Here’s a test of your philosophy of human nature.
A woman is making a video of her son, who is practicing skateboarding on a bike path. She quickly turns her camera to a near-by road, where an elderly lady is waiting to cross and a car has stopped to wait for her to do so. The driver apparently loses patience and honks loudly at her. Apparently irritated by the honking, as she passes, she bangs the front end of his car (an Audi convertible) very sharply with her purse. So sharply, indeed, that it causes the driver’s side airbag to deploy. At the end of the video, the driver is just starting to get out of his car.
You can watch the episode for yourself (and you might want to watch twice to pick up all the details) if you wish to do so. (The giggles you’ll hear are from the woman who’s taking the video, not from the principals.)
Here, finally, is the test:
What do you think is the first thing the driver is going to do after he gets out of the car?
1. Check the front of the car for damages.
2. Run up the path and apologize to the lady for his rudeness.
3. Run up the path and accost the lady for trying to damage his car.
Or, just to expand the options:
4. (1) and (2).
5. (1) and (3).
6. (1) and (3) and then proceed directly to Starbucks for yet another cuppa?
7. None of the above. Instead, he will [supply your own answer].
Monkey Cage readers, what say you? Leave your answer and explanation in the comments section.
UPDATE: Mea culpa. The convertible is definitely a Mercedes, as a couple of readers have commented.
[Hat tip to Maurice East for providing the wmv that prompted me to devise the test]
{ 19 comments }
7. Beat up the camerawoman?
it’s gotta be #6.
3, of course, with high marks for 7., “run to the camerawoman and secure a copy of the videotape for evidence in the subsequent lawsuit.”
And this seems so obvious that I don’t feel the need to provide an explanation. I don’t even know how to talk to people whose conceptions of human nature are different.
(The lawsuit being because getting the airbag put back in a car is expensive. I had a fender-bender a few years ago that cost five grand, most of it airbag-related.)
That has to be #1-related. Also, it’s a Mercedes, right?
This has to be a set-up. Airbags don’t just deploy like that. If they did the guy has a much better suit against MB than anybody else.
If she nailed it good and hard right on the sensor, it might. I kind of want to learn that, it would be an amusing thing to do to, e.g., parking enforcement cars. (Uh, not that I ever would.)
But whether someone who was, to all appearances, actually asleep in the road until the guy honked the first time would be able to deliver that kind of a blow is another question entirely.
7. Get out the car and ask the director if the scene was ok.
Interesting post, but the video apparently was a viral ad for Ikea.
Seriously? But no Ikea product or logo or anything else appears… how does this work exactly? Why can’t it be a viral ad for, say, McDonalds? Or Ford? Or the Paul Gowder for World Emperor campaign?
Why is this a test about human nature? What if you believe that there is no way to know what “human nature” is, since we are always simultaneously “natural” and “cultural”?
Lots of places online say it is an Ikea commercial, but I couldn’t find the version that (according to some of those sources) has the Ikea website in it.
Rosmar and a couple of others: If it’s an Ikea commercial, it’s a very strange commercial. But it really doesn’t matter for present purposes whether the incident is real or staged — it’s just stimulus material.
Rosmar: All I’m really asking for is a prediction about what the driver is going to do next. If you don’t want to think of that as a test of your sense of his predispositions given a certain stimulus or if you don’t think that such a predispostion reflects human nature because that idea carries too much baggage, fine. I’m still interested in what you predict he’ll do next. “There’s just no way to predict” presupposes far too random a notion of human behavior for my taste.
(1) and (2)
(1) Because he drives a Mercedes, wears a pink shirt and sunglasses;
(2) Because deep down he is a good boy who loves his mama;
I think “human nature” may allow any of 1-3, but given that the guy has already honked at an old lady crossing the street we know he is aggressive, short tempered, and confrontational. And afaik getting an Airbag in your face hurts, so now his adrenaline is flowing which is bound to make things work.
As for IKEA commercial – entirely plausible – have you watched some of them? They mainly do weird. And the sound from a video camera would be different – no way you would get such a nice ‘smack’ sound from a distance.
I agree with Sebastian. Human nature is variable and any of these is an option given circumstances and people, BUT we already know or can reasonably surmise from the man’s honking at an old lady and the airbag smack in his face that there is some adrenaline, impatience and irritability in the mix. #3. The old lady sounds like she might be itching for a fight, too.
I don’t care if it’s a fake or not. Pretty friggin funny if you ask me. I laughed out loud.
I would go with #1. The driver, revving the engine and honking, certainly comes across as pushy and in a hurry. However, after the airbag deploys he pauses — he is either surprised or he is reflecting on his behavior (perhaps both). Given the match-up, I would be surprised if Mr Personality went after the little old lady… I mean there is a camera capturing the whole affair. That is, I don’t necessarily see the presence of a camera as influential, but the interaction between the camera and the target of the driver’s aggression (i.e., the little old lady) leads me to predict that he only checks for damage.
5
I’m going with 1 followed by 3.
I have long wondered why we say “That’s just human nature” when accounting for a mean, acquisitive or otherwise shameful behaviour. All these meannesses are seen in other animals (though not with the attention to detail seen in humans.)
To my mind, “human nature” ought to cover behaviors unique to humans.
Noni
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