I magine that you decide to buy a nice new calculator. You go to
your local electronics store and the salesperson shows you a range
of devices. After careful consideration, you choose a model that
costs $20. At this point, the clerk looks slightly anxious and explains that the following day the store is going to have a sale. If you
come back then, the calculator will cost $5. Do you buy the calculator then and there, or return the following day?
Now let’s imagine a slightly different scenario. This time you decide to buy a new computer. You’re shown a range of machines.
After careful consideration, you choose a computer costing
$1,999. Once again, the assistant looks anxious, and then explains
that the following day there will be a sale. If you come back then,
the computer will be reduced to $1,984. Do you buy the computer, or return the following day?
Researchers examining the psychology of decision making have
presented these two scenarios to lots of people. In both instances,
127
there is the opportunity to save identical amounts of money, and
so it would be rational to treat each choice the same way. People
should either buy the calculator and computer right away or, if
they want to save $15, return the following day. However, most
people treat the two scenarios very differently. About 70 percent
of people say that they would put off buying the calculator until
the following day, but purchase the computer right then and
there.
Even without a calculator, it is clear that the figures don’t add
up. Why do so many people act in such an irrational way? It seems
that they view their potential saving not in absolute terms but
rather as a percentage of the amount of money they are spending.
In absolute terms, each time they stand to save $15. However, this
represents 75 percent of the price of the calculator, but just 1.5 percent of the price of the computer. Seen in relative terms, the former seems to be a much better deal than the latter, and so well
worth waiting for.
This is just one example from the large amount of research investigating how people make up their minds. The work has examined how people make many different types of decisions, including
whom they should marry, which political party they should support, the type of career they wish to pursue, the sort of house they
should live in, the size of car they should have, and whether they
should give it all up and move to the countryside.
Here are just a few of the questions this unusual research has
explored: whether subliminal messages can increase sales of Coke,
popcorn, and bacon; whether something as simple as the height of
political candidates can cause voters to switch allegiance from one
party to another; whether your surname influences where you live
and the career you pursue; whether Hollywood movies influence
128 Quirkology
the verdicts returned in courtrooms around the world; and why
certain online chat rooms and personal ads are more effective than
others.
We start by delving deep into the strange world of subliminal
perception.
Drinking Coke, Eating Popcorn,
and Buying Bacon
In September 1957, a market researcher named James Vicary announced the results of a remarkable experiment proving that subliminal stimuli exerted a powerful influence over people’s buying
behavior.1 According to Vicary, moviegoers in New Jersey had been
secretly exposed to the subliminal messages “Drink Coke” and
“Eat Popcorn” while watching their favorite films. The messages had
been flashed onto the screen from a high-speed projector designed by
Vicary, with each exposure lasting just one three-thousandth of a second. Although the audience had been unaware of the messages,
sales of Coke and popcorn had increased by 18 percent and 58 percent, respectively. Vicary’s announcement generated a considerable
furor among the public and the politicians. Could people’s thoughts
and behavior really be manipulated by subliminal messages? Could
they be persuaded to buy products they didn’t want, to vote for
politicians they didn’t support? Could these messages even be
broadcast on national television and influence an entire nation?
Word about the possible power of subliminal stimuli spread like
wildfire, with a survey conducted just nine months after Vicary’s
press conference revealing that more than 40 percent of respondents had heard about the story. The resulting hullabaloo caught the
attention of Melvin DeFleur, an expert in communication studies
Making Your Mind Up 129
from Indiana University. DeFleur had gained his doctorate for CIAfunded research examining how information about food and shelter could be communicated effectively to the public in the event of
a nuclear war.2 DeFleur had been especially interested in the effectiveness of two low-tech methods of dissemination—word of
mouth and the bombarding of towns with thousands of leaflets.
To avoid widespread panic, DeFleur and his colleagues often disguised the real reason for their work. In one part of the project, researchers visited a fifth of homes in an isolated town in Washington
State posing as marketers for the Gold Shield Coffee Company.
They told people that the company had developed a new slogan
(“Gold Shield Coffee—Good as Gold”), and that three days later
they would interview all the inhabitants in the town and give a
pound of coffee to everyone who could name the slogan. In addition to this face-to-face attempt to create a caffeine-related buzz,
the U.S. Air Force was also ordered to bombard the town with
30,000 leaflets describing the scheme. When the investigators arrived three days later, they discovered that 84 percent of inhabitants were able to tell them accurately that Gold Shield Coffee was
as good as gold. In their resulting report, the researchers noted that
this figure may represent an unrealistically high level of dissemination because the price of coffee had risen dramatically just before
the study began, and the public might have been highly motivated
to discover the slogan.
DeFleur was curious about James Vicary’s claims concerning
subliminal perception, and he teamed up with his colleague Robert
Petranoff to investigate.3 The two decided to conduct a realistic test
by presenting hidden messages on national television. They knew
that they had to be quick. The National Association of Broadcasters had already recommended that subliminal stimuli were not to
130 Quirkology
be used on the media, and it seemed likely that a full ban was on
its way. DeFleur and Petranoff carried out two experiments on the
television station WTTV Channel 4, in Indianapolis.
The first part of the study was designed to determine whether
hidden messages could affect the public’s viewing habits. As part of
its normal nightly programming, WTTV Channel 4 broadcast a
two-hour feature film, followed by a news program hosted by a
well-known presenter named Frank Edwards. The experimenters
obtained permission to superimpose the subliminal message
“Watch Frank Edwards” throughout the entire two-hour film in
the hope that it would persuade more people to tune into the Edwards show.
A second aspect of the experiment examined the possibility
that subliminal stimuli might alter people’s buying behavior. John
Fig, Inc., a wholesale bacon distributor in Indiana, allowed the experimenters to flash the subliminal message “Buy Bacon” during
its television commercials, and then track the resulting effect on
sales across the region.
Throughout July 1958, people watching WTTV Channel 4
were bombarded with hidden messages that told them to watch
Frank Edwards and to buy bacon. Before the experiment, an average of 4.6 percent of the public had been tuning into Frank Edwards. After being exposed to two hours of continual subliminal
messages, that figure fell to just 3 percent. The effect of the subliminal messages on buying behavior was just as unimpressive. Before the experiment, John Fig, Inc., sold an average of 6,143 units
of bacon per week to the good folk of Indiana. By the end of the
study, the figure had shown a modest increase to 6,204 units per
week. In short, the subliminal stimulation had had almost no effect on bacon sales and, if anything, had persuaded a considerable
Making Your Mind Up 131
number of people to avoid Frank Edwards. The effects of the subliminal onslaught had been less than remarkable.
DeFleur and Petranoff concluded that the public could sleep easily at night, safe in the knowledge that they were not having their
thoughts and behavior secretly manipulated by subliminal stimuli.
Their conclusions were bolstered by another study carried out just
a few months before theirs. In February 1958, the Canadian Broadcasting Company briefly presented the phrase “Phone Now” more
than 350 times during a popular Sunday night program called
Close-Up, and they asked viewers to write in if they noticed any
strange changes in their behavior. CBC saw no noticeable increase
in telephone usage during, or after, the program. The station did,
however, receive hundreds of letters from viewers describing how
they had experienced an unaccountable urge to drink beer, visit
the bathroom, or take the dog for a walk. Despite the impressive
lack of evidence suggesting that televised subliminal stimuli had
any effect on viewers, in June 1958 the National Association of
Broadcasters responded to public and political pressure by banning
the use of these messages on American networks.
So why the discrepancy between the increase in sales of popcorn and Coke claimed by James Vicary, and the lack of bacon buying reported by DeFleur and Petranoff? The mystery was finally
resolved in 1962, when Vicary was interviewed in the magazine
Advertising Age. He explained how his story about subliminal
stimuli and buying behavior had been leaked to the media far too
early. In fact, he had collected only the minimum amount of data
needed to file a patent, and he admitted that his investigations
were much too small to be meaningful. The entire public and political debate had been based on fiction, not on fact. Toward the end
of his interview, Vicary added: “All I accomplished, I guess, was to
132 Quirkology
put a new word into common usage. . . . I try not to think about it
anymore.” Vicary did far more than simply encourage people to use
the word “subliminal.” His fictitious study has become the stuff of
urban legend, and is still referred to by those who believe that buying behavior can be influenced by subliminal messages.
The lack of evidence to support a link between televised subliminal messages and behavior has not stopped present-day politicians
from worrying about the possible effect of subtle signals on voters.
During the 2000 U.S. presidential elections, the Republicans produced a television advertisement criticizing the Democrats’ policy
toward prescription drugs for the elderly. As part of the advertisement, various words slowly moved from the foreground to the
background. As the word “bureaucrats” came into view, one frame
of the ad contained just the last four letters of the word, spelling
“rats.” The Democrats perceived this as an attempt to sway the
electorate via subliminal perception and asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the matter. The Republicans dismissed the appearance of the “rats” word as coincidence,
and argued that the advertisement was about health care and not
rodents.
