A Sociological Experiment With pennies

[thejestergl 0]

First let us start with the story of how it all began. My friend and I made a bet that I would not shave for a month and in return I will get $5. When the time came around and he owed me $5 he gave me it in pennies. Out of boredom we decided to do a little experiment. During lunch we had taken the bag of pennies and scattered them across the ground leaving a group of pennies in the center, and others scattered around the perimeter. We had no hypothesis about what would happen. During the lunch period most people would do one of two things. Either they would walk by and kick the large pile of pennies in the center to scatter them more, or pick up exactly ONE penny, look around, then continue walking. Why? We had a theory that most people are very cautious when it comes to borderline thievery. As the day went on and people began to go to their classes, more pennies were being picked up (2-3). At the end of the day when no one was around, a person had actually come with a jar and picked up all the pennies. It made me feel good to know that the jar he used to pick up the pennies was actually for donation to a charity (yes, I saw him give it to a teacher and it said "Donations" on it). People also had more "courage" to pick up more pennies when they were in larger groups. Small groups of 2-3 people would often pick up one each or two would pick up one and the last person would just continue to walk. Large groups of people, 5+, would pick up about a handful of pennies before stopping.Thought this might be interesting to some people, if you need it for a school project by all means go ahead and use it. It was only for fun between my friends and I.

[suberatu 0]

Nice little idea you have there. Although scientifically it doesn't fit the definition of an 'experiment', it's a cool thing to try. Still, I can see reason in your conclusion.

[thorne 0]

That's very interesting. It does seem to go along with some of the concepts we learned in psychology, like about how people are more willing to do things when they see others doing them too.

[midnightvamp 1]

Wow, that's really interesting... It's neat to see how different people will act to the same situation just based around if they are alone, or with a group of people. I personally don't know the scientific definition of an experiment... but it sounds like one to me, because isn't an experiment when you are testing to see the how something reacts? I don't know... but it's cool anyway!

[haberjj01 0]

I love little experiments like this. A few years ago at my university a girl did her psychology research project on how helpful people would be if she dressed up real pretty and looked sexy. She asked people to help her move a table and kept having them move it over and over until they gave up. One guy moved it like 50 times! However, when she didn't take a shower and wore grungy clothes, people hardly helped her at all. Also, recently in the news some girl from a Texas university is under some heat because she did an experiment where she put an American flag on a hallway floor and counted the number of people who walked on it and those who walked around it. Pretty interesting stuff....

[adrianator 0]

Some people are very patriotic when it comes to the flag, after all it is a symbol of our country.

United States Code
Title 36 Chapter 10 §176 (

( The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise

A lot of times foreign-run stores display their own country's flag above the USA flag and they come under fire, especially by veterans.