{"id":52393,"date":"2013-10-29T11:00:42","date_gmt":"2013-10-29T16:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=52393"},"modified":"2014-06-09T21:00:48","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T02:00:48","slug":"cheating-on-halloween-the-psychology-of-greedy-fingers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/10\/29\/cheating-on-halloween-the-psychology-of-greedy-fingers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Psychology of Greed on Halloween"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It turns out, there\u2019s a nice <a href=\"http:\/\/psycnet.apa.org\/psycinfo\/1976-20842-001\" target=\"_blank\">Halloween field experiment<\/a>.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the setup.\u00a0 On Halloween, a woman answers the door and invites the trick-or-treaters in.\u00a0 She tells them to \u201ctake one,\u201d and then leaves the room leaving the bowl of candy and a bowl of nickels and pennies (adjusting for inflation: dimes and quarters, maybe even half-dollars). \u00a0They did this experiment at 27 houses with a total of 1,300 kids.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, most kids (69%) took one.\u00a0\u00a0 But conditions mattered.<\/p>\n<p>In one experimental manipulation, the woman either asked the kids who they were and where they lived or she allowed them to be anonymous.\u00a0 Experimenters also noted whether the kids were trick-or-treating alone or in groups.\u00a0 For some groups, the woman designated the smallest kid in the group as being in charge of making sure that kids took only one.\u00a0\u00a0 All these variables made a difference.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2012\/11\/14.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-52394\" title=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2012\/11\/14-500x311.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"249\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2012\/11\/14-500x311.jpg 500w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2012\/11\/14.jpg 596w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The greatest rate of cheating (80%) occurred when the smallest child was being responsible but everyone was anonymous.\u00a0 Diener reasoned that with responsibility shifted to the smallest link, the other kids would feel freer to break the rule.<\/p>\n<p>Those who did cheat usually took only an additional one to three candies.\u00a0 But, of those who did grab more than what was offered, 20% took both candy and coins.\u00a0\u00a0 Unfortunately, the Snickers study is not like the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment\">marshmallow<\/a>\u00a0study, so we don\u2019t know where those greediest kids are now.<\/p>\n<p><em>HT:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.spring.org.uk\/2010\/01\/cheating-does-deindividuation-encourage-it.php\">PsyBlog<\/a>.\u00a0Cross-posted at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/2012\/11\/halloween-follow-up.html\" target=\"_blank\">Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"> Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/profilepages\/view_profile.php?username=livingstonj\">Montclair State University<\/a>.  You can follow him at <a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/\">Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/JayLivingston\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It turns out, there\u2019s a nice Halloween field experiment.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the setup.\u00a0 On Halloween, a woman answers the door and invites the trick-or-treaters in.\u00a0 She tells them to \u201ctake one,\u201d and then leaves the room leaving the bowl of candy and a bowl of nickels and pennies (adjusting for inflation: dimes and quarters, maybe even [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":56603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[223,254,37],"class_list":["post-52393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-childrenyouth","tag-holidays","tag-social-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/09\/Screenshot_7.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52393"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62931,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52393\/revisions\/62931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}