Social Loafing In Restaurants

I work at a fine dining restaurant that just opened up in Georgetown and our main goal of the restaurant is superb service. When the restaurant (Silver and Stone) first opened we worked in service teams of three or more. These teams would serve about seven or eight tables together and the tips would be dispersed appropriately. It ended up that service was good but not great. Also, the individuals were not making as much money as they should. We wanted service to be a little better and for the servers to make a little more money so we tried individual service with only about four tables each. It turned out that service quality greatly increased after this switch and it was because of social loafing. Social loafing is where individuals do not work as hard in a group compared to as when they are working alone. This was demonstrated by Alan Ingham and his associates (1974) when they asked participants to pull on a rope blindfolded. When they thought they were pulling alone, they pulled 20% harder than when they thought they were pulling with a group. This was demonstrated at my restaurant because service quality and tip percentage went up when we switched to individual service compared to team service. I remember when we were working in teams, I would not pay as much attention to my tables because I always assumed that some other member of my team would refill the water, or pre-bus the table. Now that I know all the responsibility is on me, I am much more efficient and feel like I have much more control over my tables. Not to mention I can be much more personable at my tables now which always wins people over and helps with tips.

Ingham, A., G., Levinger, G., Graves, J., & Peckman, V. (1974). The Ringleman effect: Studies of group size and group performance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 10, 371-384.

Demonstration of Obedience: Pledgeship

Obedience is defined as yielding to a direct request from someone in a position of power. Obedience is used everyday by employers, parents, teachers, coaches, etc. Obedience is a tool that must be enforced to keep order. For example, if a coach does not have control over his or her team and they do not obey him or her, the coach will not be able to successfully convey the skills and organization that he or she wants for the team to succeed. Sometimes, people will obey others who are complete strangers as shown in Bickman (1974) where he went around asking random passersby to do unusual tasks. In this scenario 33% of people followed his orders when he was wearing normal street clothes, but over 90% followed his orders when he wore a security guards uniform. This shows that obviously people are more likely to obey authority than a random person. This was shown in an even more extreme sense when Milgram (1974) used obedience to make subjects have the impression of inflicting pain on another subject. At this time the authority figure was simply the experimenter who was running it and there was no conveyed penalty for not obeying him. However, many people still obeyed the experimenter's requests to keep on shocking the other subject simply because he asked them to.
The type of obedience I am demonstrating in this blog is that of a pledge to an active fraternity member. It is almost an unwritten rule that pledges need to obey active's requests when they are going through pledgeship. We as actives use this to keep the pledges in order and for them to successfully get accomplished what needs to be done. This needs to be somewhat strict because if one pledge gets out of line, it may start a domino effects that leads to others not obeying, and they will not learn what it means to be a true member of that fraternity. When I say obedience in this sense however, I am not talking about hazing. You will see in my video clip, that requests as simple as "get my breakfast" are obeyed without any hesitation because it does not cause harm to the pledge, it does not make him uncomfortable or embarrassed, and he is not doing anything that he is unwilling to do. In my fraternity I am a ranking officer and a senior, therefore I am in a position of authority not only over the pledges but also over some of my younger brothers. I am in a special authority position over the pledges because I am the pledge educator. My position is to lead the pledges through pledgeship and make sure that the actives are not hard on them. All actives must tell me about the requests they make of the pledges and I have to approve before it happens. This keeps hazing under control and also helps me control the flow of pledgeship. Therefore, even though I only met these pledges a few months ago they know about my position of authority.
Obedience is something that also can not be taking for granted. We have noticed in the past, that if there is too much demanding of the pledges, they will sometimes give up and drop out. Therefore, the level of obedience must be regulated and controlled. That is my job. In my video clip, I planned to meet one of my pledges for breakfast in the commons. When I met him there, I walked past the trays and simply asked if he could get one for me. Without hesitation or thinking about his own breakfast, he grabbed me a tray and followed me and got what I wanted for breakfast. I asked him nicely and was not forceful because I want to keep his respect. After he got me breakfast he goes on to say that he had no problem following my somewhat random request not matter what the reasons were. For all he knew I was just being lazy and did not feel like grabbing a tray. He then says that he was happy to comply because it was not too much to ask. This tells me that obedience has limits as well, and I would not expect him to obey to a request that was too outside the norm, or one that would cause him harm or embarrassment. Our pledges do not have a problem obeying to simple requests from me or other actives because they know that everything they do it for a reason. They are trying to prove themselves to this fraternity and learn our core values and what it means to be a brother. It is amazing how powerful this influence can be. I have heard stories of pledges doing outrageous things just because they wanted to become a member of a group, and they say they enjoy doing them. This is not the way we handle our pledgeship because that is not what our fraternity is about. Another example is the video clip on the marines that we watched. Those guys went through immense pain simply because they wanted to be apart of a club. The power of obedience is amazing as shown by Milgram (1974) and Bickman (1974). This can be a good thing or a bad thing if it is used inappropriately. It can be good in the sense of our fraternity for example, because these pledges will learn the core values of our brotherhood and will be able to relay those values to future generations of pledges. That is how fraternities survive. However, it can be bad when power is abused. A few years ago at University of Texas there was a pledge who was forced to drink until he got too drunk and fell off a balcony to his death. This is an example of how the power of obedience can be abused. Power should be used responsibly because people are very susceptible to obey others, especially when the other is in some form of authority.


