Interesting name for a book, but it contains even more interesting content. As a psychologist, I can’t help but take the content seriously – surely, this is just social psychology. But some of the work covered in this book covers emphasises the bizarre nature of human behaviour, hence the name of the book. I love the way it is written - it makes the material easy to read and intensely compelling.Some of the psychology studies covered appear in other works (including Blink and The myths of Innovation), so maybe the work isn't that quirky after all!
The work I am most intrigued by is that of Stanley Milgram. I am ignoring the work that he is famous for (around obedience and authority) and am just impressed with his innovative research methods. The one that sticks in my mind is the "envelope dropping" experiments where researchers would drop envelopes in the street that were already addressed and had a postage stamp. Half the envelopes would be addressed to one party and half to another. The researchers would then record how many of the envelopes were picked up by passers-by and posted. Invariably, the return rates were dependent on the addressee on the envelope. Using this method, Milgram could detect differences in political voting behaviour. The technique was later adapted to determine the friendliest towns by dropping envelopes in major cities across the US and measuring the return rates. So this is an ingenious way to infer what people are thinking by interpreting their behaviour rather than asking them the question outright.
This spurned a whole series of experiments including stalling cars at traffic lights and measuring how long it would be before someone hooted their horn. If you do this from country to country, you can identify the most impatient country in the world. Although bizarrely, the researchers found that the length of time was dependent on the nationality of the driver.
I wonder if it is possible to conduct this sort of social research online? A sort of "virtual envelope drop" experiment. It must be easier to do this stuff online. Anyone seen anything like this?
BTW, the quirkology website is well worth exploring. Do take a look at the videos.
