Final Paper



Final PaperJeannette SmithIvy Tech Community College of IndianapolisFinal PaperInquiry 1Question: What sort of response does opening a door for someone result in?Claim: There will be more verbal responses than non-verbal responses.Supplies Needed for Inquiry 1:Go to IFC door 2Male door opener Video Recording cameraVideographerTripod Unsuspecting test subjects (5 male and 5 female)Note book for record keeping, in chart formList: 1-5 and label female, along the left side of paperList: 1-5 and label male, along the left side of paperAcross the top label: verbal, non-verbal, and no responseProcedure:Go to IFC door 2Be sure you are in the vestibule (this is the area that in between the entrance 2 doors that lead to the outside of the building and the doors that lead into IFC.)Put video camera on tripod. Start at the most west door that leads to the outside of the building, take approximately 6 paces to the south, then two paces to the west. This is where your tripod and camera should be.Have the videographer position themselves behind the camera and angle the camera in a manner in which all four doors at entrance 2 can be seen through camera. Position male door opener a minimum of 20 feet in any direction away from entrance 2 on the outside of the building. Have male door opener find an unsuspecting test subject (5 male and 5 female). After test subject has been spotted, the male door opener will need to position himself to walk in front of the subject and open the door in a manner in which the subject walks through the door first ( see pictures: Figure 1)Record results on chart in notebook.Steps 6-9 will need to be repeated 10 times (5 times for 5 males and 5 times for females)Observations: Our claim was correct. It was a sunny day and the temperature was in the mid 60’s. The test subjects were coming into school. Our door opener was a male in his early 20’s and was well groomed. When the door was held for a test subject, six out of ten of them opened the inside doors for someone else. Evidence: Response TypeMaleFemaleVerbal55Non-Verbal00No Response00Research:Have you ever wondered why some people hold the door and others do not, or maybe why sometimes you get a thank you and other times you don’t? While during our first inquiry our group witnessed the same things happening. When the door was help open for the test subject, male or female, the majority of the test subjects held the inner door for another person. We wondered why this was happening. Was it people just needing to get through the door, or was it something more? This concept has been a topic of many conversations and many experiments over the years. A study on a topic similar to this idea was done on the University of Texas campus in 2010. Zhou Lu did a study about the likely hood of a person opening a door for someone after a door had been open for them. He wondered, just as we did, what would the reaction be to a door being held open for another person. He found that a large amount of people did hold the door for another person after a door had been held open for them (Lu, 2010-2012). In our research we discovered that we could have taken other directions with our inquiry. One direction would have been to test the distance at which the door opener was to the test subject at the time the door was being held open. According to an article in Arts & Entertainment, holding open a door for someone when they are further than 10 feet away from the door is just awkward. The person you are holding the door open for may think that you are expecting something in return for your kind act, or that you are just plain strange (Carlson, 2011). Holding a door open for someone is acceptable and expected when you are walking within 5 feet in front of another person. Of course gender roles also play into the reaction of a person on the receiving end of a door being opened for them. In our research we uncovered a funny but realistic version of how different the timing of opening a door for someone attractive is compared to someone unattractive. The creator of the video examined how people will hold a door open for a longer period of time for someone that is attractive ("Open Doors," 2006). Although our male holder found himself in a situation where he held a door a little longer than necessary for an attractive girl, our group did not inquire about this subject. It would quite possibly make an interesting experiment. Inquiry 2Supplies Needed for Inquiry 2:Ivy Tech Indianapolis Downtown IFC Doors, Door 2Male Door OpenerVideo Camera on a TripodPerson to Record DataJournal and writing utensilList: 1-5 and label female, along the left side of paperList: 1-5 and label male, along the left side of paperAcross the top label: verbal, non-verbal, and no responsePerson to Video Record ExperimentUnsuspecting test subjects (5 male and 5 female)Question: How does opening the door for someone when they are leaving school and the door opener is coming to school, affect their response?Claim: People will not respond because they are in a hurry to leave school, or because the door opener is on the opposite side