James Vicary is not the only person to claim that subliminal
stimuli can exert a powerful effect on behavior. Others have written best-selling books claiming that advertisers regularly implant
sexually arousing images in photographs to help boost sales. Alleged examples include women with bare breasts embedded in ice
cubes, a man with an erection pictured on cigarette packs, and the
word “sex” embedded several times on each side of one of the
world’s best-selling biscuits. In addition, several companies have
marketed subliminal audiotapes containing hidden messages that
claim to produce all sorts of desirable effects, including increased
Making Your Mind Up 133
self-esteem, sexual prowess, and intelligence. This is not small
business. In 1990, it was estimated that sales of subliminal audiotapes exceeded $50 million annually in the United States alone.4
Most of these claims have not been subjected to any form of scientific testing, and the few studies that have been carried out on the
topic have failed to support the efficacy of such hidden messages.5
In one study, overweight people listened to subliminal audiotapes
designed to help them drop a size. They lost no more weight than a
control group not listening to any tapes.6 In another experiment,
police officers spent more than twenty weeks listening to tapes designed to improve their marksmanship.7 The results revealed that
the group ended up with the same shooting abilities as their nonsubliminally stimulated colleagues.
So, does this mean that our thinking and behavior isn’t influenced by small, subtle signals? In fact, a large amount of research
suggests that many aspects of our everyday behavior are affected by
factors outside our awareness. These factors are not to be found being briefly flashed up on movie and television screens; instead, they
are right in front of our noses and can exert a considerable influence on the way we think and behave. Like something as simple as
your name.
Mr. Bun the Baker
In 1971, two psychologists, Barbara Buchanan and James Bruning,
asked a group of people to rate how much they liked a thousand or
so first names.8 Strong stereotypes emerged, the vast majority of
people giving the thumbs-up to the likes of Michael, James, and
Wendy, but showing an equally strong dislike for Alfreda, Percival,
and Isidore. It would be nice to think that these emotional reac-
134 Quirkology
tions don’t have a significant effect on people’s lives. Nice, but
wrong.
In the late 1960s, the American researchers Arthur Hartman,
Robert Nicolay, and Jesse Hurley examined whether people with
unusual names were more psychologically disturbed than their
normally named peers.9 They examined more than 10,000 psychiatric court records, and identified eighty-eight people whose first
names were highly unusual, such as Oder, Lethal, and Vere. They
then looked through the same set of records and put together a
control group of eighty-eight normally named people who were
matched on gender, age, and place of birth. Those with unusual
names were significantly more likely than the control group to be
diagnosed as psychotic. As the researchers note in their paper, “A
child’s name . . . is generally a settled affair when his first breath is
drawn, and his future personality must then grow within its
shadow.”
Other studies have also documented the downside of having a
name that stands out from the crowd. Research has shown that
teachers award higher essay grades to children with likeable
names,10 that college students with undesirable names experience
high levels of social isolation, and that people whose surnames happen to have negative connotations (such as “Short,” “Little,” or
“Bent”) are especially likely to suffer feelings of inferiority.11 The
psychiatrist William Murphy has examined several case histories illustrating this final point. In one instance, a patient admitted to
wearing an athletic supporter to bed when he was a boy to prevent
his penis becoming erect. The supporter failed to have the desired
effect, and instead caused the boy’s penis to bend downward. Unfortunately, the patient’s last name was Bent, and this, coupled with
the fact that his nickname was “Dinkey,” constantly reminded him
Making Your Mind Up 135
of the sexual problems that he had experienced as a boy. This, in
turn, made him feel anxious about sex, resulting in psychosexual
impotence and reinforcing his feelings of inadequacy.
Nicholas Christenfeld, David Phillips, and Laura Glynn from the
University of California, San Diego, uncovered evidence in 1999
suggesting that even a person’s initials may become an issue of life
or death.12 The team used an electronic dictionary to generate
every three-letter word in the English language. They then worked
their way through the list, identifying words that were especially
positive (such as “ace,” “hug,” and “joy”) and those that had very
negative connotations (“pig,” “bum,” and “die”). Using a computerized database of California death certificates, they examined the
ages at which people with “positive” and “negative” sets of initials
passed away. Controlling for factors such as race, year of death, and
socioeconomic status, the researchers discovered that men with
positive initials lived around four and a half years longer than average, whereas those with negative initials died about three years
earlier than average. Women with positive initials lived an extra
three years, although there was no detrimental effect for those
with negative initials. When discussing the possible mechanisms
behind the effect, the authors noted that people with negative initials “may not think well of themselves, and may have to endure
teasing and other negative reactions from those around them.”
This idea was supported by the fact that those with negative initials
were especially likely to die from causes with psychological underpinnings, such as suicides and accidents.
But it is not all doom and gloom for the unusually named and
negatively initialed. Another team of researchers have questioned
the findings of the Christenfeld study. In a paper titled “Monogrammic Determinism?” Stilian Morrison and Gary Smith from Pomona
136 Quirkology
College in California criticized the statistical methods used in the
original experiment and failed to replicate the findings using what
they consider to be more sophisticated analyses.13
Richard Zweigenhaft, a psychologist from Guilford College in
North Carolina, has argued that there are several potential benefits
associated with having an unusual name.14 He notes that one of the
most frequently voiced complaints by those with common names is
that there are too many other people with the same name. The
same point was well made by Samuel Goldwyn who, upon hearing
that a friend had named his son John, quipped, “Why did you
name him John? Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is named John.”
Zweigenhaft also notes that unusual names are more memorable
and cites several instances in which the fame enjoyed by wellknown sports people may have been due, at least in part, to their
unusual names. As one New York Post sportswriter noted when
discussing the Oakland Athletics’ pitcher Vida Blue, “America
knew it instantly. Vida Blue! Vida Blue tripped off the tongue like
Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb and Lefty Grove.”
Taking a more empirical look at the potential positive effects of
unusual naming, Zweigenhaft randomly selected 2,000 people
from The Social Register (described as the “best guide to the
membership of the national upper classes”), and identified those
who were mentioned only once; this process generated a list of
218 people. Zweigenhaft then generated a control group by randomly selecting 218 people who did not have unusual names in
the original sample of 2,000. Next, he consulted Who’s Who (described as a book listing “the best known men and women in all
lines of useful and reputable achievement”) to discover whether
people with usual or unusual names tended to obtain eminence.
Of the total of 436 possibilities (2 x 218), 30 were listed. Of these,
Making Your Mind Up 137
23 from the unusual names group were listed in Who’s Who, versus just 7 of those with more usual names. In short, evidence that
under certain circumstances, an unusual name can be good for
your career.
Work examining the effects that people’s names have on their
lives is not just concerned with whether a name is unusual or
usual. The remarkable research of Brett Pelham and his colleagues
at the State University of New York at Buffalo suggests that people’s
names may influence the towns in which we choose to live, the career paths we follow, whom we marry, and even the political parties we support.15
By looking at a huge number of U.S. census records, Pelham has
uncovered an overrepresentation of people called Florence living in
Florida, George in Georgia, Kenneth in Kentucky, and Virgil in Virginia. In another study, the team examined the Social Security
death records of 66 million American people who had died in cities
starting with the term “Saint” (for example, St. Anne, St. Louis,
etc.). Once again, they found proportionately more people called
Helen in St. Helen, more Charleses in St. Charles, more Thomases
in St Thomas, and so on. Further analyses suggested that these effects do not occur because parents name their offspring after the
children’s places of birth but because people drift toward cities and
towns containing their own names.
Could the same effects even influence people’s choice of marriage partner? Are people more likely to marry someone whose surname starts with the same letter as their own? Pelham and his
colleagues looked at more than 15,000 marriage records between
1823 and 1965.16 An intriguing pattern emerged: Significantly more
couples had family names with the same initial than predicted by
chance. Worried that the effect might be due to ethnic matching
138 Quirkology
(that is, members of certain ethnic groups being likely to marry one
another and have surnames starting with certain letters), the team
repeated the study, but this time focussed on the five most common
American surnames: Smith, Johnson, Williams, Jones, and Brown.
Once again the effect emerged; for instance, people named Smith
were more likely to marry another Smith than someone called Jones
or Williams, and people called Jones were more likely to say “I do”
to another Jones than a Brown or even a Johnson.
Pelham’s work is not restricted to examining the relationship between people’s names, where they choose to live and die, and the
people they marry. He has also examined how surnames may influence choice of occupation. Searching the online records of the
American Dental Association and American Bar Association, the researchers found that there were more dentists whose first names
began with “Den” than with “Law.” Likewise, a greater preponderance of lawyers had first names beginning with “Law” than with
“Den.” Then there is the data from hardware and roofing companies. Using the Yahoo Internet Yellow Pages, the team searched for
all the hardware stores and roofing companies in the twenty largest
U.S. cities; then they examined whether the owners’ first names or
surnames began with the letter H or R. The results revealed that
the names of owners of hardware companies tended to start with
the letter H (such as Harris Hardware), and the names of those in
charge of roofing companies tended to start with R (such as
Rashid’s Roofing). According to Pelham, the same effect even extends into politics. During the 2000 presidential campaign, people
whose surnames began with the letter B were especially likely to
make contributions to the Bush campaign, whereas those whose
surnames began with the letter G were more likely to contribute to
the Gore campaign. Writing about his results in paper titled “Why
Making Your Mind Up 139
Susie Sells Seashells by the Seashore: Implicit Egotism and Major
Life Decisions,” Pelham concludes that perhaps we should not be
surprised by these effects, noting that they “merely consist of being
attracted to that which reminds us of the one person most of us
love most dearly.”
