Social Experimenting-Experiments 1&2

I have a coworker that directed me to a website www.improveverywhere.com. The site is more or less a site where a group of people conduct experiments in public just to see what reactions will occur. One of my favorites is "Where's Rob?" This social experiment was conducted at Madison Square Garden. The premise was there is a guy named Rob that gets lost coming back from halftime while looking for his friends. His friends see him and are yelling for him. The goal was to see how many people they could get to yell for Rob. By the end of the game there was a whole section yelling for Rob. Funny stuff. With this model in place I decided to conduct a few experiments of my own.

Experiment 1 "The Ring Test"-

The Test:I have been married for 7 years now and one of my coworkers recently became married. I wanted to see if I took off my wedding ring how long would it take before my wife realized that it was missing. My friend took his off at the same time I did. We started this experiment on Friday after our work day.

Expectations: My expectations were my wife would not realize it at all and I would come back Monday with little to report. I thought that due to the length of marriage my coworker's wife would immediately recognize that his ring was missing and by that evening he would be wearing his ring again

Results: I stuck my ring in my pocket on Friday and went home that day. My wife and I had a nice evening with no questions asked about the location of my ring. Saturday I awoke and transferred my ring from the pocket that the ring was in the previous day to the shorts I was wearing at the time. Again nothing was said, although I did not factor in that we had pictures scheduled that day. So if you see these pics posted somewhere, there is a reason my ring is missing. That night I decided I did not want to really lose my ring, so I placed it on a drawer and went to sleep. Sunday we awoke and as we were heading to church my wife asked where my wedding ring was. I pointed at her as if to acknowledge that she just caught me. I thought I could officially take her off the clock, but then she said she had saw it earlier and was wondering why I wasn't wearing it. I chalk this up to a botched experiment. Id like to replicate it again, but my wife is definitely going to be on the lookout for it. My coworker said he had similar results, he placed his ring in a jewelry box that his wife never gets into, but she just happened to look inside and saw it on Saturday afternoon. All in all it was a fun first experiment.

Experiment 2: No Talking (internally)

The Test: A lot of my internal interactions are conducted by instant messaging. I thought it would be fun to see how long it would take for my coworkers to figure out that I was only speaking through Instant Messaging or facial gestures. I also wanted to see what reactions I would get after people realized that I was not talking.

Expectations: I expected my coworkers to be oblivious to the fact until around 4-5 P.M. Emotionally I expected a sympathetic reaction.

The Results: I started the experiment at approximately 9:30 AM. Almost immediately someone asked me a question. I typed furiously to get the answer out. She read my response and was happy with it. The next person that realized that something was going on asked me if I lost my voice. I lipped that I was trying to preserve it. He wanted to see if I was ok or if there was anything he could do. The sympathy expectation was definitely achieved. I then went back to work. Our admin. assistant asked me some direct questions not pertaining to work that I could not respond to. I tried to divert, but she knew something was up. She is an incredibly nice person, but I could tell she was getting frustrated, but I stood my ground and didn't say anything. The next gentleman that arrived was asking me some questions that I couldn't answer except through IM. Luckily I had my phone headset on. He asked if I was on the phone. I nodded my head and he said I'll catch up with you later. I was pretty proud of that so I did a celebratory dance. The bad news is the admin assistant saw me do the dance. Now she knew something was up. She asked another coworker that feared my peculiar behavior was due to something they had done. I had lunch with both the admin. asst. and the other coworker. The minute I stepped out the door I was grilled about what was going on. I fessed up and they giggled about the whole ordeal. Ultimately the test only lasted for about 2 hours, but in that timespan I realized if you don't talk, many different emotions are felt including sympathy, anger, and paranoia.

Look for more experiments to come soon!

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