What Psychologists Have Learned From Watching You on the Subway

Travel Blog  •  Michael Yessis  •  11.25.09 | 10:41 AM ET

Tom Vanderbilt looks at what psychologists have gathered from studying subway riders, and why the subway is “a perfect rolling laboratory for the study of human behavior.”

As the sociologists M.L. Fried and V.J. De Fazio once noted, “The subway is one of the few places in a large urban center where all races and religions and most social classes are confronted with one another and the same situation.”

Or situations. The subway presents any number of discrete, and repeatable, moments of interaction, opportunities to test how “situational factors” affect outcomes. A pregnant woman appears: Who will give up his seat first? A blind man slips and falls. Who helps? Someone appears out of the blue and asks you to mail a letter. Will you? In all these scenarios much depends on the parties involved, their location on the train and the location of the train itself, and the number of other people present, among other variables. And rush-hour changes everything.

Tags: Global Village, Train Travel, News and Briefs


1 Comment for What Psychologists Have Learned From Watching You on the Subway

John Rouse 11.27.09 | 1:18 PM ET

Really interesting article.  I’ve often thought that a New York subway was one of the best places to people watch.

-John
http://www.createculture.org

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