In addition to being interesting in its own right, Pelham’s work
may at last provide an explanation for an effect that has fascinated
psychologists for decades: Why does a surname so often match the
bearer’s chosen occupation?
In 1975, Lawrence Casler from the State University of New
York at Geneseo compiled a list of more than two hundred academics working in fields associated with their last names.17 Casler’s
list includes an underwater archaeologist called Bass, a relationship
counselor called Breedlove, a taxation expert named Due, a gynecologist named Hyman, and an educational psychologist studying
parental pressure called Mumpower. In the later 1990s, New Scientist magazine asked readers to send in similar examples from
their own lives. The resulting list included music teachers Miss
Beat and Miss Sharp, members of the British Meteorological Office
called Flood, Frost, Thundercliffe, and Weatherall, a sex therapist
named Lust, Peter Atchoo the pneumonia specialist, a firm of
lawyers named Lawless and Lynch, private detectives Wyre and
Tapping, and the head of a psychiatric hospital, Dr. McNutt. My
own favorites are the authors of the book A Student’s Guide to the
Seashore: John and Susan Fish.
Pelham’s work suggests that examples such as these may not
happen entirely by chance; rather, some people may be unconsciously drawn to occupations related to their names. As a professor of psychology called Wiseman, I am in no position to be
skeptical about the theory.
140 Quirkology
Hidden Persuaders
Our names are assigned to us the moment we are born and, for
most people, remain throughout their lives. However, some of the
other factors that influence our thoughts and behavior are far more
subtle. Sometimes, it can just be a single sentence, a short piece of
music, or a newspaper headline.
It really doesn’t take much to change the way in which a person
thinks, feels, and behaves. The concept is beautifully illustrated in
two studies recently published in one of the world’s most prestigious academic publications, the Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology.
In the first of these, conducted by John Bargh and his colleagues
at New York University, participants were asked to rearrange a series of scrambled words to form a coherent sentence.18 Half the participants were shown mixed up sentences that contained words
relating to the elderly, such as “man’s was skin the wrinkled.” The
remaining participants were shown the same mixed-up sentences,
but the one word relating to the elderly was replaced with a word
not associated with old age, such as “man’s was skin the smooth.”
Once participants had carefully worked their way through the sentences, the experimenter thanked them for taking part and gave
them directions to the nearest set of elevators. The participants
thought the experiment was over. In reality, the important part was
just about to begin. A second experimenter was sitting in the hallway armed with a stopwatch. When participants emerged from the
laboratory, this second experimenter secretly recorded the time
taken for them to walk down the hallway to the elevators. Those
who had just spent time unscrambling the sentences that contained words relating to old age took significantly longer than those
Making Your Mind Up 141
who had spent time with the nonelderly sentences. Just spending a
few minutes thinking about words such as “wrinkled,” “gray,”
“bingo,” and “Florida” had completely changed the way people behaved. Without realizing it, those few words had “added” years to
their lives and they were walking like elderly people.
A similar study, conducted by Ap Dijksterhuis and Ad van Knippenberg from the University of Nijmegen in Holland, asked participants to spend five minutes jotting down a few sentences about the
behavior, lifestyle, and appearance of a typical football hooligan,
while others did exactly the same for a typical professor.19 Everyone
was then asked about forty Trivial Pursuit questions, such as
“What is the capital of Bangladesh?” or “Which country hosted the
1990 Soccer World Cup?” Those who had spent just five minutes
thinking about a typical football hooligan managed to answer 46
percent of the questions correctly, whereas those who had generated sentences related to a typical professor were right 60 percent
of the time. Although people were unaware of it, their ability to answer questions correctly was dramatically altered by simply thinking about a stereotypical football hooligan or a professor.
This is all well and good within the relatively artificial confines
of a laboratory, but how do the same effects influence people’s behavior in the real world?
Americans leave about $26 billion in restaurant tips every year.
You would think the size of the tip would depend on the quality of
food, drink, or service provided, but secret studies conducted in
bars and restaurants around the globe have revealed the hidden
factors that really determine our tipping behavior. Mood plays a
large part in the process. Happy eaters are bigger tippers. In one
study, French bar staff were asked to give their customers a small
142 Quirkology
card with the bill.20 Half the cards contained an advertisement for a
local nightclub; the other half contained the following joke:
An Eskimo had been waiting for his girlfriend in front of a
movie theater for a long time, and it was getting colder
and colder. After a while, shivering with cold and rather
infuriated, he opened his coat and drew out a thermometer. He then said loudly, “If she is not here by fifteen degrees, I’m going!”
Those receiving the joke showed a higher level of laughing and,
more important, tipping. Researchers have replicated the relationship between happiness and tipping time and again. Waiters receive bigger tips when they draw happy faces, write “Thank you”
at the bottom of a bill, or give a big smile to customers.21 People tip
more when the sun is shining, and even when waiters tell them
that the sun is shining.22 Other studies have shown that tipping is
dramatically increased when waiters introduced themselves by
their first name, or refer to customers by name.23
Then there is the power of touch. Describing their work in a paper titled “The Midas Touch: The Effects of Interpersonal Touch on
Restaurant Tipping,” April Crusco and her collegue explain how
they trained two waitresses to touch diners’ palms or shoulders for
exactly one and a half seconds as they gave them the bill.24 Both
kinds of touching produced more tipping than the hands-off approach adopted in the control condition, with palm touching doing
slightly better than a tap on the shoulder.
Leaving relatively small amounts of money to waiters and bar
staff is one thing, but do these subtle effects persuade people to
Making Your Mind Up 143
part with much larger sums of cash? In the 1990s, researchers
Charles Areni and David Kim from Texas Tech University investigated exactly this issue by systematically varying the music being
played in a downtown wine shop.25 Half the customers were subjected to classical tunes, including Mozart, Mendelssohn, and
Chopin; the other half heard pop songs, including Fleetwood Mac,
Robert Plant, and Rush. By disguising themselves as shop assistants
making an inventory of stock, the experimenters were able to observe customers’ behavior, including the number of bottles they
picked up from the shelves, whether they read the labels, and,
most important of all, the amount of wine they bought.
The results were impressive. The music did not affect how long
people stayed in the cellar, how many bottles they examined, or
even the number of items they bought. Instead, it had a dramatic
effect on just one aspect of their behavior—the cost of the wine
they bought. When the classical music was playing, people bought
bottles of wine that were, on average, more than three times more
expensive than those they bought when the pop music was playing. The researchers believe that hearing the classical music unconsciously made shoppers feel more sophisticated, and this in turn
caused them to buy significantly more expensive wine.
There is even some evidence to suggest that the same sort of
subtle stimuli influence matters of life and death. Jimmie Rogers
(not Kenny), a professor of sociology, analyzed more than 1,400
country songs and discovered that the lyrics often refer to topics associated with negative life experiences, including unrequited love,
alcohol abuse, financial problems, hopelessness, fatalism, bitterness, and poverty.26 In the mid-1990s, Steven Stack from Wayne
State University and Jim Gundlach from Auburn University wondered whether continual exposure to downbeat topics might make
144 Quirkology
people more likely to commit suicide.27 To find out, the researchers
looked at the suicide rate and the amount of country music played
on national radio in forty-nine areas across the United States. After
controlling for several other factors, such as poverty, divorce, and
gun ownership, the researchers did find that the more country music played on the radio, the higher the suicide rate.
The results may sound far-fetched, and they have been challenged by several other researchers.28 However, the basic premise is
supported by a wealth of other work suggesting that the mass media plays an important role in determining whether people decide
to end their lives, of which the work exploring the “Werther Effect” is an excellent example.
In Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, a young man
named Werther falls in love with a woman who is already promised to another. Rather than face a life without her, Werther decides to end his life by shooting himself. The book was a
remarkable success. In fact, in many ways it was a little too successful, inspiring a series of copycat suicides that eventually resulted in its being banned in several European countries.
In 1974, David Phillips, a sociologist from the University of California, San Diego, decided to examine whether media reports of
suicides may create a modern-day Werther Effect.29 In an initial
study examining the suicide statistics in the United States between
1947 and 1968, he discovered that a front-page suicide story was
associated, on average, with an excess of almost sixty suicides.
Moreover, the types of suicides reflected the methods of death described in the media, and the level of publicity received by the suicides was directly related to the number of subsequent deaths. On
average, the number of suicides increased by roughly 30 percent
within two weeks of media reports, and the effect was especially
Making Your Mind Up 145
pronounced after a celebrity death. Phillips calculated, for example, that the death of Marilyn Monroe in August 1962 increased
the national suicide rate by about 12 percent. Since Phillips’s
groundbreaking work, more than forty scientific papers have been
written on the topic, prompting several countries to produce media
guidelines for reporting suicides, urging journalists not to sensationalize them or to describe the methods used.30
Another part of Phillips’s work has investigated the relationship
between televised boxing matches and murder rates. He carefully
analyzed daily murder rates in the United States, and showed that
they tended to increase in the week following the television broadcast of a high-profile heavyweight boxing match. There was a direct relationship not only between the amounts of publicity the
fight received and the number of murders, but also between the
racial backgrounds of the boxers and the murder victims. If a white
boxer lost the fight, Phillips found an increase in the number of
white, but not black, people murdered. Likewise, if a black boxer
lost, there was an increase in the number of black, but not white,
people killed.
