The Misconception: All buttons placed around you do your bidding.
The Truth: Many public buttons are only there to comfort you.
You press the doorbell button, you hear the doorbell ring. You press the elevator button, it lights up. You press the button on the vending machine, a soft drink comes rattling down the chute.
Your whole life, you’ve pressed buttons and been rewarded. It’s conditioning at its simplest – just like a rat pressing a lever to get a pellet of food.
The thing about buttons though is there seems to be some invisible magic taking place between the moment you press them down and when you get the expected result. You can never really be sure you caused the soft drink to appear without opening up the vending machine to see how it works.
Maybe there’s a man inside who pulls out the can of soda and puts it in the chute. Maybe there’s a camera watching the machine, and someone in a distant control room tells the machine to dispense your pop.
You just don’t know, and that’s how conditioning works. As long as you get the result you were looking for after you press the button, it doesn’t matter. You will be more likely to press the button in the future (or less likely to stop).
The problem here is that some buttons in modern life don’t actually do anything at all. The magic between the button press and the result you want is all in your head. You never catch on – because you are not so smart.
According to a 2008 article in the New Yorker, close buttons don’t close the elevator doors in many elevators built in the United States since the 1990s. In some elevators the button is there for workers and emergency personnel to use, and it only works with a key. The key-only settings isn’t always active though, as the blog Design with Intent asserts. Each elevator is different. In some, the emergency function requires a long-press of several seconds longer than the average user attempts. The website, The Straight Dope, investigated the issue in 1986 by asking elevator companies and elevator repairmen directly. According to their investigation, “The grim truth is that a significant percentage of the close-door buttons in this world…don’t do anything at all.” The reasons cited were that the button was never wired up, or that it was set to a delay, or was deactivated by the owner, or it broke long ago and no one ever complained because the doors eventually close whether or not you press the buttons. More recently, fire personnel
If you happen to find yourself pressing a non-functional close-door button, and later the doors close, you’ll probably never notice because a little spurt of happiness will cascade through your brain once you see what you believe is a response to your action. Your behavior was just reinforced. You will keep pressing the button in the future.
Non-functioning mechanisms like this that motivate you to fool yourself are called placebo buttons, and they’re everywhere.
Computers and timers now control the lights at many intersections, but at one time little buttons at crosswalks allowed people to trigger the signal change. Those buttons are mostly all disabled now, but the task of replacing or removing all of them was so great most cities just left them up. You still press them though, because the light eventually changes.
In an investigation by ABC news in 2010, only one functioning crosswalk button could be found in Austin, Texas; Gainsville, Fla.; and Syracuse, NY.
The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on, according to city Department of Transportation officials. More than 2,500 of the 3,250 walk buttons that still exist function essentially as mechanical placebos, city figures show. Any benefit from them is only imagined.
- New York Times, 2004
In many offices and cubicle farms, the thermostat on the wall isn’t connected to anything. Landlords, engineers and HVAC specialists have installed dummy thermostats for decades to keep people from costing companies money by constantly adjusting the temperature. According to a 2003 article in the Wall Street Journal, one HVAC specialist surmises 90 percent of all office thermostats are fake (others say it’s more like 2 percent). Some companies even install noise generators to complete the illusion after you turn the knob.
In a survey conducted in 2003 by the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration News, 72 percent of respondents admitted to installing dummy thermostats.
“We had an employee that always complained of being hot,” recalls Greg Perakes, an HVACR instructor in Tennessee. “Our solution was to install a pneumatic thermostat. We ran the main air line to it inside of an enclosed I-beam. Then we just attached a short piece of tubing to the branch outlet (terminating inside the I-beam without being attached to any valves, etc.).”
The worker “could adjust her own temperature whenever she felt the need,” Perakes says, “thus enabling her to work more and complain less. When she heard the hissing air coming from inside the I-beam, she felt in control. We never heard another word about the situation from her again. Case solved.”
- The Air-Conditioning, Heating & Refrigeration News, Mar. 27, 2003
Placebo buttons are a lot like superstitions, or ancient rituals. You do something in the hopes of an outcome – if you get the outcome, you keep the superstition.
Dancing to bring the rain, sacrificing a goat to get the sun to rise – it turns out these are a lot like pressing the button at the crosswalk over and over again.
Your brain doesn’t like randomness, and so it tries to connect a cause to every effect; when it can’t, you make one up.
You Are Not So Smart – The Book
If you buy one book this year…well, I suppose you should get something you’ve had your eye on for a while. But, if you buy two or more books this year, might I recommend one of them be a celebration of self delusion? Give the gift of humility (to yourself or someone else you love). Watch the trailer.
Order now: Amazon - Barnes and Noble – iTunes - Books A Million
Links:
NYT article on crosswalk buttons
Article on fake thermostats in The Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration News
Testimonial from HVAC worker who installs fake thermostats
Design with Intent – Elevator Close Buttons
WSJ article on dummy thermostats
Radio Boston article on non-functioning crosswalk buttons
ABC News Story on Placebo Buttons
The Straight Dope on Elevator Close Buttons
Stupid ameicans. You are not so smart stupid ameicans. I am smart you stupid.
i push the button because sometimes the food pellet comes out.
The crossing buttons in New York might be faked, but New York, and London among other megacities, are different from most towns.
There’s no point in a crossing displaying “WALK” or the Green Man symbol, if nobody wants to cross. It would, cumulatively, cause millions of hours of wasted driving time. For every crossing I’ve ever paid attention to, the button tells the computer that somebody wishes to cross, and the computer then waits for the right conditions on the traffic lights it controls, and turns them red when appropriate. Typically a few seconds, I suppose they’re programmed to “think” in repeating cycles that last maybe 30 seconds.
In New York, it’s likely many crossings are ALWAYS in use, or often enough at least, to be worth using placebo buttons. So in that case transport designers (there are people who’s job is to study traffic flow, and optimise signals accordingly) would put in the timings that give the best throughput, with the buttons mostly not needed.
In London and Manchester town centres, I’m pleased to say, an ad-hoc system has sprung up that works in reverse. When enough people want to cross, WE CROSS NOW! And traffic just has to cope.
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I’m dead now. I killed myself after I got pwned.
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My uncle works in construction and told me that the buttons DO work and are not psychological. Each button just have a different timer setting on it from when you push the button for the door to close.
The only reason for them to not work is if they are broken or turned off.
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The article actually is a benefit to me because, contrary to this statement:
‘The problem here is that some buttons in modern life don’t actually do anything at all. The magic between the button press and the result you want is all in your head. You never catch on – because you are not so smart.’
I caught on long ago BUT I thought they were broken or didn’t work well because they were designed poorly. That has caused me much frustration in the past!
I also think about that poor lady in the office thinking that she is crazy or having hotflashes or whatever because the ‘fake’ thermostat is lying to her!
No where is safe from the lying evil-doers!
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So this time all the coincidences of buttons not working did lead to the uncovering of a conspiracy. Usually it’s the conspiracy that leads to the uncovering of coincidences .. Irony strikes again.
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“I caught on long ago BUT I thought they were broken or didn’t work well because they were designed poorly”
But they are. Vestigal buttons that do nothing are a subpar design.
I liken this to Homeopathy, where buttons are pressed, in order to achieve a believable result……then they do.