Ambience and Behavior

A new study supports the controversial claim that people can be morally swayed by the state of their surroundings.

Last month social scientists in the Netherlands empirically demonstrated a phenomenon observed by policymakers and law-enforcement officials for years: When an envelope visibly containing a five-euro note was left hanging out of a mailbox on a sidewalk, 13%of the passersby snatched it up. When the same mailbox was covered in graffiti, however, more than double the number of the pedestrians (about 27%) stole the envelope. Graffiti was not the only misdemeanor that fostered a cavalier attitude toward theft. When the ground near the mailbox was covered in litter, 25% of the subjects stole the envelope.

These results are significant for both social-behaviorial and statistical reasons. Is a disorderly environment responsible for disorderly conduct? Perhaps not in a direct manner, but we can be quite certain that the ambient environments in which humans make choices strongly influence subjective ethical evaluations.

Moreover, we might then also infer that it is our subconscious attitudes and aesthetic judgments cascading into our awareness subsequently influence our supposed ‘rational’ choices. Again, another argument for the co-determining complexity of bodily sensation, human thinking and emotion. In other words, Rationality is a mixed bag of intrapsychic and environment (contextual) activity.