All this adds up to one simple fact: The ways in which we think
and feel are frequently influenced by factors outside our awareness. Our names influence our self-esteem and choice of career.
Just reading a sentence influences how old we feel and our recall of
general knowledge. A simple smile or a subtle touch influences
how much we tip in restaurants and bars. The music played in
shops creeps into our unconscious and influences the amount of
money we spend. But do the same sorts of strange persuaders also
influence the way in which we see others? Could they even dictate
the politicians that we vote for, and the way in which we decide on
the guilt or innocence of our fellow citizens?
146 Quirkology
Inching Forward in the Polls
Thousands of years ago there were evolutionary advantages to
hanging around with taller people because their physical size afforded all sorts of benefits when it came to gathering food and defeating foes. Although height no longer offers a physical advantage,
our primate brains hold on to their evolutionary past: We still associate tall people with success, a faulty but persuasive perception
that plays out in interesting ways.
The psychologists Leslie Martel and Henry Biller asked university students to rate men of varying heights on many different psychological and physical attributes.31 Reporting the results in their
book Stature and Stigma, they describe how men and women
rated men shorter than five feet five as less positive, secure, masculine, successful, and capable. Even our language reflects the value
of height. Those held in high esteem are “big men” that we “look
up” to. Run out of money, and you are “short” of cash.
Even in the world of romance and mating, size matters. Robin
Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist from Liverpool University,
and his colleagues analyzed data from more than 4,000 healthy
Polish men who had undergone compulsory medical examinations
between 1983 and 1989.32 They found that childless men were
about three centimeters shorter than men who had fathered at
least one child. The only exceptions to the pattern were men born
in the 1930s. Dunbar believes that this was because they emerged
into the marriage market just after World War II, a time when single men were relatively scarce and so women had few choices.
This association between mating success and height appears to
be universal. In the 1960s, Thomas Gregor, an anthropologist from
Vanderbilt University, lived among a tropical-forest people of central
Making Your Mind Up 147
Brazil known as the Mehinaku.33 Even here, height matters.
Among the Mehinaku, tall men are seen as attractive and are respectfully referred to as “wekepei.” Those short in stature are referred to by the derisive term “peritsi,” which rhymes with “itsi,”
the word for penis. Wekepei were far more likely than peritsi to be
associated with wealth, power, participation in rituals, and reproductive opportunities. Gregor discovered that the taller the man,
the more female mates he had access to, with the three tallest men
having had as many affairs as the seven shortest men.
Does height also matter when it comes to careers? It seems so.
In the 1940s, psychologists found that tall salesmen were more
successful than their shorter colleagues, and a 1980 survey found
that more than half the CEOs of America’s Fortune 500 companies
are at least six feet tall. More recent research from the Journal of
Applied Psychology shows that when it comes to height in the
workplace, every inch counts.34 Timothy Judge, a business professor from the University of Florida in Gainesville, and his colleague
Daniel Cable analyzed the data from four large studies that had followed people through their lives, carefully monitoring personality,
height, intelligence, and income. Focusing on the relationship between height and earnings, Judge discovered that each inch above
average corresponds to an additional $789 in pay each year. Someone who is six feet tall therefore earns an extra $4,734 more each
year than an equally able five-feet-five colleague. Compounded
over a thirty-year career, a tall person enjoys an earning advantage
of hundreds of thousands of dollars over shorter colleagues.
Politics has also been scrutinized. Of the forty-three American
presidents, only five have been below average height, and it has
been more than a hundred years since voters elected someone who
was shorter than average (President William McKinley, who was
148 Quirkology
five feet seven, took office in 1896 and was referred to by the press
as a “little boy”). Most presidents have been several inches above
the norm. Ronald Reagan was six feet one, and George Bush Sr.
and Bill Clinton both stand tall at six feet two. There is also some
evidence to suggest that some candidates realize the influence of
height on voters and take steps to make the most of an advantage.
In the 1988 presidential debate, George Bush Senior greeted
Michael Dukakis with an exaggeratedly long handshake—a move
apparently orchestrated by Bush’s campaign manager to have them
stand together as long as possible and thus make the most of the
fact that Bush was taller.
The psychological relationship between status and height works
in both directions. Not only do we think that tall people are more
competent, but we also believe that competent people are tall. This
explains why we are so often surprised to discover that some Hollywood stars are below average height. Dustin Hoffman, for example, is just five feet five, and Madonna is five feet four. The Web
site www.celebheights.com (by-line: “In the Land of Hollywood
Pygmies, the Elevator-Shoed Dwarf Is King”) is dedicated to discovering the true heights of celebrities, often sending people of a
known height to have their photographs taken next to celebrities so
that their heights can be accurately determined. The author Ralph
Keyes speculated about the fact that so many actors are short in his
book The Height of Your Life. Keyes thought that some smaller
people have a need to show that they are strong and overcome their
height disadvantage by developing assertive personalities.
This relationship leads to an interesting phenomenon—that the
perceived height of a person can change with that person’s apparent
status. The first scientifically controlled experiment into this curious
phenomenon was conducted by Paul Wilson, a psychologist from
Making Your Mind Up 149
the University of Queensland.35 Wilson introduced a fellow academic to different groups of students and asked them to assess his
height. Unbeknownst to the students, Wilson changed the way in
which he introduced the academic each time. On one occasion, he
told the class that the man was a fellow student; the next time he
said that he was a lecturer; then the man was introduced as a senior lecturer; and finally as a full professor. The students’ perception of the man’s height varied with his perceived status. When he
was just a fellow student he was seen as being about seventy
inches tall. However, simply saying that he was a lecturer added
about one inch to his height. Promoting him to senior lecturer
meant that he gained another inch in the eyes of the students, and
his rapid promotion to professor added an extra inch, bringing him
up to about seventy-three inches.
In 1960, Harold Kassarjian from the University of California
asked 3,000 voters whether they would be supporting Kennedy or
Nixon in the forthcoming election, and which they believed to be
the taller of the two candidates.36 In reality, Kennedy was an inch
taller than Nixon. However, this was not how his voters saw it.
Forty-two percent of Nixon supporters said that Nixon was the
taller candidate, compared to just 23 percent of Kennedy supporters. Other research, conducted in the early 1990s by Philip
Higham and William Carment from McMaster University in
Canada, took matters a stage further.37 Higham and Carment asked
voters to estimate the heights of the leaders of the three main political parties (Brian Mulroney, John Turner, and Ed Broadbent) in
Canada before, and after, a general election. Mulroney won the
election, resulting in a half-inch gain in the height polls. After losing the election, Tuner and Broadbent were seen to have shrunk by
about a half an inch and one and a half inches, respectively.
150 Quirkology
I wondered whether it might be possible to use this effect to
measure the perceived status of politicians before an election. In
2001, I worked with Roger Highfield, the science editor at the
Daily Telegraph, to carry out an unusual political opinion poll.38
We asked a representative sample of 1,000 respondents to estimate the height of the leaders of the UK’s two main political parties. According to their party headquarters, the Labour and
Conservative leaders at that time, Tony Blair and William Hague,
were both six feet tall. But this is not how the electorate saw
things.
In line with Harold Kassarjian’s findings from the 1960s, we
found differences when people estimated the heights of the leader
they supported and the leader they opposed. Significantly more
Labour than Conservative voters thought that Blair was five feet
nine or taller. Likewise, more Conservatives than Labour supporters thought that Hague was five feet nine or taller. In short, voters
saw their own candidates as taller than the opposition. However,
what did our stature poll predict about the results of the forthcoming election? Whereas only 35 percent of voters thought that Blair
was less than the average male height of five feet nine inches, 64
percent of voters thought this of William Hague. So voters perceived Blair as relatively tall and Hague as a real shorty.
And the results of the 2001 election?
A massive landslide victory for Tony Blair’s Labour Party.
If the Face Fits
We all used to be a lot hairier than we are now. As apes, we were
covered in facial and body hair but, over the course of tens of thousands of years, we have shed our fur. There is considerable debate
Making Your Mind Up 151
about why this happened. Some researchers believe that it was a
result of our needing less hair to keep warm as we ventured away
from the shady forests and out into the hot savannas. Others have
suggested that a lack of body and facial hair was associated with a
lower incidence of disease-carrying ticks and parasites. Either way,
some men choose to turn back the hands of evolutionary time and
sport various types of facial hair. In doing so, they are unconsciously altering the way in which they are perceived by the people
around them.
In 1973, the psychologist Robert Pellegrini studied the effects of
facial hair on perceived personality.39 He managed to find eight fullbearded young men who were happy to have their facial hair removed in the name of science. Pellegrini took a photograph of each
of the men before the experimental barber got at them. Next, each
man was photographed when he had a goatee and a moustache,
then just a moustache, and finally when he was clean-shaven.
