Journal Entry #7

Journal Entry #7

Pervasiveness of Automacity

I am very fortunate to have a job that I love at college. I am also very fortunate that the subbing policy at that job works very well. The subbing policy is there for students who cannot make their shift for almost any reason. If you want to take a day to go into the city, if your family is coming to visit you, if you have suddenly fallen ill, or any number of possibilities, all you have to do is send a request through our work’s list serve and hope that someone will email you back saying that they can take your shift.

Most often, people will send out requests for a certain shift with a short description of what they plan to do in the time that they are unavailable. Whenever I write one up, I will give the exact time of the shift I need to be covered and say something like “I will be away in Virginia visiting my family this weekend so will be unable to make it to my shift. If someone could please sub for me, I would be very grateful.” This system has proven to be pretty successful overall. Usually other workers respond to my request rather quickly saying that they would happily cover for me.

There are a few individuals at my workplace who rarely use this method described above. When they send out sub-request emails they often say something like: “Can I have a sub for this time please? Thanks! ~Goed-Girl”. I, myself, am very unsympathetic towards these emails. I usually get the feeling that there is no legitimate reason for wanting a sub, and that the cause for not wanting to go to work is simply boredom or too much homework. These are ridiculous reasons for not wanting to go to work, because everyone faces these issues, but suffers through them so that they can maintain a job.

Whenever someone sends out a request in this format, no one responds.  The person asking for a sub usually has to send another email a few days later to ask again. Occasionally, they must even send out a third, pleading with us and using the word “please” with more frequency than is necessary. This email is quite often sent out the day of the shift that needs to be taken over, but then at the last minute someone responds.

I actually did a little test myself when I started noticing this pattern. I needed a sub for the coming weekend (at that point it was Monday), so I sent out a request following the casual format of my fellow coworkers. As I expected, not a single person responded. I sent another email on Thursday afternoon, repeating my request, changing the wording only slightly. Still no one responded. As I needed the sub for a Saturday shift, I actually began to get desperate. My boss told me later that afternoon to send out another email that shows my desperation but to also add a reason for my needing a sub. Following his instructions, I sent out an email Friday morning and actually got a response later that afternoon. It worked so well. This outcome was purely correlational. Because it was not a real experiment, I am not sure if my little test worked because I either: got desperate, sent out three requests, or used a reason in my final email.

In any case, worker responsiveness could be contributed to the pervasiveness of automacity. People like to take short cuts when they are thinking. Using the word “because” lets individuals know that there is some sort of reason for the previous clause in the statement.

Langer and colleagues conducted a study in which they tested how people react to others asking to use the copy machine when the first person was already using it (1978). For the first test, the confederate went up to a subject and said “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I am in a rush?” Ninety-four percent of people complied with this request. The researchers changed up their question (in a second study I believe) by taking out any excuse within the request. The confederates asked “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” The compliance with this request dramatically dropped down to only 60 percent. The researchers changed the question a third time to see whether what followed the word “because” mattered. This time the confederate walked up to the person in front of them and said “Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?” What surprised me was that this request had 93 percent compliance. 

Compliance and non-compliance feels like common sense when you read about this study. In the first case, there was a reason to feel sympathy towards the other person. You can understand what they are going through when they say they are in a rush. They are probably very stressed, and if they are asking to go in front of you, they must be very pressed for time. The second case has no reasoning behind the request. The question that popped into my head as a response to that request is Why should I let this person go in front of me? I need the Xerox machine too and I was here first. I understand why the third case still got compliance, but it still shocks me. There does not have to be a long, thought out reason as to why a person needs something. Simply by using the word “because” and following it with some sort of excuse leads to compliant behavior. People tend to tune out the rest of the sentence because of our automatic desire to take short cuts. We assume that the reason must be serious or else the other person would not be asking. We also assume that the person is trustworthy and that they will not manipulate us for their own purposes. 

I could use this phenomenon in the future for when I write my sub requests so that I do not have to stress about missing appointments or other important events. Maybe I should also let others at work know that this is something they should start practicing too. That way others will be more inclined to help them out.