Bickman, L. (1974). The social power of a uniform. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 4, 47-61.
Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York: Harper & Row.


Here is another example of obedience. Our pledge is introducing himself to a young lady, which emphasizes one our core values: being a gentleman.

The Sleeper Effect: A Reason for Lost Tips

My co-workers and I recently experienced the sleeper effect in how we are conducting tip distribution in a new restaurant that just opened. The sleeper effect was shown by Hovland and Weiss (1951) when they found that attitudes that come from a non-credible source increase over time. It is the tendency to remember the content of the message but forget that the source was non-credible (Pratkanis et al., 1988). Anyways, there is a cook who works in the kitchen (I will call him George) and is one of the owner's best friends. He is the guy who jokes about anything and everything and makes everyone laugh. The first day of training the manager told us never to take anything George says seriously. However, one of his early jokes caused the employees much confusion once the store opened. As a restaurant all the waiters pull tips so everyone who is at the same level (server 1, 2, or 3) should get the same amount of money on a given night, and all the tips are put on the paycheck at the end of the week. This makes sure everything is claimed and nobody gets in trouble with the IRS, and also it helps the whole restaurant work together as a team. So server 1 makes the most percentage and gets the highest hourly and server 2 gets the second highest and so on and so on. George started a rumor early on in training that all server 1's get 100% of cash tips and we should just pocket it and take it home. At first, we all knew that it was George and we should run it by the manager before actually taking him seriously. However, it slipped our minds and come opening night there were three server 1's on the floor, myself included. At the end of the night each of us had one table pay with cash each and we had the idea in our heads that the cash tips were ours because we had apparently forgotten who had told us this. So we pocketed the cash tips and left for the night we some money in our pockets. The next day at work all three of us were brought into the manager's office and on the desk was the server's manual that had in big bold letters "POCKETING CASH TIPS RESULTS IN IMMEDIATE TERMINATION!" We were all shocked and couldn't think to believe why we thought it was alright to take the cash home, until finally, my co-worker said that George had told us that. Then, it all clicked, we all immediately remembered George telling us and realised it was just a joke gone wrong. So we ended up paying back the cash and we were not penalized for the misunderstanding. However, this is one example that shows that the sleeper effect can cause problems in society, and everyone should always check their sources.

Hovland, C. I., & Weiss, W. (1951). The influence on source credibility on communication
effectiveness. Public Opinion Quarterly, 15, 635-650.

Pratkanis, A. R., Greenwald, A. G., Leippe, M. R., & Baumgardner, M. H. (1988). In search of
reliable persuasion effects: III. The sleeper effect is dead. Long live the sleeper effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 203-218.