Groups of randomly selected people were asked to rate the personality of the people in the photographs. There was a positive relationship between the amount of beard and traits such as masculinity,
maturity, dominance, self-confidence, and courage. “It may well be
that inside every clean-shaven man there is a beard screaming to be
let out,” Pellegrini noted. “If so, the results of the present study provide a strong rationale for indulging that demand.”
Pellegrini’s work, although insightful, failed to ask about one important trait: honesty. Had he done so, his conclusions about
beards may not have been so positive. Recent surveys show that
more than 50 percent of the Western public believe clean-shaven
men to be more honest than those with facial hair. Apparently,
beards conjure up images of diabolical intent, concealment, and
152 Quirkology
poor hygiene. Although there is no relationship between honesty
and facial hair, the stereotype is powerful enough to affect the
world—perhaps explaining why everyone on the Forbes 100 list of
the world’s richest men is clean-shaven, and why no successful
candidate for the American presidency has sported a beard or a
moustache since 1910.
The beard studies are just one tiny aspect of a large amount of
research conducted by psychologists into the effects of facial appearance on perceived personality and abilities. According to research recently published by Alexander Todorov and his colleagues
at Princeton University, facial appearance is vitally important in
politics.40 Todorov presented students with pairs of black-and-white
photographs containing head shots of the winners and runners-up
for the U.S. Senate in 2000, 2002, and 2004. For each pair of photographs, Todorov asked the students to choose which of the pair
looked more competent. Even though the students saw the pairs of
photographs for just one second, choosing which of the two looked
more competent predicted the election results about 70 percent of
the time. Not only that, but the degree of disagreement among the
students also predicted the margin of victory. When the students
all agreed on which of the two candidates appeared the most competent, that candidate emerged the clear winner at the polls. When
there was less agreement among the students, the election results
were not so clear-cut.
Todorov’s work suggests that when it comes to winning seats
in the Senate, it is important to have a face that fits. But does a
person’s facial features also influence the most important political
process of them all—the race for the White House? To find out, I
recently teamed up with an expert in facial perception—Rob
Making Your Mind Up 153
Jenkins, a psychologist from the University of Glasgow—and carried out an unusual experiment involving twelve of the most powerful men in history.
Most people are quick to associate certain personality traits with
certain types of faces. They see a baby-faced individual with large
eyes and a round head and instantly assume that the person is honest and kind. Or they meet someone with close-set eyes and a
crooked nose and suddenly question whether that person is to be
trusted. Like it or not, such stereotypes influence many aspects of
our everyday lives, and so it wouldn’t be especially surprising if
presidents tend to have the types of faces that are perceived as especially trustworthy and competent.
However, Rob and I were curious about whether facial appearance affects voters in a far more subtle and interesting way. Not
surprisingly, research suggests that Democrats and Republicans
value different personality traits in their leaders, Democrats being
attracted to those who are more liberally oriented and Republicans
going for more authoritarian types. Assuming that people unconsciously associate such traits with different facial features, are Democrats and Republicans drawn to very different-looking leaders?
Such an effect might influence the way in which party members
choose candidates to run for the presidency, or how voters decide
which one to put into the White House. Either way, if there is
something to the idea, then Democratic and Republican presidents
should have very different facial features because different selection pressures are in operation. Rob and I set out to discover
whether this was the case.
The work involved a sophisticated computer program that accurately blends several different faces into a single average, or “com-
154 Quirkology
posite,” image. The principle behind the technique is simple. Imagine having photographic portraits of two people. Both have bushy
eyebrows and deep-set eyes, but one has a small nose and the
other a much larger nose. To create a composite of their two faces,
researchers first scan both photographs into the computer, control
for differences in lighting, and then manipulate the images to ensure that key facial attributes—such as the corners of the mouth
and eyes—are in roughly the same position. Next, one image is
laid on top of the other, and an average of the two faces calculated.
If both faces have bushy eyebrows and deep-set eyes, the resulting
composite would also have these features. If one face has a small
nose and the other a large one, the final image would have a
medium-sized nose. The process is totally automated and can be
used to merge any number of faces.
Rob tracked down photographic portraits of the last six Democratic (Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton)
and Republican (Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr., and
Bush Jr.) U.S. presidents, ensuring that the portraits in each group
showed the presidents with the same facial expression and looking
in the same direction. He then digitally removed Harry Truman’s
glasses, fed all the images into a computer, and created a composite
for each group of presidents. The results were astonishing. As predicted, the blend of the six Democratic presidents looked very different from the six Republican presidents: The Democratic
composite looked remarkably Clinton-like and the Republican composite bore a striking similarity to George Bush Jr. (see fig. 5).
We wondered whether these results came about because the
composites contained images of Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr.,
and so we excluded both of these faces, and re-ran the analysis.
Making Your Mind Up 155
Even without Clinton and Bush, the results were almost exactly
the same. The Democratic composite still looked far more Clinton
than Bush, and the Republican composite was clearly more Bush
than Clinton (see fig. 6). In short, evidence that Democratic and
Republican voters are drawn to leaders that conform to very different facial “types.”
Were these differences really driven by Democrats’ attraction to
faces that appear more liberally orientated and Republicans’ preferences for more authoritarian types? To find out, we asked a group
of people to rate the faces shown in figure 6. For each face, they
were presented with various adjectives, such as “caring,” and “authoritarian,” and asked to indicate whether they believed that the
person shown in the photograph possessed that trait. They had no
156 Quirkology
Fig. 5 Composites of the last six Democratic (left) and
Republican (right) presidents.
idea that the faces were based on presidents, or that the experiment was even related to the psychology of voting. Even so, large
differences emerged. The Republican composite was rated as significantly more authoritarian than the Democratic composite, and the
Democratic composite was seen as far more caring and openminded than the Republican one.
Even when it comes to one of the most important and powerful
political positions in the world, voters do indeed appear to ask
themselves a key question: Does the face fit?
If facial stereotypes can influence winning or losing at the ballot
box, are there other situations where looks matter? Could these
same types of stereotypes even influence whether people determine the guilt of defendants in a courtroom?
Making Your Mind Up 157
Fig. 6 Composites of the last six Democratic (left) and Republican
(right) presidents, excluding Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr.
And So I Ask the Jury . . . Is That the
Face of a Mass Murderer?
In chapter 2, I described how my first mass-media psychology experiment with the help of Sir Robin Day had explored the psychology of lying. Three years later, I went back to the same studio to
conduct a second study. This time the experiment was bigger and
far more complicated than before. This time we wanted to discover
whether justice really is blind.
The idea for the study had occurred to me when I had come
across a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon. The cartoon was set in a
courtroom, and the lawyer was talking to the jury. Pointing at his
client, the lawyer said, “And so I ask the jury . . . is that the face of
a mass murderer?” Sitting in the dock is a man wearing a suit and
tie, but instead of a normal head, he has the classic “smiley” face
consisting of just two black dots for eyes and a large semicircle
grin. Like all good comedy, Larson’s cartoon made me laugh, but
then it made me think.
The decisions made by juries have serious implications, and so it
is important that they are as rational as possible. I thought it would
be interesting to put this alleged rationality to the test. During a
live edition of the BBC’s leading science program, Tomorrow’s
World, the members of the public were asked to play the roles of
jury members. They were shown a film of a mock trial, had to decide whether the defendant was guilty or innocent, and then
record their decisions by telephoning one of two numbers.
Unbeknownst to them, we would cut the country into two huge
groups. We discovered that the BBC broadcasts to the nation via
thirteen separate transmitters. Usually they all carry an identical
signal, so the whole of the country watches the same program.
158 Quirkology
However, for this experiment, we obtained special permission to
send out different signals from the transmitters, allowing me to
split Britain in two and to broadcast different programs to each half
of the country.
Everyone saw exactly the same evidence about a crime in
which the defendant had allegedly broken into a house and stolen
a computer. However, half the public saw a defendant whose face
showed characteristics of the stereotype of a criminal—he had a
broken nose and close-set eyes. The other half saw a defendant
whose face matched a stereotypical innocent person—he was
baby-faced and had clear blue eyes. To ensure that the experiment
was as well controlled as possible, both defendants were dressed in
identical suits, stood in exactly the same position in the dock, and
had the same neutral expression on their faces.
We carefully scripted a judge’s summing-up, describing how the
defendant had been accused of a burglary. The evidence presented
did not allow for a clear guilty or not guilty decision. For example,
the defendant’s wife said that he was in a bar at the time of the
crime, but another witness saw him leave about thirty minutes before the burglary. A footprint at the scene of the crime matched the
defendant’s shoes, but these were a fairly common brand of shoe
owned by many people.
After transmission, we stood anxiously by the telephones and
waited to see how many calls we would receive. The experiment
had obviously struck a chord with the public. For the lying experiment we had received about 30,000 calls. This time, more than
twice as many people telephoned. A fair and rational public would
have focused solely on the evidence when deciding guilt or innocence. However, the unconscious tendency to succumb to the
lure of looks proved too much. About 40 percent returned a guilty
Making Your Mind Up 159
verdict on the man who just happened to fit the stereotype of a
criminal. Only 29 percent found the blue-eyed, baby-faced man
guilty. People had ignored the complexity of the evidence and
made up their minds on the basis of the defendants’ looks.
