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'Big Brother' Eyes Make Us Act More Honestly
dylanduck quotes a NewScientist.com article that says "We all know the scene: the coffee room with the 'honesty box' where you pay for your drinks — or not, because no one is watching. But researchers have discovered that merely a picture of watching eyes trebled the amount of money paid." That's a pretty deep-rooted fear of getting caught, which could be useful for crime prevention perhaps. But whose eyes?"
Maybe flowers make you pay less?
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
I'm not surprised by this at all.
I once was very good friends with a card shop owner. In the back two corners of his store, he had two very huge obtrusive obnoxious surveillance cameras angled into the store. I had been in the back of the store to play cards with him every now and then and had never seen any television sets. So I asked him one day where the feeds went on his cameras so that he could catch people shoplifting. He just laughed and told me that the feeds didn't need to go anywhere. And if I looked closer, those cameras were fake.
I would suspect that anything symbolizing or triggering our mind to think of surveillance would cause us to be more honest. It would be interesting to instead of eyes use pictures of surveillance cameras pointed at the coffee. Or, perhaps simply the words, "We are watching you!" I mean, it's only natural for us to react to what we see.
My work here is dung.
Just so everyone will flush and wash their hands!
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Is fear of getting caught a worse human trait than the tendency to be dishonest?
I'd like to think the better of my fellow man, but this story just tells me that I'm probably not being honest with myself.
Here's a picture suitable for posting on your refrigerator, to aid with dieting efforts. It combines the 'watching eyes' effect with the 'I'm gonna hurl' effect to maximize effect.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
A single eye, composed of orange flames, sitting atop a tall tower, emitting a large beam of light, like a lighthouse, should work pretty well.
Then again, it didn't work out too well the last time someone tried it.
Berserk Manga > All
I think the important thing here is the possibility that these eyes could be giving the coffee fund a human feature.
It's entirely possible that the people who were just taking coffee before thought the coffee fund to be more of a faceless corporate operation run by management at their company. Perhaps they thought they weren't paid enough and so it was 'ok' to take coffee.
They didn't feel like they were doing something wrong because they could easily justify their free coffee--plus it made them work harder! Even better for the company providing it.
If you look at the eyes, they look very concerned and hurt. I think that this probably triggered emotions of the coffee fund being an employee thing and you weren't taking coffee from the company but your fellow man. That's why this is interesting and that's why I don't think that the people who were taking coffee ever thought they were really doing something wrong.
My work here is dung.
Kind of a similar theory presented in the Panopticon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon)
The illusion of surveillance is as powerful as surveillance itself.
http://www.ceilingcat.com/
...
I wonder if the effect is the same with cat's eyes
There's a pretty common thread in ethics training that goes something like this: your character is determined by what you do when no one is watching.
I'm not sure if that's right or wrong, but the picture of the watching eyes is apparently a powerful prompt to pay for the drinks. It's a reminder that someone could be watching (but isn't), so what will you do?
It's also possible that the 'tripling effect' results from the people who think "Oh, I'll pay it later" actually remembering to pay rather than the people who never pay actually turning over a new leaf.
Those of TJ Eckleburg, of course.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
It's interesting how just the image of human eyes "humanizes" the coffee fund. I was chatting with a professor friend who was complaining about how most of the boys in his classes wear baseball caps that prevent him from seeing most of their face, including their eyes. He felt that even subconsciously this affected their grades in a negative way. It bothered him that he didn't really know them. In fact he joked that mostly he knew their hats --- "the kid with the red hat with the black bill seems pretty good at derivatives."
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
My dad lost an eye in WWII. He was a farmer in Kenya after the war, and would sometimes 'pop' his eye and leave it on a post to keep farm workers from slacking off. It worked well, until they figured out they just needed to put a hat over the eye.
This is one thing that the concept of God used to be used for - the all seeing eye that made some people act (somewhat) honestly. Now that religion is on the wane in parts of the world, a replacement all seeing eye will be needed to keep the same class of people in line.
We all know the scene: the coffee room with the "honesty box" where you pay for your drinks - or not, because no one is watching.
I hardly ever pay for my drinks in regular coffee shops so why would I start paying in some honesty box?
We all know the scene, you go into the starbucks and order the double. Before paying you pretend you have to run to the washroom. When you get back the coffee is waiting for you so you snatch it and run out the door screaming "rape." Or you can just live here in Japan where some places you pay after you drink. In that case you pretend to go to the washroom after you finish your coffee and simply climb* out the window (shouting "rape").
* Note: There might be a bit of a fall if the shop is on the third floor**.
** This may or may not have been learned through experience.
And if this truly works, does that make xeyes a productivity tool?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Humans are hardwired to focus on faces, or even just eyes.
Maybe the eyes were just more noticeable than a less "eye-catching" textual reminder to pay?
So the eyes made it less likely to forget the payment, but not because of guilt or fear, and a blinking light next to the notice would have the same effect?
now behave!
thats "trebled", not tripled ;)
I am certain that one as perspicacious as thou was not remiss in making proper use of thine Capitals and Punctuation when reprimanding yonder knave for his abuse of the King's English.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Normally, I'd cite statistics of crime in neighborhoods with/without these programs, but that was too much work. So I decided to make an unfounded assertion and hope for +5 insightful!
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
straight out of 1984.
if you're not doing anything wrong, why should you mind being watched?
This is why I feel the Government should be very careful with this line of thought. I turn it right back on them. If the Government isn't doing anything wrong then why should they mind us watching them.
Democracy in action.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com