Behavioral engineering

It is always fascination to see how people will react to certain changes. In my case, it was people walking through the covered doorway to the apartment. Normally I would not be bothered, however there is a window there as well, so it is a huge loss of privacy. So my first attempt was to forge a side path, sadly it was nowhere near as convenient as the straight shot that was already there, so almost no one used it. Quite frankly I would not have either, so it was no surprise.

Thus, next was to cover the path to force them away. However I had to plan it carefully as if not done correctly it would simply be removed, or even worse get a large number of student angry. So step one was to change with out anyone noticing. This would leave the least impact and the confusion with the change would drive people away instead of taking action. Next was to make the pile just big enough that it would not be easy destroyed, but not large enough to show it was put there on purpose, physical plant was shoveling off roofs, and this would nicely blend in with that reality. So an early saturday morning shoveling some of the snow off the roof accomplished this nicely. Plus I made the side path the most visible choice to limit remembering that the other path was there.

All that was working against my carefully set changes was force of habit, which would be a big factor, people do not like change and depending on how I set this up, could get annoyed enough to remove the change, luckily I have laziness on my side, and with the side path available, I suspected that it would win out in the majority of people.

So my experiment was let to these possible and expected results...
1. People go the long way instead to avoid
2. People go the shot but not as convent side path I made.
3. People destroy the wall and go through anyways.

I expected 2 most of the time and eventually 3 to happen, however the worst that happened was simply a person climbing over it. I was quite surprised my wall survived, however it makes sense, as people are prone to laziness, so instead of taking time to destroy a large pile of snow and putting the effort in making the path again, resulting in the cost of wet and cold, people simple gave up and walked around. I was happy with the results and no one wrecked my wall, plus I rarely get a chance to test out social behavioral theories on so may people so I was excited either way.

It funny how with a little observing, planing and research you can easy change the way people will make decisions and shape how people interact around you.

UPDATE
Scratch that... two drunk girls destroyed my predictions, but lost a shoe! Argh.. outliers, that was not expected, I figured it would be guys.