The results of our experiment overwhelmingly supported our hypothesis; the vast majority of those petitioned didn?t read the actual document as they signed it. Below is a graphical representation of our data.


As you can see, there is a very, very large difference between those who read the petition and those who didn?t. In short, our hypothesis was proved within the parameters of the experiment.

A total of one hundred and two people were petitioned successfully, but only eight people actually read the petition. Percentage-wise, only 7.84 percent read the entire document before signing. Considering the complexity and abundance of legal documentation in our daily lives, the figure is a bit frightening, but not totally unexpected.

Discussion

In retrospect, there were many things we could have done to make this a more accurate experiment. First and foremost was our sample; we were pragmatically limited to the HCC Brandon campus after the Brandon Town Center Mall denied us permission to experiment on their grounds. Our sample is therefore not necessarily applicable to a larger population.

On a similar note, the sample size was further limited by our needs to fit the experiment into our schedules; we petitioned twice, on the same day of the week, around the same time. Suffice it to say, our sample size was very limited. For a truly applicable experiment, the petitioning would have been done at all times of day, in large public areas where larges numbers of people converge.

Another factor to consider is the actual presentation of the petition; the presentation speech was consistent, but the presenters were all male, and obviously students. Had there been a female petitioner, or a teacher/authority figure petitioner, we may have gotten different results, or a larger sample.

There were also some instances of people who seemed to have read the entire petition, yet signed it anyway. At first we thought there might be ambiguity in our instructions within the petition, but the occurrences were so rare that we decided it was simply an odd happening. However, with such a small sample size, these individuals undoubtedly skewed our results.

While selecting people to petition, we avoided those on cell phones, as well as those leaving lavatories, for obvious reasons.

We weren?t prepared for anyone to take detailed interest in our petitions; as such, we didn?t have ready-made answers for people who asked questions regarding the petition?s sponsor, or the scope of the ?movement?; we had to make up answers on the spot. In retrospect, we should have had a simple faux-history prepared regarding our petition in case we were asked.

We also had several people who were reluctant to fill out the entire petition form, not wanting to give out such important data; one subject even grew indignant regarding it. It may have been simpler to request only the name and street address, or name and phone number. To ease our subjects, we asked that they only filled out the information they felt comfortable giving.

(An interesting phenomena occurred regarding the information given by subjects; if the first person to sign on one petition sheet filled out all the requested information, the subsequent signers were much more likely to do the same. On the other hand, if the first person signed only their name and left the other information blank, that became the trend for that sheet. A conformity experiment could be conducted using a method similar to ours, but with the focus on the patterns of the signatures.)
Finally, the most interesting part of the project: the difference in reaction regarding the two surveys. As expected, there was very little criticism of the school-zone survey, because it was recognized as a generally noble cause. However, what was surprising was that many people who refused to sign did so on the grounds that they sped in school zones, and didn?t want to get hit with a steeper penalty. (Referencing a point made earlier, we may not have gotten such a response had a perceived authority figure conducted the petition, instead of a perceived peer.)
We had assumed that some people wouldn?t sign that petition for that reason, but we?d thought that no one would actually admit to it. The fact that some did without hesitation was a bit disheartening. Because we weren?t keeping data on those who refused to take the petition, we can?t produce a definite number of people who reacted in such a way. In retrospect, collecting data on all the people we approached, and gauging their reaction to the petition subject might have better served us.

The drinking age petition produced much more varied results, however. Some people were as enthusiastic as we?d thought they?d be, but others reacted with confusion, and some with anger. Similar to the people who didn?t sign because they sped in school zones, many subjects replied that they didn?t care about the drinking age because they were under twenty-one and drank anyway. The antithesis of this group were those over twenty-one that said that they had to wait, so everyone else should as well.

Without question, however, the most memorable response was the young man who exploded with, ?Why the H*ll you lil? drunk-a** b*tches tryin? to lower the drinking age? Like we need drunk-a** freshmen all over the place, runnin? into everyone!?
Regarding the varied reactions we received to our petition, we realized midway through the process that no matter how interesting they were, they simply didn?t matter to the actual project, because we took no consideration of anyone who didn?t actually accept the petition. Perhaps we should have created a means to gauge public response to the petition, in addition to recording those who actually read it. However, this would have created more variables, and as armature experimenters, we have an inherently limited amount that we can effectively process.

In conclusion, had we performed this experiment again, we would have done several things differently. First, we would have a more diverse group performing the petition, and we would have performed it within a more diverse area, a small ?melting pot? scene such as a mall or movie theater. Second, we would have petitioned over a much broader period of time, to get as much of a diverse sample as possible. We would also have asked for much less personal data on the petition, to avoid scaring away potential signers.

We would have created a method of recording the reactions of the public to the petition as well, and been able to gather correlative data between the reactions of the people within different demographics; we also would keep a tally of those who refused to sign. Finally, we would have put much more thought into our petition subject and how it might influence the outcome of the experiment; is it better to go with a non-descript subject, or to go with a controversial and potentially volatile one? For the purpose of this experiment, where only the signature and reading of the petition mattered, the less-offensive petition was more effective. However, if the scope of the experiment is widened to include subject reaction, controversy may be key.

However, we firmly believe that even if we allocated all the time and resources necessary to properly carry out this experiment, the results would still remain the same: the vast majority of people won?t read what they?re signing.

[Heaven's Cloud]

That is why I refuse to sign petitions that people I don't know hand me, no matter how good the cause. I have almost as little desire to become a statistic for someone's psychology class as I do for reading a boring petition.

Anyway, it is a very well written report but hardly surprising.

[Baron Samedi]

[size=1]Nice report there. Very interesting. It also brings to mind people who don't read the Legal notices that come with much software, or people who fail to read manuals [though that is less related to your experiement].