College: An Enemy of Repulicans

It is now widely known that people with more education and have been to college tend to be more liberal. This was shown in the classic study by Theodore Newcomb (1943) where he surveyed women and Bennington College in Vermont on their political affiliation. The results showed that the women were more liberal as they advanced in college. I had not realized it really until I started reading about this but college has made me much more liberal as well. I was born in a conservative family and conservatism is definitely in my genes. Attitudes were shown to be genetic by Abraham Tesser (1993) and his identical twins studies. It turns out that identical twins who have been raised apart will have similar attitudes. So, I was a big Bush fan in high school and so were (are) my parents and grandparents. However, since I have been to Southwestern I have taken a few classes on social diversity and have made friends who have different views than what I grew up with. For example, I dated a girl not too long ago who is very liberal. She was constantly watching debates and monitoring the economy. She also was a big Obama fan. I ended watching CSPAN with her often and we discussed politics (which is something I never used to enjoy). I knew from the beginning that I favored Obama, which was weird because if I was in high school I am sure I would be voting for McCain. Anyways, my support for Obama grew greatly just by hanging out with ex and her liberal friends. It was the first time I had really hung out with that kind of crowd on a daily basis but I started to feel very comfortable around them and eventually enjoyed hanging out with them just as much as I enjoyed hanging out with my regular conservative friends. College has given me the opportunity to meet more people and take courses that open my eyes and keep me from being narrow minded. I think this is the reason why I have had a political slide from right to left and is also the reason why I think more educated people become more liberal. So I am a good case study that supports the findings of the Bennington College study (Newcomb, 1943) and I will be voting for Obama, the democratic nominee, despite my background and genetics.

Newcomb, T. M. (1943). Personality and social change: Attitude formation in a student
community. Ft. Worth, TX: Dryden Press.

Tesser, A. (1993). The importance of heritability in psychological research: The case of
attitudes. Psycholigical Review, 100, 129-142.

My IAT Tests

I took both the sexuality and the age IAT tests. On the sexuality test my results were that I had a strong preference for straight people than gay people. This is somewhat consistent with my concsious awareness of the subject in that I know I do have a preference for straight people, just because I grew up in a high school where being called "gay" was the worste insult and people who truly were homosexual were not accepted. However, I would not call my preference "strong." Since I came to Southwestern I have met many gay people and feel perfectly comfortable around them. I think the results are showing my inhibited attitude that I have been trying to change. I was fully aware of this preference in high school but am not so much anymore. I probably obtained these results because of my childhood and I spent alot more time in that community than I have at Southwestern where it is much more liberal. Then I saw the results from others who have taken the test and the majority are in the same category as I was. I did not think that today that would be true, that people still have strong preferences for gay people than straight people. Personally, this is a trait about me that I would like to change, so maybe next time I take this test, my results may be slightly different.

The second test I took, age, showed me that I had a strong preference for young people rather than old. I knew this was true and am very conscious about it. I have worked in fine dining for a few years now and have had to deal with grumpy old people who do not tip. They want everything to be perfect and gripe over the smallest little things. Having to deal with this as long as I have, I am fully aware of my preference for young people. Also, young people are the people I hang out with everyday. Even at my new job, the managers are all younger and I feel much more comfortable there. In my old jobs I would feel less comfortable with older employees than younger even if I had known the older employees longer. I also have a different definition of "old." For example, if a 30 year old is hanging out with us 20 year old and is cracking jokes, acting a little immature, and is having a good time with us, I will feel comfortable with him like a would a young person. On the other hand, if a younger person has a lot of authority and is acting very mature and traditional, I would feel less comfortable with that person. This test has made me aware of how age can effect the way people treat or feel around people of different ages.

I took the sexuality test again and I tried so hard to make it be neutral. I really did think I went just as fast and just as correct with all the situations, but I STILL had a strong preference for straight people. This makes me think that this test is pretty valid, and I actually do have a strong preference for straight people even though I don't really see it. However, like I said before I can believe it because of my background.

