Effect of the Number of People Present on the Tendency to Open Doors for Others
Gretchen Hanson Gotthard
Randolph-Macon Woman’s College
Effect of the Number of People Present on the Tendency to Open Doors for Others
There has been a considerable literature on the influence of groups on people’s behavior (Nevid, 2003). For example, Somebody and Somebody (1984) clearly showed that the number of people present in a situation can ….
Method
Participants
Fifty individuals were observed on the campus of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (30 women and 20 men)….
Materials
A notebook and pen were used to record door-opening behavior…
Procedure
The experimenters sat outside of the dining hall at R-MWC for 45 minutes and recorded the number of times people opened the door for others. The independent variable was the number of people present when a door was opened for someone. The dependent variables were sex, approximate age…
Results
The more people present, the more likely individuals were to hold a door open for someone else. As seen in Table 1, there were no numerical differences between doors being opened for others and the sex of the individual opening the door; however, older individuals showed a higher numerical average than younger individuals for door-opening behavior. Additionally, the more people present, the more likely people were to open doors for others (see Figure 1)… [put Figures and Tables either in this section or at the end of the paper]
Discussion
As hypothesized, it appears that the more people present, the more likely people are to open a door for someone. This finding relates nicely to the literature on group behavior (Nevid, 2003). It has been shown before that group size has an effect on… (Somebody & Somebody,
References: Nevid, J.S. (2003). Psychology: Concepts and Applications (pp. 1-15). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Saywitz, K.J., & Sandler, I.N. (2003). Race differences in face-ism: Does facial prominence imply dominance? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 290, 1113-1120.