Test subject

By Anonymous - 07/12/2009 21:05 - Canada

Today, I signed up for a psych experiment. I was a damsel in distress on the side of the highway, but no one stopped. Back at the lab, another participant said a half-dozen people helped her. The professor was testing how attractiveness affects altruism. I was the unattractive subject. FML
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Top comments

loki09 4

Apparently, you did a good job! :)

60 1

Comments

tass919 12

i'm a psych major and have actually done a study on this as well. although we used pictures and did a paper study, but studies do actually show this is true. don't take it personally however, because it's impossible to generalize what is "good" looking and what is "bad" looking and everyone has different standards, which is why anything that uses attractiveness is actually a really hard study to do. which is why preliminary studies need to be done by others to determine what actually makes someone the "attractive" subject and the "unattractive" subject. and in using live subjects, that's really hard.

28 2
spiderman0606 0

Attractive: Megan Fox. Unnattractive: Crazy Cat Lady.

1 3
diet_otaku 0

there are other factors that affect altruism too, like the absence or presence of other bystanders and the victim addressing a specific bystander directly, i.e. you're more likely to get help by grabbing someone and saying "YOU. HELP ME." instead of standing there going "will someone help me?" #35 also has an excellent point.

2 0
sarcdude 3

@41: well, I was going to say megan fox isn't THAT fine (still that opening shot of her in TF2:ROTF--never mind), but you beat me to it.

2 1
polico_wolf 0

WHAT ARE YOU SAYING ABOUT THE CRAZY CAT LADY?!

6 0
catscratch_fml 1

Aww man, that sucks. :( Which idiot University was this, Da-lousie?

1 7
crumsnatcha 4

You're what we call a "practice girl"...

2 9
kbaker90 0

This is actually what I'm writing a paper on (or more like NOT writing a paper on) at this very moment. Don't feel too bad, when my class did this experiment I was the unattractive subject too.

11 1
alwaysalady 0

And now you know.....

1 4
I_am_stupid_also 6

Pretty bad experiment. Was it because it was you were unattractive, or because you had a scowl on your face? Maybe it was because you were standing around looking like you were waiting for someone to change your tire for you (for example, the fml doesn't say) and the other person looked like they were trying but having trouble. Maybe the researcher was trying to be kind and said the test was for unattractiveness when really it was about bitchiness.

9 2
perdix 29

If you help a pretty girl in distress, it's not altruism -- it's a business deal. He's doing the quid so that later he can get into her quo. Helping an ugly girl is altruistic. Canada ought to be ashamed of itself in this case. We're always led to believe that you're the nicest people in the world. Work on it.

15 1
blastvortex 3

Well, that sucks, but you're the one that volunteered for it. Since you obviously didn't or couldn't have known what you were getting into, you kind of jumped into that trap on your own volition. I highly doubt the latter though since most experiments require disclosure of the variants, which means you're just absent minded, you silly goof. BTW, if it's any consolation, I wouldn't have helped either of you. =p

5 2
RyeBreadBoy 0

I agree with this. I don't pick up hitch-hikers. One assumes that these days, everyone has a cell phone.

3 0
someguy945 0

I loved this FML the first time I saw it on this website.

2 0