You know you have problems when you start seeing graphs out of people. While recently at the airport I was faced with the ever-tricky decision: which line to choose at security. At this point we're only lining up to have the officer look at our IDs/boarding passes and there are about 5 counters with security guards to choose from. However, it's often hard to tell how long the line really is as people are standing in odd positions/compacted together so sometimes a line that looks shorter has more people. Plus, when facing the crowd of people in lines head on, it's hard to tell from that angle which is the shortest. Fortunately for me, behavioral principles verified my visual approximations leading to a very short trip through security.
I warn you, what follows probably isn't disseminated into normal human language very well (I need to get better at this) so just follow what you can. Also, the theological aspect of this blog that will be in most other posts is missing- I just had to share this nugget of nerdiness.
Here's the nerdy part: The airport also has signs up indicating what type of traveler should go where, which I generally appreciate. The far left line says something like "family and unfamiliar travelers" and the rest of the lines say "casual traveler." At first I was inclined to the line at the far right. I believe this was for two-reasons, first because that line has a history of being paired with a sign that says "experienced travelers" (although it wasn't today) and even though that line has never been particularly faster to reinforce the behavior of going in it, there's some conditioned reinforcement going on in terms of verbal behavior simply because the sign says "experienced travelers" (I expect it to move faster and even if it didn't in the past, it seems likely that it could move faster than the other lines in the future). The other reason was that it was as far away from the "family" line as possible. In stimulus-discrimination/generalization gradients (graphs that show organisms' responses to a continuum of similar stimuli), when a certain stimulus- say the color blue or the family line was placed on extinction (the reinforcer of quick movement through a line or perhaps food was not provided- in the line case you could even say punished) organisms responded higher at the opposite end of the spectrum- far away from the extinguished stimulus even if a reinforcer was provided at a stimulus in the middle. So, on a continuum of color going from blue to green to yellow- blue being the stimulus that was extinguished (family line), green being the stimulus that was reinforced (not totally applicable in the line scenario) and yellow being the stimulus furthest from blue with no special consequence (the line furthest to the right where the "experienced traveler sign used to be), the highest responding was not at the green stimulus like you'd expect but leaning closer to the yellow (or the line furthest to the right that I was inclined to choose).
Thus, I presumed that other people, given their probable history with the experienced traveler sign and also inclination to avoid punishing stimuli or at least extinction (the family line) would line up further away from it. Thus, the shortest line would likely be the line that was still "casual traveler" but right next to the family line. Although the lines of people formed more of a bar graph, if you drew a line from the last person in each line and connected them, I swear you'd see something like the generalization gradient I described (although slightly different because you don't have a reinforced stimulus in the middle- had the experienced traveler sign been in the middle previously rather than to the far right, you would perhaps have seen a truer generalization gradient). I would have given you graphs for all of this but they're kind of complicated and ugly and I almost feel like they would lead to more confusion without a ton of annoying background explanation.
Long story short- even obscure behavioral principles can be seen in real life and, when choosing a line at the airport, the one next to the family line might be quickest. Of course, there are other variables involved on any given day so use your discretion.
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