of the door than the person they are holding it open for. Procedure:Go to IFC door 2Be sure you are in the vestibule (this is the area that in between the entrance 2 doors that lead to the outside of the building and the doors that lead into IFC.)Put video camera on tripod. Start at the most west door that leads to into the building, take approximately 6 paces to the south, then two paces to the west. This is where your tripod and camera should be.Have the videographer position themselves behind the camera and angle the camera in a manner in which all four doors at entrance 2 can be seen through camera. Position male door opener inside the vestibule as if walking into the building. Have male door opener find an unsuspecting subject (5 male and 5 female). After subject has been spotted, the male door opener will need to position himself to open the door as the test subject is about to walk through it.Record results on chart in notebook. Steps 6-9 will need to be repeated 10 times (5 times for 5 males and 5 times for females)Observations: Our claim was correct. It was a sunny day and the temperature was in the mid 60’s. The test subjects were leaving school. Our door opener was a male in his early 20’s and was well groomed. Many times, when our male door opener went to open the door, the person on the opposite side of the door would choose to go through a different door. When our male door opener opened the door, the test subjects coming out the door did not acknowledge the kind gesture. Evidence:Response TypeMaleFemaleVerbal02Non-Verbal00No Response53Research:Inquiry 2 produced almost all no responses from the test subjects. Was it because people were in a hurry to leave school? It could have also been because the door opener was coming in the same door that the test subject was coming out of, meaning that the test subject did not feel that the door opener was doing them any favors by opening a door that they were already coming through. Maybe we did not get a response from the test subjects because they were distracted by cell phones, talking to friends, thinking about what they need to do now that school is over, or simply in too big of a hurry to notice that someone had held open the door for them. The truth is we will never know the exact reason why we did not get a response from the test subject. If we wanted an accurate assessment of “why” the test subject did not respond, we could have done a survey after they came through the door.Are people in a hurry to leave school, and does that sense of “I have to be somewhere” cause them to be less polite? According to a study done by Reader’s Digest, even some of the busiest, hustle and bustle cities proved to be the most polite ("How Polite," July, 2006). This study was done on 36 of the world’s largest cities. They tested to see if people would hold doors open for them, help pick up a dropped folder in a busy location, and say thank you after they purchased small items from retailers. In all 3 categories New York City, the world’s busiest city, was the most polite out of the 36 cities that were tested. Even when people were in a hurry, they stopped to help pick up a dropped folder, held the door open for others, and said thank you when small items were purchased from retailers. When we are distracted by other things, we may come across as being rude or dismissive. According to an article in The New York Times, texting is a distraction that comes across as rude without the intention of doing so (Cohen, 2009). People, especially young people, get caught up in something on their phone or a conversation they are having with friends, which results in them ignoring the world around them. Often times this behavior is unintentional. The person doing the ignoring does not intend to come across as rude, they are just too distracted to acknowledge a kind act by another. This could have been a great direction for our second inquiry. Unfortunately, we did not record whether our test subjects were distracted by something, which could have resulted in their lack of response to the door being held open for them.In our search for a reason why people do not say thank you when a door is opened for them, we read many blogs about the subject. What we found is that most people responded to blog questions about saying thank you to those who open a door for them, in the same way. Everyone claims that they “always” say thank you when a door is open for them, and they also claim that many people do not say thank you to them when they open a door for someone else ("Do you say “thank you”, 2008), ("Do you Say “Thank You”, 2009), ("Why don’t people say thank you," 2006). Maybe the only people who reply to these blogs are polite people. Or maybe we all think we are polite, and do not want to admit that we are not. Or maybe the people who reply to these blogs simply enjoy complaining about others, while ignoring their own faults. Either way, the research on inquiry 2 was difficult and inconclusive. In order to determine an exact reason why our test subjects did not respond to our door opener, we would have to do a survey asking