At my school, we've had something like that done to us. We're given a sheet with a whole ton of questions/instructions on it, but told to read them all before we begin filling them out. The last instruction tells you to write your name on the sheet and turn it over, and wait for everyone else.

Out of my class, I was the only person [I think] to not do everything the sheet told me to :p[/size]

[Sol-Blade]

[SIZE=-3]Nice report. I remember seeing a petition like that when I went to my first Chemistry class. I still have the orginal document I was given...

[IMG]http://img72.exs.cx/img72/4383/DHMODocument.jpg[/IMG]

It's actually pretty interesting. [B]Should we ban Dihydrogen Monoxide?[/B] was the title. It was basically a paper attempting to persuade you that DHMO was a very harmful chemical that kills many people each year...

If you haven't already figured it out, the chemical in question is actually...WATER. There were many hints in the paper itself, but the whole point was to get you to research the assignment. Googling Dihydrogen Monoxide brings up sites dedicated to...water.

Let me break it down for those who haven't gotten it quite yet. [B]Di[/B], meaning two and [B]Mono[/B], meaning one. So, [B]Di[/B]hydrogen [B]Mono[/B]xide comes out to be...H20? Interesting...very interesting. The best part of the paper, were the facts about the deadly thing itself.

...DHMO have been found [I]in nearly every[/I] stream, lake, and reservoir in the World Today.

...also used as a [I]fire retardant[/I].

...Most of these deaths are caused by [I]accidental inhalation[/I] of DHMO.

...Prolonged exposure to its [I]solid form[/I] can cause severe tissue damage.

...Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive [I]sweating and urination[/I].

Solid form? You mean...ice? Accidental inhalation...heh, that's a nice word for drowing.

Anyways, lots of people failed the assignment! Me included![/SIZE]

[Baron Samedi]

[size=1]I believe some crazy person actually put a thread about DHMO on OB once. Amusing, but silly.

I quite enjoyed reading that little document Sol-Blade, lol.[/size]

[KarmaOfChaos]

[color=deeppink][size=1]My friend tricked me with that one once. It's pretty sad, considering we had just learned about how to name elements and compounds in Chemistry. But yea, that sheet is hilarious.

Ahem. Back to the topic at hand.

Yea, those results aren't surprising. I think "common sense" though is, in reality, the things that should be obvious as the wise choice, but aren't always, for whatever reason. Laziness and ignorance are the great enemies of common sense.

It'd be interesting though, to see how many other experiments you could come up with using this data, relating to psychology. I think you mention it in your paper, under the discussion section.

-Karma[/size][/color]

[Gavin]

[SIZE=1]Interesting, most interesting.

That was a fascinating little piece of reading Death Bug, I had suspected that the results might show that most people wouldn?t read the entire document although it could have gone the other way. I do think that running the petition in a different area would have produced similar results, there may have been a slight difference in those who actually did read the entire document but that would have only been due to the increased volume of people. I guess it is merely a case that common sense isn?t all that common, or maybe it?s just a case people want to complete a task as quickly as possible regardless of the results, a lá filling out the petition without reading it fully.

Sol-Blade?s article/picture/what-have-you, that too was rather good, I had actually guessed from the name that it might be water and reading through the whole thing confirmed my assumption, still it would be something fairly interesting to slip to people and see if they do get it. As for Josh?s comments we had something fairly similar in Fourth Year, you were given this 4 A4 set of pages and told to read it thoroughly before beginning to answer, 88% of the year (which means all but 5 people) started the sheets before reading it fully. The last question asked them to hand back the sheet to the teacher at the end of the class without filling out any of the questions, sneak trick but I luckily I didn?t get caught out, I'd learned a while before that to read everything carefully before you answer.[/SIZE]

[Doc]

[font=Century Gothic][size=2][color=gray]I have seen many people proform experiments/petition things like this, and people proudly sign them without even reading them. Even though I'm only 15, I have been asked to sign about 10 petitions, mostly for new school stuff/get back a teachers job, and if the person presenting the petition doesn't have any good, believable reasons for signing, I don't.[/color][/size][/font]
[font=Century Gothic][size=2][color=gray][/color][/size][/font]
[font=Century Gothic][size=2][color=gray]I also feel that it is sad many people don't read petitions they sign. Just think, if someone did petition for something that seemed good, but somewhere in the fine print there was something such as "if you are reading this, you should also know...(insert something bad)," and that thing was so... terrible... that it could drasticly change something about our lives, and NO ONE READS IT, BUT HAPPILY SIGNS IT!!!!:wigout: Now that is scary.:naughty: [/color][/size][/font]

[Lunai]

[font=georgia][color=blue][i]It's really interesting, because in the wider world, there are a lot of companies and places that would much rather you don't read the fine print at all.

I've found this to be true, both in looking for a job in the adminstrative field and in signing leases for apartments. When someone doesn't really want you to read all that closely, they will try to paraphrase the context. I once had a leassing agent tell me that a paragraph was about "simple liability stuff' when in actuality the lease was stating that I was waiving my rights to sue the property management company for any damages incurred to my person and/or belongings. That included, but was not limited to, the building not being earthquake safe and collasping during and earthquake, or getting poisoned from the asbestos in the ceiling.

So I try my hardest to always read the fine print. If I'm too tired to read it, then I'm not signing it.[/font][/color][/i]

[Harry]

I wrote "Check for ID" on the back of my credit card in the signature part two years ago and have only been asked for my ID once.

Also the other day I recieved a check that sayed "Thank you for being a valued [bank] customer" and there was a check for 5 bucks. I didn't read the fine print that said by depositting the check it signs me up for a Credit Card Protection Agency which costs $100.

Read everything.