It would be nice to think that this result is confined to the relatively artificial setting of a television studio. That is not, however,
the case. John Stewart, a psychologist from Mercyhurst College in
Arizona, spent hours sitting in courts rating the attractiveness of
real defendants.41 He discovered that good-looking men were given
significantly lighter sentences than their equally guilty, but less attractive, counterparts.
In his book Influence, the psychologist Robert Cialdini, from
Arizona State University,42 makes a fascinating link between this
work and a highly unusual experiment exploring the use of plastic
surgery in prisons. In the late 1960s, a group of prisoners in a New
York City jail were given plastic surgery to correct various facial disfigurements. Researchers discovered that these prisoners were significantly less likely to return to prison than a control group of
prisoners with uncorrected facial disfigurements. The degree of rehabilitation, such as education and training, did not seem to matter. Instead, looks appeared to be everything. This result caused
some social policymakers to argue that societal stereotyping was
causing some people to turn to a life of crime, and that changing
the way they looked had provided an effective way of preventing
them from offending again. This may have been the case. However,
Cialdini used the data obtained by John Stewart to argue for another interpretation of the results. It was possible that the corrective surgery had little effect on whether they re-offended, but
simply meant that they were less likely to be sent to prison.
160 Quirkology
The Hidden Influence of Hollywood
Research shows that we link looks with likeability. Whenever we
see an attractive face, we unconsciously associate it with traits such
as “kindness,” “honesty,” and “intelligence.” Good-looking people
are more likely to be offered jobs than their ugly competitors, and to
be given higher salaries than their equally competent colleagues.
But where do these sorts of irrational effects come from and
why do they persist? Some researchers place the blame firmly at
the door of Hollywood. Stephen Smith, from North Georgia College, and his colleagues decided to discover whether this was true.
In the first of two highly revealing experiments, the researchers
collected twenty of the top-grossing films for each decade between
1940 and 1989.43 They then asked a group of people to watch the
films, rating all the characters identified by name on various scales,
including how attractive they were, how moral, how intelligent,
how friendly, and whether they lived happily ever afterward. After
sitting through everything from It’s a Wonderful Life to Around the
World in 80 Days (the 1956 version), and Last Tango in Paris to
Beetlejuice, the raters evaluated 833 characters. The researchers
discovered that physically attractive characters were depicted as
more romantically active, morally good, intelligent, and far more
likely than others to live happily every after.
Although interesting, this doesn’t prove that such depictions
cause stereotypical thinking. To investigate this, the experimenters
conducted a second study. They chose a few films that either did or
didn’t portray attractive people in a stereotypical way. For example,
Pride of the Yankees relates the true-life story of the famous baseball player Lou Gehrig. A good-looking Gary Cooper played Gehrig,
Making Your Mind Up 161
showing his success on the field, and how in the prime of his life
Gehrig begins having serious health problems but deals with the illness with incredible dignity. At the opposite end of the spectrum
came films such as Up the Down Staircase, in which a young and
spirited teacher tries to make a difference in a troubled inner-city
school. Sandy Dennis, who played the lead in the film, was a
highly acclaimed actress. However, unlike other stars, such as Gary
Cooper, she did not look like a classic Hollywood idol and tended
to stammer her way through lines.
Groups of people were asked to watch one of the films and rate
certain aspects of it. Then they were asked to help out with a second study. They were told that a nearby university wanted people
to rate the qualifications of various graduate students. Each member of the group was presented with a folder containing a resume
and a photograph of a student. In reality, all the resumes were
identical, but were accompanied by one of two pictures—one
showing an attractive person and the other showing an unattractive one. Those who had just seen Pride of the Yankees, or a film
like it, assigned especially high ratings to the attractive candidate,
and especially low ratings to the unattractive candidate. The effect
disappeared when the researchers examined the corresponding
data from participants who had seen Up the Down Staircase or
similar films. Just on the showing of one film, people’s perception
had changed significantly. Although they weren’t aware of it, the
stereotypes depicted in the film had seeped into their brains and affected the way they saw others. The experiment involved just one
film. It is not difficult to imagine the effects of a lifetime of watching thousands of similarly biased television shows, advertisements,
and movies.
162 Quirkology
If You Were a Pizza Topping, What
Would You Be?
Knowing how your thoughts, feelings, and behavior are influenced
by subtle factors allows you to use information to your own advantage. For example, right now, millions of single people all over the
world are desperate to find the perfect partner (or, for many, any
partner at all). The good news is that help is at hand. For several
years, researchers have been exploring how an understanding of
the psychology of attraction can help budding Casanovas impress
others. Like so much of the strange science described here, the
work has not been carried out in laboratories but in the real world:
during speed-dating events, in personal ads, and, as with our starting point, high above a river in British Columbia.
In 1974, two psychology professors, Donald Dutton and Arthur
Aron, conducted an unusual study on two bridges above the Capilano River in British Columbia.44 One was a swaying footbridge suspended about two hundred feet above the rocks; the other was
much lower, and more solidly built. Young men walking across each
of the bridges were stopped by a female experimenter posing as a
market researcher. The woman asked the men to complete a simple
questionnaire, and then offered them her telephone number in case
they would like to find out more about her work. As predicted by
the experimenters, the offer of the telephone number was not only
accepted by significantly more men on the high bridge, but a greater
proportion of men on the high bridge subsequently telephoned the
female experimenter. Why should someone’s position above the
Capilano River have anything to do with that person’s accepting
the telephone number of a woman and then calling her for a chat?
Making Your Mind Up 163
Prior to the bridge study, researchers had confirmed what poets
had suspected for hundreds of years. When a person finds someone
attractive, the heart beats faster as the body prepares itself for potential action. Dutton and Aron wondered whether the opposite
was true—that people whose hearts were already beating faster
would be more likely to find someone attractive. Hence the experiment on the two bridges. The precarious nature of the high, swaying bridge meant that people using this way of crossing the river
had higher heart rates than those on the lower bridge. When the
men on the high bridge were approached by the female market researcher, they unconsciously attributed their increased heart rates
to her rather than to the bridge. As a result, their bodies fooled
their brains into thinking that they found her attractive, and so
were more likely to accept her telephone number and subsequently give her a call. In addition to showing how the body can
deceive the brain, the results have an important implication for our
lives. This is why, when you want someone to fall in love with you,
some scholars believe that you and your date should stay away
from calming New Age music, country walks, and wind chimes.
Instead, your chances of success are increased by attending a rock
concert, riding on a roller coaster, or watching a frightening film.
The work conducted by Dutton and Aron is just one of several
unusual experiments exploring the psychology of love and attraction. Other work has tackled the rather thorny issue of pick-up
lines.
If you really want to impress a potential date, what is the best
opening gambit? Searching the Internet certainly won’t help, with
the most frequently cited lines likely to depress rather than impress
(“Is it hot in here or is it just you?” “If I could rearrange the alphabet, I’d put U and I together,” and “I lost my phone number. Can I
164 Quirkology
have yours?”). To help discover the pick-up lines most likely to attract a potential partner, researchers from the University of Edinburgh had people rate various types of classic openings.45
The results showed that straight appeals for sex (“Well, hey
there, I may not be Fred Flintstone, but I bet I can make your Bed
Rock!”) and compliments (“So there you are! I’ve been looking all
over for you, the girl of my dreams”) did not play big. In fact, they
were so unsuccessful that the researchers wondered why they
should have evolved at all. After much head scratching, they concluded that these lines might be “used by men to identify sociosexually unrestricted women” (think “tart”). Instead, lines suggesting
a potential for spontaneous wit, a pleasant personality, wealth, and
an appreciation of culture were much more effective. The study
was all well and good, but, as the authors themselves admit, it is
one thing to check the “yes, that is a good pick-up line” box on an
anonymous questionnaire and quite another to make the decision
in real life.
I recently teamed up with the Edinburgh International Science
Festival with my academic colleagues James Houran and Caroline
Watt to examine the best pick-up lines and conversational topics
when searching for the love of your life. The project revolved
around a large-scale, experimental, speed-dating event.
A few months before the event, we issued a media appeal for
single people who wished to participate in a study exploring the
science of seduction. We had about five hundred replies, and invited a hundred randomly selected participants (fifty men and fifty
women) to our love laboratory.
The event took place in a large beautiful ballroom at one of Edinburgh’s oldest and most palatial hotels. At the beginning of the
evening, our one hundred participants arrived and were randomly
Making Your Mind Up 165
seated at one of five long tables. At each table, men were seated on
one side, women on the other. The people at four of the tables were
asked to talk about a specified topic throughout all their speed
dates. We chose four of the most frequently used topics: hobbies,
film, travel, and books. Our fifth table acted as a “control,” and we
allowed the people there to chat about whatever they liked. As we
started to play the romantic strains of Carole King, each person was
asked to chat to the person opposite them. Three minutes later, participants were asked to rate their potential beaus. Did they find
them physically attractive? What was the level of “chemistry” between them? How quickly had they made up their minds? And,
perhaps most important, would they like to meet each other again?
