Watching Compliance

12-12-2006 | Categories:

Enhancements

The Eyes Of Honesty by Clive Thompson New York Times December 10, 2006

This brief brief article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine describes an experiment based on the premise that individuals are more likely to behave honestly if they know they are being watched.

In the psychology department at Newcastle University, some patrons were not making their contributions at a self-serve, self-pay coffee station.

For 10 weeks this spring, they [those running the experiment] alternately taped two posters over the coffee station. During one week, it was a picture of flowers; during the other, it was a pair of staring eyes. … A remarkable pattern emerged. During the weeks when the eyes poster stared down at the coffee station, coffee and tea drinkers contributed 2.76 times as much money as in the weeks when flowers graced the wall. Apparently, the mere feeling of being watched — even by eyes that were patently not real — was enough to encourage people to behave honestly. Roberts {the psychologist directing the experiment] says he was stunned: “We kind of thought there might be a subtle effect. We weren’t expecting such a large impact.”

After reading about this, a British police department in Birmingham is placing posters of eyes as part of a campaign called “We’ve Got Our Eyes on Criminals.” Researchers will analyze the results to determine if there is a similar effect on street crime.

Watching Compliance

While patient compliance is clearly not identical to honesty, adherence is higher when patients know they will are being observed, just as office workers are more likely to pay for coffee on the honor system if they know they are being watched. It seems worth considering whether compliance would improve if a similar psychological cue were provided.

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