Transcript Well Dressed vs. Poorly Dressed

Who will be helped first?
By: Harvey & Sunny

Our experiment consisted of two people going into the same
store, one after the other. One was wearing beaten up clothes
like old sweatpants, a t shirt, gloves and torn up shoes. The
other was wearing dress pants, a dress shirt, a belt, and dress
shoes. They would enter a certain store one by one record
how long it took for the workers to help them people and
how they were treated.

Our hypothesis was that the poorly dressed person would be
helped first. We predicted that the workers would expect the
poorly dressed person to steal something so they would help
them first but treat them badly. The well dressed person
would be helped quickly and with a positive attitude. The
experiment was designed to test how judgmental people are.

We visited many stores such as Le chateau, American Eagle,
Zumiez, Bench etc. The experiment went quite smoothly
however if the poorly dressed man could have worn older
clothes we would have gotten better results. The variables
included style of store as well. Skater stores would obviously
treat the more casual clothed man better while high end
stores would do the opposite.

After testing many stores we observed that the poorly
dressed man was not helped at all but rather watched
carefully. Workers would always keep and eye on him and
make sure he knew he was being watched. This happened at
the majority of stores. As for the well dressed man he was
treated very nicely and respectfully, getting help in under a
minute.
Times Helped (10 stores total)
10
8
Times Helped
6
(10 stores
4
total)
2
0
Dressed Up
Slob

Based on out results we found out that people are very
judgmental. Instead of talking to the person they just looked
at the way he was dressed and made a decision what kind of
person they are. For the poorly dressed person they thought
he was a thief and for the well dressed person they thought
of him as a rich person with good morals and beliefs.

No, our experiment did not back up our experiment. We
thought that the poorly dressed man would be helped first
however he was not helped at all. We were not too surprised
at the results because we expected the workers to be
alarmed. However, we did not expect that he would not be
helped at all in so many places (only 2/10)