Fundamental Attribution Error in a Bar

I recently fell victim to the fundamental attribution error (Kassin, Fein, & Markus, 2008) in my job as a bar tender. When people commit this social phenomenon they blame bad or unexpected situations on the person or persons who it is happening to and disregard circumstantial or situational effects. So I was bar tending this past Monday night at a local bar here in Georgetown, and the Cowboys were playing the Eagles, which was supposed to be a good game. It was busy all night because it actually was a very good game and people like to drink while they watch their football games. When I get busy behind the bad I get very cognitively loaded because I am thinking about so many things at once. It was towards the end of the game and I had been on my feet running around the bar for more than a couple hours and I hear a scream and some commotion in front of the bar. Someone had vomited all over himself and on the floor. I was grossed out but knew I had to control the situation. I got the bus boy to clean it and up and the guy went to his car to get a new shirt. I was still busy with other customers when the same guy came and asked me for another beer. I immediately told him that he was cut off and it would be irresponsible for me to serve him another drink. In my head I was thinking to myself that he was an irresponsible drunk who could not control his alcohol and therefore, I was not going to continue serving him. In the state of Texas under TABC law I have the right to refuse service for anyone and it is actually illegal for me to serve an intoxicated person. However, I was blaming the event on the person and did not think about the situational factors that came into play. The guy ended up leaving pretty angry. Later I after the game was over and everything was calming down the guys friends approached me and told me what had happened. It turns out that this guy was not drunk but actually threw up because his friends had pressured him to take a shot of our house tequila. Our well tequila is actually very hard to take shots of because it goes down very rough. This guy had taken the shot wrong and some of the nasty tequila got caught in his throat which promoted a gag reflex and caused him to throw it up. His friends said that it was only the second drink he had all night. This is an example of the fundamental attribution error because I ignored the situational circumstances (him being sober and getting the shot caught in his throat) and only focused on the personal attributes which I assumed (that he was a drunk who did not know his limits). It is also possible that if I would not have been so busy and therefore cognitively loaded, I would have slowed down and asked what had happened and maybe realized that it was not him being irresponsible and let him stay and have a few more beers. I ended up feeling pretty bad about jumping to conclusions but in the bar tending industry sometimes one has to make snap judgements and it just so happens that this time, I was a little too harsh.

Kassin, S., Fein, S., Markus, H. R. (2008). Social Psychology. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 107 - 110.

The "Hot Hand" Effect In Poker

Before I read the article by Gilovich, I have been noticing the hot hand effect (Gilovich, 1991) in Texas hold'em, a popular poker game. I play every week at a local bar in a free tournament where the winner gets a cash prize. I have also been playing the game at with my friends for years. In texas hold'em everyone is dealt two cards and then can use five community cards to form the best five card hand. The two cards that people are dealt and the five community cards are completely random every hand even though it may not seem so. It always seems that people will catch good cards in streaks, similar to a player in veagas rolling good dice over and over again at a craps table. On the other hand, it is also the case where it seems that people will catch bad cards all at once also. I took research methods and I know that everything is completley random and having good and bad cards is simply good or bad luck. However, when I am sitting at a poker table and the player across from me is continually getting good hands and I have to repeadely fold my hand because it is not strong enough, it gets harder and harder to beleive it is simply dumb luck. Eventually, I will play a bad hand and most likely loose money simply becuase I am getting frusterated and bored. These feelings I beleive are a direct result of the hot hand effect. Even though it is proven not to be true, and I know that it can't be the case that the universe is picking me to have bad cards and for the other guy to have good cards, I just find my self trying to find someone or something to blame for my bad luck. Last week was an excellent example of this. I was playing at table with a group of people, and there was one guy who was winning all the pots. In poker there are two ways to win a pot, either be really good at the actual game, or to just have really good luck. This guy was not very skilled, but still winning everything. I sat there folding my hand over and over again while I watched this other guy get good cards almost everytime and also would hit good cards in the community cards to go with the cards in his hand. At the end of an hour i had not played one hand and had almost blinded myself out of the game (that means betting the minimum bet everytime I have to), but the other guy had almost kicked everyone out by winning their money with many good hands. I know he was getting lucky because I have played with him before and he is not a very good player. I eventually played a hand that was not very good, because that was all I could get, and lost feeling very discouraged and puzzled at what I had just experienced. This just shows that even though the hot hand effect is not a real effect, I can see how easy it is for people like very knowledgeable basketball coaches to strongly beleive in it.

Gilovich, T. (1991). Something out of nothing: The misperception and misrepresentation of random data. How we Know What isn't so: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life, The Free Press, 9-21.