A better person

“Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.” – Thomas Jefferson

For this June 1^st Wednesday wellness email, I invite you to consider some studies reported in a Scientific American online article “How the Illusion of Being Observed Can Make You a Better Person” –

“A group of scientists at Newcastle University, headed by Melissa Bateson and Daniel Nettle of the Center for Behavior and Evolution, conducted a field experiment demonstrating that merely hanging up posters of staring human eyes is enough to significantly change people’s behavior. Over the course of 32 days, the scientists spent many hours recording customer’s “littering behavior” in their university’s main cafeteria, counting the number of people that cleaned up after themselves after they had finished their meals. In their study, the researchers determined the effect of the eyes on individual behavior by controlling for several conditions (e.g. posters with a corresponding verbal text, without any text, male versus female faces, posters of something unrelated like flowers, etc). The posters were hung at eye-level and every day the location of each poster was randomly determined. The researchers found that during periods when the posters of eyes, instead of flowers, overlooked the diners, twice as many people cleaned up after themselves…

While the researchers have convincingly illustrated that displaying a mere image of human eyes is sufficient to actually alter real-life social behavior, the real question is how. Humans (and other animals) have a dedicated neural architecture for detecting facial features, including the presence of eyes…

Experiments have shown that people are unable to inhibit responses to gaze even when instructed to…neural activation of the gaze detection system is fast and automatic…

Robyn Dawes and colleagues showed in the 70s that the presence of other people in the room tends to have a positive effect on people’s decision-making when faced with a social dilemma. Yet, it wasn’t until a few years ago that Terence Burnham and Brian Hare published an article in Human Nature that showed people make more cooperative choices in economic computer games when they are “watched” on the screen by a robot with human-like eyes.”

What has your experience shown? Any change in course of action when being observed? These studies indicated an increase in cleaning up, helping socially, cooperating. What do you think: do we have a better sense of the greater good when we are watched by others? Might we even go so far as to say that we’re wired for community: as in made to care about and for one another?

I’ve had a tendency to do the right thing, but too often for the wrong reason - such as quieting my bully ego that wants to be thought well of, rather than simply ‘bettering’ the world by sharing some love. [An aside: my experience and others' research indicates that serving/caring/considering another is good for both the giver and receiver.]

These studies remind me that I’d like to more often do good things for good reasons – to love much whether I’m being observed or not. Want to join me in aiming to love well, even when no one is watching?

"Courage is doing without witnesses that which we would be capable of doing before everyone." - Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” – Colossians 3:23-24