First Impression Post

For the first impression post I selected option 2 with the Mythbusters to analyze the myth question of “Do waitresses get bigger tips when they have bigger breasts?”

During the video it had one woman wear three different sized bras to see if she would receive more tips as the size of her breasts increased. The experiment had the same woman wear the same outfit and arrive at the coffee shop at the same time of day for three days in a row with the same quality of service in each day. Based off of this experiment they kept several constants and the only change was the bra size in order to answer the question, do larger breasts equal larger tips?

The video accurately answered the question based off of the responses from the increased amount of tips received as the breast size increased. It had several different controlled variables which is necessary in order to find the outcome of a question. The constants included the customer service, outfit, person, and time in the same coffee shop.

The weaknesses surrounding the video assumed men would be the main contributor to the tips as the breast size increased. Not only would they be the ones focusing on in the study as demonstrated in the video, but one can infer that the Mythbusters assumed that men make more money in comparison to women as they were the larger ones focused on being able to tip. The issues surrounding this experiment implies that every man that walks into the coffee shop at the time this woman is working is a straight male. In January of 2017 there was an estimated of 10 million people who identified in the LGBTQ+ population and to assume every single man is going to tip solely based off of the breast size of a white female with larger breasts is impossible to know their motive. This is an inaccurate conclusion from this study and impossible to conclude that the reason they are tipping is because of the size of breasts and not because of other possible reasons. It not only assumes all men are straight but that all women who walked into the coffee shop at the time she worked are only lesbian or bisexual and attracted to her breasts, causing them to tip more.

Based off of the study it showed that women tipped 40% more with larger breast size whereas men tipped 30% more. This could lead to the question as to whether women tip more in general in comparison to men? Do women and men still tip regardless of the cashier? In order to conclude to whether or not breast size increased the tips, it would be necessary to answer the question of “Do women tip more than men?” along with “Do women and men still tip regardless of the cashier?” which could then have this draw the conclusion as to whether the breast size increased equated to more tips. Lastly, I find this study to be weak as they had three different days which accumulate different customers based off of the time of the week (different people will most likely come on Saturday than on a Monday). Not only this but if large breasts were the sole contributor of whether tips increase than the service of the cashier should be bad in order to focus on the why they are tipping more. In my opinion, if they tested every Monday at 12pm for one hour with low-effort service and still increased tips as the breast size increased, it would have a more accurate results from a more controlled experiment.

4 thoughts on “First Impression Post

  1. I definitely agree with your first impression post. This video was actually the other one I wanted to react to for the assignment, and you addressed many of the reasons why it originally seemed interesting to me. In addition to the strengths of the experiment you mentioned, I would also give credit to the researchers for acknowledging women who tipped more as well, since the main focus was initially the impact it would have on male customers. I love how you included statistical information regarding the number of men who would not necessarily have a positive response to women with large breasts. This note about the immense group of people who are part of the LGBTQ community definitely added support to your claims about the weaknesses of the experiment. There were several assumptions made throughout this process that focused solely on the biological perspective of psychology. Evolutionary psychology relies heavily on mate selection, which was seen in this experiment as the researchers concluded that many males were returning to their primal instincts of reproductive capabilities, specifically with larger breasted women. This experiment also used behaviorist psychology to observe the men who stared a little too long at the woman in the study, or perhaps seemed more enthusiastic when ordering coffee and depositing a generous tip. I completely agree with you that there needed to be more firmly established controls within the experiment. It is possible that the larger tips were a result of the day they performed the study, or the customer service as you said. Great post, I really enjoyed reading all that you wrote!

    Like

    1. Good job connecting the study in the video with the different theoretical lenses in psychology from the chapter. One place you could incorporate more terminology from the chapter would be describing the aspects of the study itself. For example, pointing out that the sexual orientation of the customers and the day of the week are potential confounding variables (something that is not accounted for in the design of the study but may be affecting the outcome).

      Like

  2. Your post on the Mythbusters clip is very enjoyable. I agree with the points about experiment assuming men make more money than woman and that every man was straight because these are important factors that would greatly influence the results. The assumptions are something they should have tried to look over when trying to come up with their results. If they had gone over their results with the behavioral genetics perspective and the behavioral perspective, then they could have understood a few more things. It seems they could have done a better job at trying to analyze the behavioral perspective and psycholinguistics. With the behavioral perspective the Mythbusters would have figured out if this is a natural response from the genetics at play or if the out come can be altered by being taught from a young age that how a person looks shouldn’t be a reason to treat them differently than other people. If they were to use psycholinguistics of the subjects in the test, then maybe they would have learned they were only giving her bigger tips because she has a nice personality rather than because she has big breasts.

    Like

    1. I appreciate the way you tied the different theoretical lenses of psychology into your refinement post. I would have liked to see you incorporate some of the terminology about research design into the post as well. For example, your idea about using psycholinguistics seems to be about trying to rule out another possible explanation for the results. In other words, you are trying to account for a confounding variable in the original design. You could also have identified the IV/DV of the study or discussed the sampling procedure used.

      Like

Leave a comment