A few moments later, everyone was paired up with a different person, and the entire procedure repeated again. Two hours and ten
speed dates later, the experiment was over. It proved to be a huge
success, and lots of people were hanging around in the bar afterward. Some shared their telephone numbers with one another.
The following day, we entered more than 1,500 pages of data
into a giant spreadsheet. Whenever two people had indicated that
they would be happy to meet up again, we sent them each others’
telephone numbers. Around 60 percent of those attending walked
away with the contact details of at least one other person. Some
people did really well, with about 20 percent getting the details of
four others. Women proved to be about twice as picky as men, but
the top-rated man and woman of the evening had a 100 percent
success rate: All their dates wanted to meet them again.
The conversation topics had produced different success rates.
When talking about movies, less than 9 percent of the pairs
wanted to meet up again, compared to 18 percent when participants spoke about the top topic—travel. A clue to why would-be
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lovers might want to avoid chatting about movies comes from additional data from the study. At the beginning of the evening, we
asked everyone to indicate their favorite types of films. The results
revealed that men and women have very different tastes. For instance, 49 percent of men liked action films compared to just 18
percent of women, and 29 percent of women liked musicals, compared to only 4 percent of men. Whenever I walked past the table
where participants were talking about films, all I heard was arguing. In contrast, the conversations about travel tended to revolve
around great holidays and dream destinations, and that makes
people feel good and so appear more attractive to one another.
The data also revealed other surprises. Although men are traditionally seen as shallow people who judge women very quickly,
our findings suggested that women were making up their minds
much sooner than men, with 45 percent of women’s decisions being made in less than thirty seconds, compared to just 22 percent
of men’s decisions. Since a man has only a few seconds to impress
a woman, his opening comments are important.
To uncover the best type of pick-up lines, we compared the conversations of participants rated as very desirable by their dates with
those seen as especially undesirable. Failed Casanovas either
tended to employ old chestnuts (“Do you come here often?”) or
else struggled to impress with comments such as “I have a PhD in
computing” and “My friend is a helicopter pilot.” Those more
skilled in seduction encouraged their dates to talk about themselves in an unusual, fun, quirky way. The most memorable lines
from the top-rated man and woman in the study illustrate the
point. The top-rated male’s best line was: “If you were on Stars in
Their Eyes, who would you be?”; the top-rated female asked: “If
you were a pizza topping, what would you be?”
Making Your Mind Up 167
Why should these latter types of lines be so successful? The answer was revealed by an unusual experiment involving drinking
straws and funny voices.
In 2004, Arthur Aron (of the 1974 bridge study) and Barbara
Fraley, a psychologist from the State University of New York at
Stony Brook, randomly paired strangers and had them carry out
one of two sets of slightly strange behaviors.46 In one condition,
one stranger was blindfolded and the other was asked to hold a
drinking straw between his or her teeth (which made that person’s
voice sound funny). The two then carried out a series of tasks designed to make them laugh. The blindfolded person had to learn a
series of dance steps by listening to instructions read by the strawholding colleague. In another example of laboratory-based hilarity,
they were asked to act their favorite television commercial using a
made-up language.
The other, more straight-faced condition did not involve drinking straws. Here, the dance steps were learned without the blindfold and the silly voice, and the commercials were acted in English.
Participants were then asked to complete a questionnaire about
how much fun they had had. The results confirmed that the blindfold, drinking straw, and silly language had resulted in significantly
more hilarity. Then came the crunch question: All the participants
were asked to draw two overlapping circles to indicate the degree
of closeness they had felt with their partners. The results revealed
that those who had participated in the shared humor experience
felt significantly closer to their partners, and also found them more
attractive.
The successful pick-up lines in our study were the speed-dating
equivalent of putting a straw in your mouth to make your voice
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sound silly: They elicited a shared funny experience that promoted
a sense of closeness and attraction.
“Minimalist Seeks Woman”:
The Psychology of Personal Ads
Imagine that you are going to write a personal ad. What choice of
words do you think would prove most successful and attract the
largest number of replies? This was exactly the question tackled in
another aspect of our journey into the science of seduction.
We asked everyone involved in the speed-dating experiment to
write a short personal ad containing about twenty words. We then
showed these to more than a hundred men and women and asked
them to indicate which ads they would be most likely to answer.
The results provided important clues into a hitherto unexplored aspect of ads.
Previous work into personals had examined the type of person
most frequently sought by men and women.47 The results haven’t
yielded many big surprises. Men tend to look for women who are
physically attractive, understanding, and athletic. In contrast,
women are searching for someone who is understanding, humorous, and emotionally healthy. I decided to take a different tack.
I looked through the ads we had received and noticed something odd. There was a large variation in the number of words that
people used to describe themselves compared to the number of
words used to describe the person they were looking for. Which
type of ad would attract the greater number of replies—the one
that describes you in greater detail or the one that describes the
person you are looking for?
Making Your Mind Up 169
To find out, I counted the number of words the advertisers used
for themselves and for those they sought. I then used these two
numbers to derive a “self versus other” percentage. At one extreme were the “it’s all about you” people, who obtained a near 0
percent score by saying very little about themselves and instead focused almost entirely on their wish lists:
Brunette, 27, looking for someone kind, romantic, spontaneous, caring, and who is willing to take a risk. We can always tell them we met in the supermarket!
In the middle of the range were the “it’s about the two of us”
people who split the wording more evenly, describing themselves
and their potential partners, and who obtained a 50 percent
score:
Laid-back guy, good sense of humor, into sport, travel,
lethal coffee, eating out, seeks creative, funny, sunny,
happy, charismatic girl to while away long summer nights.
Then, at the other end of the spectrum were the “it’s all about me”
people who obtained a 100 percent score by focusing almost entirely on themselves:
Bright, fun, gym-loving, nonsmoker, singer-songwriter, into
detective novels, funny films, American comedy shows,
and long walks on sunny beaches.
I then looked at the relationship between the score assigned to
each ad and the number of people indicating that they would reply
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to that ad. The results were revealing. Only a small number of
people indicated that they would reply to “it’s all about you” ads.
The “it’s all about me” ads fared a little better, but still didn’t attract
many replies. A balance between the two extremes turned out to
be the winning formula. The results showed that a 70 percent “this
is me” versus 30 percent “this is what I am looking for” balance attracted the greatest number of replies. It seems that if you devote
more than 70 percent of the ad to describing yourself, you look
self-centered. Less than 70 percent and you look suspicious.
Our two top ads fitted the pattern, and contained the rough
70:30 split. Around 45 percent of men said that they would reply
to the winning female ad:
Genuine, attractive, outgoing, professional female, good
sense of humor. Enjoys keeping fit, socializing, music, and
travel. Would like to meet like-minded, good-natured guy
to share quality times.
Similarly, almost 60 percent of women indicated that they would
be attracted to the top male ad:
Male, good sense of humor, adventurous, athletic, enjoys
cooking, comedy, culture, film, seeks sporty, fun female for
chats and possible romantic relationship.
Our study also provided another top tip for those wishing to write
winning ads. We asked our group of one hundred people to indicate which ads they thought members of the opposite sex would
be likely to answer. The results showed a remarkable difference between the sexes.
Making Your Mind Up 171
First, let’s have a look at the ads written by men. We compared
the percentage of women who said that they would reply to each
ad with the percentage of men who thought that women would reply. So, one of the ads read:
Tall, slim, athletic, fashionable male with a good sense of
humor looking for slim to average girl with good sense of
humor interested in cars, music, clothes, and cuddles.
About 11 percent of women said that they would reply to the ad.
Interestingly, men said that they thought 15 percent of women
would reply—a remarkably accurate prediction. Another ad
noted:
Tall, energetic male with his head in the clouds and feet
on the ground. Would like to meet a woman who is fun,
positive, and isn’t afraid of a challenge.
This time, 39 percent of women checked the “yes” box. Again,
men’s predictions were remarkably accurate, predicting that 32
percent of women would answer this ad. And so it went on. For ad
after ad, men were able to predict accurately which ads women
would find attractive and which they would avoid. Overall, men’s
predictions were, on average, 90 percent correct.
A very different story emerged when women predicted men’s
behavior. Look at the following ad, written by a female:
Cute and quirky professional with a passion for good food,
wine, and company looking for the proverbial tall, dark,
and handsome with cracking wit and fit body.
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Only 5 percent of the men said that they would reply to the ad.
Women were convinced that this would act as a man-magnet, predicting that about 44 percent of them would reply. How about:
Relaxed, upbeat, friendly woman who enjoys relaxing,
laughing, exploring the world, and wants to dance the
night away!
Once again, women thought that this would attract the majority of
men, but they were wrong. Only about 22 percent of men indicated that they would respond.
The pattern repeated itself across the ads. Women simply had
very little idea about what actually attracted men. So why are
women so inaccurate? Perhaps the unsolicited “questionnaire graffiti” that women thought men were interested only in the physical
attributes of women is a clue. Time and again, we came across
comments such as “They are just interested in one thing,” and
“They are only interested by two things.” Our research suggests
that perhaps men are not quite so shallow. Regardless, the implication for women using personals is simple: If you want to attract lots
of beaus, get a guy to write your ad.
Love at First Sight?
