The title of today’s post could easily be yesterday’s: “Commitment to the Bit.” Because what I find most fascinating about the field of hitchhiker studies is the effort that its practitioners pour into gathering data. I don’t know many social scientists who would throw themselves into their work quite like the authors of “WHO PICKS UP WHOM: The Fleeting Encounter Between Motorist & Hitchhiker”:
In order to test the similarity-attraction assumptions of balance theory (Layton and Insko, 1974; Touhey, 1974; Stephen, 1973) the senior author assumed the role of a hitchhiker. The independent variable was manipulated by changing the researcher’s appearance, a technique employed by Gelfand, et al. (1973) in the study of individual reactions to shoplifters in various modes of dress. In the first phase an effort was made to communicate to the approaching motorist the image of non-conventionality by dressing in sandals, tie-dyed T-shirt, grubby work pants, and a railroad engineer’s cap. The hitchhiker was unshaven, with shoulder length hair, and carried a canteen, sleeping bag, and backpack. Forty rides were obtained in this longhair phase.
During the second phase of the research the hitchhiker altered his appearance to that of a conventional “straight” by dressing in slacks, sportshirt and/or sweater, loafers and being clean shaven with moderately short hair. In this context the hiker carried a small athletic bag and a windbreaker jacket. Thirty-five rides were obtained during the short hair phase.
Also recommended: A far more recent paper on whether hitchhikers can improve their odds by holding flowers. The answer is unsurprising, but once again the description of the experimental design is worth the price of admission; I long to get stuck into my work to such a marvelous degree.
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