Elevator on college campus. A middle-aged man enters the elevator. A college-aged woman follows him in.
WOMAN: Hi. How are you doing today?
MAN: Uh, okay. (Presses button)
WOMAN: Nice day today, huh (presses button)
MAN: Uh, yeah. (Looks at his shoes)
WOMAN: So what are you doing on campus today? Are you a professor?
MAN: Oh, I get it. You’re one of those psychology students doing an experiment, right?
WOMAN: What do you mean?
MAN: No one strikes up a conversation on an elevator with a stranger. Especially a young woman. And especially to a man who is old enough to be her father.
WOMAN: I don’t know what you mean. Can’t a person be friendly?
MAN: Yeah, right. A woman like you talking to a guy like me. Come clean. You’re a psych student and this is an experiment.
WOMAN: Busted! Yeah. I have to talk to 20 people on an elevator to see their reactions so I can get my grade.
MAN: I knew it. Every time I visit campus, something strange happens in an elevator that never happens in real life.
WOMAN: Like what?
MAN: There was the time when I walked into an elevator and everyone was facing the wrong way.
WOMAN: Oh, that was Professor Bernardi’s study on social influence.
MAN: Then there was the time when I walked into an elevator and everyone faced the same way and then everyone turned around.
WOMAN: Professor Bernardi again. The social psychological effects of peer pressure on closed group dynamics. I helped him write that paper.
MAN: Why on earth does he think those studies apply to the real world in any way, shape or form?
WOMAN: What do you mean?
MAN: He designs these studies using fake situations. He has a study group of guinea pigs who aren’t a representative sample of the cross population of a business environment and he claims to be able to apply the outcomes to the real world. For crying out loud, he’s using college kids as his samples on a college campus. There’s no more group that is out of touch with real life than college students!
WOMAN: Are you saying my professor is a fraud?
MAN: Well, yes.
WOMAN: So I’m wasting four years of my life and a quarter million dollars studying something that has dubious application in the real world?
MAN: Well, yes.
WOMAN: What do you think I should do?
MAN: Well, you’ve just proven my study on the social effects of asking strangers for advice that can change your life even though you don’t know who they are. You’ve been a great subject for my Ph.D. study.
WOMAN: So you’re doing research too?
MAN? Yes. By the way, can I buy you a cup of coffee?
WOMAN: Are you kidding? I don’t speak to strangers on elevators. What kinds of nuts talk to strangers on elevators?
(end)