every test subject why they did not respond. Inquiry 3 Question: What sort of response does opening a door for someone result in?Claim: There will be more verbal responses than non-verbal responses.Supplies Needed for Inquiry 1:Go to IFC door 2Female door opener Video Recording cameraVideographerTripod Unsuspecting test subjects (5 male and 5 female)Note book for record keeping, in chart formList: 1-5 and label female, along the left side of paperList: 1-5 and label male, along the left side of paperAcross the top label: verbal, non-verbal, and no responseProcedure:Go to IFC door 2Be sure you are in the vestibule (this is the area that in between the entrance 2 doors that lead to the outside of the building and the doors that lead into IFC.)Put video camera on tripod. Start at the most west door that leads to into the building, take approximately 6 paces to the south, then two paces to the west. This is where your tripod and camera should be.Have the videographer position themselves behind the camera and angle the camera in a manner in which all four doors at entrance 2 can be seen through camera. Position female door opener inside the vestibule as if walking into the building. Have female door opener find an unsuspecting test subject (5 male and 5 female). After test subject has been spotted, the female door opener will need to position herself to open the door as the test subject is about to walk through it. Record results on chart in notebook. Steps 6-9 will need to be repeated 10 times (5 times for 5 males and 5 times for females)Observations: Our claim was correct. It was a sunny day and the temperature was in the mid 60’s. The test subjects were leaving school. Our door opener was a female in her early 30’s and was well groomed. Our female door opener received more verbal and non-verbal responses from male test subjects than our male door opener did. Many times, when our door female opener went to open the door, the person on the opposite side of the door would choose to go through a different door. Evidence: Response TypeMaleFemaleVerbal32Non-Verbal11No Response12Research:When you are entering a doorway with a steady crowd going in and out, you do not always take the time to realize what is going on around you. Some people seem to hurry through the door. Others hold the door for the people behind them, but is there some method to all of this madness? What causes people to respond to the door being opened for them? The answer is often gender. Statistically speaking, men are more likely to thank women for holding a door open and women are more likely to thank men (Allen, 1976). This may be due to gender-roles. It is no secret that a man is “supposed” to hold a door open for a lady, out of common courtesy (Anne, 2013). So what dictates whether or not someone responds? Our evidence shows that most people will respond with a verbal reaction, typically a “thank you”, to both men and women. That being said, we too found evidence supporting that the door-opener was more likely to get a response if it were the opposite sex walking through. According to a field experiment at the University of Arizona, men are twice as likely to hold open a door for a woman (Allen, 1976). Perhaps women recognize this tradition of men and gentleman-like behavior and find it more appropriate to thank them for it. In turn, they may not find it necessary to thank women for such acts as often. Men are also aware of this gentlemen-like duty and may be more likely to respond to a woman simply because it is more out of the ordinary.Another explanation may simply deal with appearance. A man’s response to a woman door opener and vice versa, may be dictated by attraction or how friendly the door opener presents them self. Some men hold doors open for women hoping to seem more attractive to them (Markman, 2011). Women may recognize this with a reply. In a study, men were six times more likely to respond verbally when a female door-opener was wearing “feminine clothing” (Allen, 2013). ReferencesAllen, P. C. (1976, June). Gender and the ritual of the door - Springer. Retrieved April 19, 2013, from , L. (2013, February 21). On Chivalry, Opening Doors, and Basic Humanity. Retrieved April 17, 2013, from , J. (2011, June 22). Door Holding Etiquette: Please Don’t Hold The Door. Arts & Entertainment. Retrieved from , R. (2009, July 13). When Texting Is Wrong. The New York Times. Retrieved from you Say “Thank You” if someone holds a door open for you? What do you do if someone doesn’t it to you? (2009). Retrieved from you say “thank you” to someone holding/opening the door for you? (2008). Retrieved from Polite Are We: Reader’s Digest 2006 Global Courtesy Test. (July 2006). Reader’s Digest. Retrieved from , Z. (2010-2012). A study of courteous behavior on the University of Texas campus. Digital Repository. Retrieved from , A. (2011, May 23). Why do you hold the door for others? | Psychology Today. Retrieved April 19, 2013, from Doors. (2006). Retrieved from don’t people say thank you anymore? (2006). Retrieved from ................
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