Sex and the Single Armrest
For the next two weeks I'm going to be visiting relatives in Germany (with a brief stop in England). But thanks to the miracle of future-dating posts, I should be able to produce a trickle of posts while I'm gone. And, of course, I hope to be able to blog from Germany about all the weirdness I find there (I'm sure there'll be plenty of it).For my first future-dated post, I present you with "Sex and the Single Armrest" -- a 1982 study of "limited space and territorial behavior" during air travel (Psychological Reports, 51: 743-749). The question it posed was this: in a mixed-sex seating arrangement, who uses the common armrest more, men or women?
As you read this, I'm probably on a transatlantic flight, battling with someone for the armrest, so I thought it was an appropriate topic.
To find the answer, the researchers conducted "direct observation on 20 flights (occurring on a variety of weekdays, nights, and weekends) with a total of 852 people in mixed-sex seating arrangements."
The conclusion:
The over-all results of the observational study indicate that, even when controlling for size, males use the common airplane armrest three times more frequently than females do in mixed-sex seating arrangements. Conclusions are supported by information from interviews in which twice as many males said they used the armrest. The younger males and females indicated much stronger feelings toward armrest use than the older people interviewed, especially the younger-than-40 males. A stewardess indicated that she felt these findings were accurate. During many flights, she has observed that men become much more aggressive about seating than women do; she has even seen some near fist fights by men.
Doesn't surprise me at all.
Category: Science, Psychology, Travel, Gender