Checking Assumptions (at the door!)
May. 22nd, 2010 02:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeshyrI want you to read the scenario described below and then answer the poll questions as you read them. Please answer AS YOU READ, don't read all the questions before you answer and please don't read the comments before you answer!
To aid those who have trouble not reading anything that's in their line of sight, I'm putting the second question behind a cut tag so you can answer the first one first!
Scenario #1:
You are walking down a suburban footpath and come across a woman picking up rubbish at the front of a group of units. There are multiple dwellings on the property, but it looks like there are less than 10 - it's not a high rise apartment block or anything like that. You can see that there's a combined school and place of worship (church, synagogue, mosque) immediately across the road. The woman appears to be in her early twenties and as you're looking at her she notices and smiles at you, saying hello in a friendly way. She's wearing casual clothing which is obviously not a uniform or anything else that would indicate she's at work, but she's using a pick-up stick to help her get the rubbish into a plastic shopping bag without actually touching it.
What is your first assumption about the person described in the above scenario?
They probably live at the property and want the front to look nice.
68 (54.0%)
They've probably been employed to pick up the rubbish.
10 (7.9%)
They're probably picking up rubbish as punishment.
1 (0.8%)
They're probably doing volunteer/charity work picking up the rubbish.
39 (31.0%)
Something else I will explain in the comments.
8 (6.3%)
OK, did you answer the first one?
Pretty please answer the first one before reading this!!
Scenario #2:
You are walking down a suburban footpath and come across a woman who is in a power wheelchair (electric wheelchair) picking up rubbish at the front of a group of units. There are multiple dwellings on the property, but it looks like there are less than 10 - it's not a high rise apartment block or anything like that. You can see that there's a combined school and place of worship (church, synagogue, mosque) immediately across the road. The woman appears to be in her early twenties and as you're looking at her she notices and smiles at you, saying hello in a friendly way. She's wearing casual clothing which is obviously not a uniform or anything else that would indicate she's at work, but she's using a pick-up stick to help her get the rubbish into a plastic shopping bag without actually touching it.
What is your first assumption about the person described in the above scenario?
They probably live at the property and want the front to look nice.
85 (69.1%)
They've probably been employed to pick up the rubbish.
7 (5.7%)
They're probably picking up rubbish as punishment.
1 (0.8%)
They're probably doing volunteer/charity work picking up the rubbish.
24 (19.5%)
Something else I will explain in the comments.
6 (4.9%)
Why, yes, I picked up rubbish at the front of my group of units today, in my powerchair. I'd been noticing there was a ton of rubbish around there and it looked icky and I figured it'd only be a 10 minute job to fix up the vast majority of the mess.
It was a very interesting lesson in assumptions made by the general public ... I may have broken some people's brains by exhibiting such unbelievable characteristics as the ability to talk. I hope I made them - and you - think.
Cheers,
Ricky
PS
Feel free to pass this Dreamwidth link around anywhere you want :)
no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 05:06 am (UTC)*hugs the penguin*
(obviously my answers are not going to reflect any stereotypical beliefs - you know how i feel about stereotypes in general ;-) )
no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 05:42 am (UTC)The spoons here just keep getting bigger and more numerous :)
I'm working on doing a certain amount of stuff per day, and so technically it was "part of my physical therapy" but OTOH playing in my garden would also count if I did that so it most certainly dosen't feel like therapy. Not the way the nightly physio "ouch ouch repititions of exercises" stuff does, anyway!
Still hard not to just wait for the other shoe to drop...
no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 07:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 03:11 pm (UTC)I've been there, worrying about the other shoes. In hindsight, I wishes I'd "fppt"ed the other shoe and just grooved on the one I had that day!
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Date: 2010-05-22 05:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 11:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 05:28 am (UTC)2) While I wouldn't argue with a volunteer or employee of mine in a power chair who wanted to be assigned to pick up trash, it wouldn't be my first choice of assignments for them, nor would they be first on my list to do that if it needed doing. I assume that this is probably going to be the logic of the average employer/religious organization/school, and that someone assigning that as punishment might be opening themselves to serious trouble even if the person doing it as punishment was capable of it. And I think of a person in a power chair as more likely to be attached to the closer establishment, because my assumption is that one does avoid unnecessary trips, and therefore one might be less likely to clean off the other side of the road from the place one has the responsibility to.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 05:44 am (UTC)Certainly the patronisingness level seemed to be about 10x what it usually is, and the shock that I can speak seemed to be much higher... average people are so weird.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 05:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 11:22 am (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_prize
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Date: 2010-05-23 01:25 pm (UTC)and then take her picture that way, power chair and all.
of course, she looks nothing at all like Stephen Hawking ;-)
no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 02:18 pm (UTC)That is incredibly odd.
