In the first study they found that twice as many mall shoppers who had just ridden an up escalator contributed to the Salvation Army than shoppers who had just ridden the down escalator. In a second study, participants who had been taken up a short flight of stairs to an auditorium stage to complete a series of questionnaires volunteered more than 50 percent more of their time than participants who had been led down to the orchestra pit.
A third study took yet another approach. Participants were to decide how much hot sauce to give to a participant purportedly taking part in a food-tasting study. Those who were up on the stage gave only half as much of the painfully hot sauce to the other person as did those who were sitting down in the orchestra pit.
In a final study, participants watched film clips of scenes taken from an airplane above the clouds, or through the window of a passenger car. Participants who had watched the clip of flying up above the clouds were 50 percent more cooperative in a computer game than those who had watched the car ride down on the ground.
More in Scientific American. The idea is that people primed to think about height will act from “higher ground”.
I’m not surprised to see effects, I’m surprised to see these effects. 50 and 100% changes in behavior from subtle priming? Hard to believe. These results go straight into the “should be replicated by a different group of researchers” category.
Hat tip to @poverty_action
2 Responses
Pls let’s waste any brain power replicating these studies! Do they really help us understand how to make people more helpful and cooperative?? Honestly I thought this was your April Fool’s Day’s satire on RCT!
I have noticed that many beggars in Thailand set up ‘shop’ halfway up a set of stairs. I am sure they would be able to provide some anecdotal evidence on the above theory…
My theory is they position themselves there because those going up the stairs are going so slowly that they are more likely to feel guilty for not giving money, and so they do. Where the beggar is stationed at the mid-way point of the stairs, both groups are at the exact same height so that might discount the higher ground hypothesis.