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Pastimes : Thread Morons -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom C who wrote (11633)	12/2/2004 11:54:15 PM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12810

...a study on Road Rage In high school, a friend and I did a similar project on Road Rage, except we didn't have that term back then. We would try our best to be the first to stop at a red light then just sit there doing nothing until someone beeped. Then we'd record how long it took for the beep, the gender of the driver, and the make of car-- in New Haven, CT. If we did this in 2004, we'd probably be shot. No, I don't recall the results, but I do recall we were trying to verify the results of an experiment we had read about in class. As I was typing this, I did a Google search and, lo and behold, found it was probably the one by Doob and Gross (1968): Status was manipulated by using two categories of automobile for the stopped vehicle: a new luxury car (a black 1966 Chrysler Imperial) versus an older car rusty 1954 Ford station wagon or a grey 1961 Rambler). More honking and shorter latencies of honking occurred in the low status condition. Additionally, as can be expected, male drivers honked more quickly.http://www.uctc.net/papers/016.pdf Other studies manipulated other variables (e.g. one is less likely to honk at someone they can readily see in the car in front of them) and either verified or disputed Doob and Gross. If anyone really cares, they are discussed in the above link. Personally, I think there are way too many variables to control in real-world experiments to get any meaningful data. For example, the time of day, weather, traffic density, city, etc. ===== I think the best "moron" experiment I ever saw conducted here on SI, or most tragic, depending on your point of view, was when there was a generic way to view one's profile. You would say something like: "Here's a link to the one person you can't trust here on SI: siliconinvestor.com. Note that the link always takes the reader to their own profile. The "fun" was whether a) they didn't know it was a goof but took it well, b) they didn't know it was a goof and got really pissed off, or c) they were at first stunned but then realized it was a goof. I'll refrain from analyzing the results. - Jeff P.S. As for your daughter, I'm suprised she wasn't picked up for solicitation.