Take a quick look at the two images shown in figure 7. Do you prefer the image on the left or the one on the right? Your decision may
feel like little more than guesswork, but in reality there is a considerable amount of psychology at work, and I recently used this task
to understand more about that most curious of human experiences: love at first sight.
Making Your Mind Up 173
Fig. 7 Which image do you find more attractive?
The study was initiated by an e-mail from a middle-aged woman
called Jenny. Jenny had been one of the participants in the speeddating study, and she was writing to let me know that she had
since met the man of her dreams under somewhat unusual circumstances. Her e-mail described how, a few months before, she had
arrived at a friend’s party and immediately noticed a man standing
on the other side of the room. Their eyes met for a split second and
Jenny had the sudden, and surreal, experience of instantly “knowing” that this was the man she was going to marry. The man
smiled, walked over, and the two of them started to chat. A few
hours later, he admitted to having felt the same instant attraction
toward Jenny, and the two of them arranged to meet again. Jenny
ended her e-mail by explaining that they had been together for six
months now, and were planning to marry.
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Jenny’s e-mail made me curious about the idea of love at first
sight. A search through psychology journals and books revealed
that there had been no academic work into the topic, and so the
area seemed ripe for some quirky research. A month later, I
launched a two-part online experiment to take an initial look at the
phenomenon.
The first part of the study tackled several questions. What percentage of people have experienced love at first sight? Do more
women than men report the phenomenon? Did the experience
lead to a romantic relationship and, if so, how long had those relationships lasted? More than six hundred members of the public
agreed to take part, and the results were fascinating.
Almost 70 percent of respondents said that they had indeed experienced love at first sight, with roughly equal numbers of men and
women reporting the sensation. These are not once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Forty percent of respondents said that they had experienced the phenomenon more than once, one in ten people having
experienced it several times. The results also suggested that there
is far more to these experiences than just wishful thinking. In 40
percent of instances, people reported that the objects of their desire
had experienced exactly the same feelings, 60 percent of the experiences had led to romantic relationships, and one in four of these
relationships had lasted longer than ten years.
The second part of the study presented participants with the
task described at the beginning of this section. Take another look at
the two images shown in figure 7. There is only one very small difference between the images—the pupils in the image on the right
have been digitally enhanced and so are larger than the pupils in
the image on the left. People’s pupils tend to become larger when
Making Your Mind Up 175
they see something, or somebody, that appeals to them. Moreover,
because we tend to like people who like us, people with enlarged
pupils are often seen as especially attractive. The signal is subtle,
but the effect is powerful. It has also been known about for a long
while. During the seventeenth century, Venetian women would
place an extract of the plant belladonna, which contains a toxin
that dilates the pupil, into their eyes to appear more attractive. This
unusual practice explains the origin of the plant’s name: bella
donna means “beautiful lady” in Italian. The toxin would also have
had the side effect of making the Venetian women’s vision somewhat blurry, perhaps also giving rise to the expression “Love is
blind.”
What has all of this to do with love at first sight? My theory was
that people who experienced this phenomenon may, without realizing it, be especially sensitive to nonverbal signals of attraction. If
this was correct, then in the experiment such people would be especially likely to be drawn to the images containing enlarged
pupils. During the experiment, people were shown several pairs of
photographs and were asked to indicate which image in each pair
they found most attractive. The data was fascinating. First, women
were far more sensitive to pupil size than men. Time and again
they would choose the image with the larger pupils, but the men
tended to check the “uncertain” box. Second, when I focused on
those people who had experienced love at first sight, this effect
was much more striking. Women who had experienced love at first
sight were super-sensitive to signals of attraction, whereas men
who had experienced this strange phenomenon were relatively insensitive to the same cues. This provides tentative evidence that
the love-at-first-sight experience, at least in women, may be driven
by an enhanced ability to detect subtle signals of attraction.
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The study revealed that love at first sight is surprisingly frequent, often leads to long-lasting relationships, and might be driven
(at least in women) by a sensitivity to certain types of subtle nonverbal cues. In short, that there is far more to this curious phenomenon than first meets the eye.
Making Your Mind Up 177
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5 The Scientific Search for
the World’s Funniest Joke
Explorations into the
Psychology of Humor
I n the 1970s, the cult comedy show Monty Python’s Flying Circus created a sketch based entirely around the idea of finding the
world’s funniest joke. In the 1940s, a man named Ernest Scribbler
thinks of the joke, writes it down, and promptly dies laughing. The
joke turns out to be so funny that it kills anyone who reads it.
Eventually, the British military realize that it could be used as a
lethal weapon, and so they arrange to have a team of people translate the joke into German. Each person translates just one word at
a time in order not to be affected by the joke. The joke is then read
out to German forces, and it is so funny that they are unable to
fight because they are laughing so much. The sketch ends with
footage from a special session of the Geneva Convention in which
delegates vote to ban the use of joke warfare.
179
In a strange example of life imitating art, in 2001 I headed a
team carrying out a year-long, scientific search for the world’s funniest joke. Instead of exploring the potential military applications of
jokes, we wanted to take a scientific look at laughter.
In addition to finding the joke that had maximum mass appeal,
my Pythonesque project resulted in a string of surreal experiences
involving the internationally syndicated humorist Dave Barry, a giant chicken suit, the Hollywood actor Robin Williams, and more
than five hundred jokes ending with the punch line “There’s a
weasel chomping on my privates.”
More important, the project also provided considerable insights
into many of the questions facing modern-day humor researchers.
Do men and women laugh at different types of jokes? Do people
from different countries find the same things funny? Does our
sense of humor change over time? And if you are going to tell a
joke involving an animal, are you better off making the main protagonist a duck, a horse, a cow, or a weasel?
Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?
In June 2001, I was contacted by the same august scientific body
that had commissioned my study into financial astrology, the
British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS). The
BAAS were eager to create a project that would act as a centerpiece for a year-long national celebration of science, and they
wanted a large-scale experiment that would attract public attention. Would I be interested in creating it and, if so, what would I
choose to investigate?
After a few “close, but no cigar” moments, I happened to see a
rerun of the Monty Python sketch involving Ernest Scribbler, and I
180 Quirkology
started to think about the possibility of really searching for the
world’s funniest joke. I knew that there would be a firm scientific
underpinning for the project because some of the world’s greatest
thinkers, including Sigmund Freud, Plato, and Aristotle, had written extensively about humor. In fact, the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was so taken with the topic that he once stated
that a serious work in philosophy could be written entirely of
jokes. I then discovered that whenever I mentioned my idea to
people, it provoked a serious discussion. Some queried whether
there really was such a thing as the world’s funniest joke. Others
thought that it was impossible to analyze humor scientifically. Almost everyone was kind enough to share a favorite joke with me.
The rare mix of good science and popular appeal meant that the
idea felt right.
I presented the BAAS with my plans for an international, Internetbased project called LaughLab. I would set up a Web site that had
two sections. In one part, people could input their favorite jokes
and submit them to an archive. In the second section, participants
could answer a few simple questions about themselves (such as
sex, age, and nationality), and then rate how funny they found various jokes randomly selected from the archive. During the year, we
would slowly build a huge collection of jokes and ratings from
around the globe; from this we would be able to discover scientifically what makes different groups of people laugh and which joke
made the whole world smile. Everyone at the BAAS nodded, and
LaughLab got the green light.
The success of the project hinged on being able to persuade
thousands of people worldwide to come online and participate.
To help spread the word, the BAAS and I launched LaughLab by
staging an eye-catching photograph based around perhaps the
The Search for the World’s Funniest Joke 181
most famous (and, as we would go on to prove scientifically, least
funny) joke in the world: “Why did the chicken cross the road? To
get to the other side.” Toward the end of 2001, I found myself
standing in the middle of a road dressed in a white laboratory coat
and holding a clipboard (see fig. 8). Next to me was a student
dressed in a giant chicken suit. Several national newspaper photographers were lined up in front of us, snapping away, and I can still
vividly remember one of them looking up and shouting: “Can the
guy playing the scientist move to the left?” I shouted back “I am a
scientist,” and then looked sheepishly at the giant chicken standing
next to me. It was the type of surreal experience that was to occur
all too frequently throughout the next twelve months.
The launch was successful, and LaughLab made its way into
newspapers and magazines all over the world. Within a few hours
of opening the Web site for business, we received more than five
hundred jokes and 10,000 ratings. Then we hit a major problem:
Many of the jokes were a tad crude. Actually, I am understating
the issue. They were absolutely filthy. One especially memorable
submission involved two nuns, a large bunch of bananas, an elephant, and Yoko Ono. We couldn’t allow these submissions into
the archive because we had no control over who would visit the
site to rate the jokes. With a backlog of more than three hundred
jokes from the first day alone, we needed someone to work full
time to vet them. My research assistant, Emma Greening, came to
the rescue. Every day for the next few months, Emma carefully
looked at every joke and excluded those that were not suitable for
family viewing. She was often frustrated by seeing the same jokes
again and again (the joke “What is brown and sticky?” “A stick”
was submitted more than three hundred times); but on the upside,
182 Quirkology
Emma now owns one of the largest collections of dirty jokes in the
world.
Participants were asked to rate each joke on a 5-point scale ranging from “not very funny” to “very funn