Also, +1 the comments above about hooray for spoons.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 05:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 06:02 am (UTC)but nice to see you can do something on a voluntary basis for your own neighbourhood
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Date: 2010-05-22 06:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 08:12 am (UTC)I checked that my first assumption in each case was that they wanted the place to look nice, but I might be more likely to assume that the first person might be doing volunteer/charity work than the second person, if the first person was (as far as I could tell) visibly-abled. This is just because I expect that someone who definitely uses a power chair might well have a pickup stick lying around.
I'm not sure how valid that assumption is.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 10:22 am (UTC)Mainly though it's squeee! Extra spoons!
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Date: 2010-05-22 03:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 11:16 am (UTC)--
“Sometimes something historical gives you a better perspective. You can see the latest dumbness as just the end of a long line of dumbnesses that have been taking place for thousands of years.”
- J.B. Handelsman
no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 11:17 am (UTC)There's one interesting thing I noted about your poll, in that there's another assumption that I made during the poll that you didn't ask about: The assumption that the woman in the first poll is able-bodied. (You didn't actually say!) I probably shouldn't have done.
It would have been interesting to see a third poll asking people whether the woman they imagined in the first poll was, in fact, able-bodied, differently-abled from the person in the second poll (and if so, how?), or whether they were the same person.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 03:03 pm (UTC)(And this is why more and more I've been avoiding the place.)
no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 06:42 pm (UTC)If so, that's kind of sad. :(
no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-22 04:22 pm (UTC)Other people have mentioned the assumption that the woman in your first scenario was able-bodied. I'm not sure I made that assumption and having read all the comments, it would be futile to try guessing in hindsight. (Only hard evidence I have is that it took me several readings before I figured out the difference between the 2 scenario descriptions, but I have no idea what it's evidence for.)
And as others have said: yay spoonization!
no subject
Date: 2010-05-23 08:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-23 12:48 pm (UTC)Oh, and so I can correct Ru, what are your correct diagnoses? (if you don't mind?)
Lisa
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Date: 2010-05-23 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-23 08:41 pm (UTC)I thought the first one was a volunteer from the congregation. I assumed an able-bodied-appearing person, *doh*
I assumed the second one was a resident because of similar reasons to
Hurray for spoons!
no subject
Date: 2010-05-23 11:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 02:01 pm (UTC)Not on Dreamwidth so I couldn't respond to the poll, but my assumptions go like this (and were like this before I read the comments):
1st scenario: (I assumed TAB) most likely a volunteer, but second most likely someone who lives in the area.
I thought she was probably a volunteer of some sort because: I don't think pick-up sticks are particularly common household items, so I guessed that she might have one if she volunteered regularly at stuff like this / the organisation she was with provided them. I missed the fact that she was putting it into a plastic shopping bag, that might've made me think resident was more likely than volunteer.
2nd scenario: most likely someone who lives in the area, but could be a volunteer.
As with other commenters above, I thought someone living in the area seemed most likely because it seemed unlikely that someone using a power wheelchair would travel very far to pick up rubbish (although I don't know anyone who uses one, so what do I know?), but I thought that she could also be volunteering for a local organisation / helping out a friend who lived there but was unable to clear up / etc.
(It seemed unlikely that someone in a wheelchair would be employed to pick up rubbish and very unlikely that it would be used as a punishment.)
--Carol
no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 05:49 pm (UTC)Poll #1: I would assume she was picking up the garbage on her own, but I wouldn't specifically think she lived there. I would probably assume she had some connection to the area, though.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 06:01 pm (UTC)I voted "Other" for 1, so I'll lay out all my assumptions. The pickup stick isn't a usual tool for an abled person (and I would assume that the person is abled), so my assumption is that it was acquired specifically for the purpose of picking up trash. (I know a number of people who do this when visiting parks.) So I'd expect that the person lives in nearby, but not necessarily even on the same street.
If I see a pickup stick used by someone in a power chair, my assumption is that it's something they have for a wide variety of things, so that doesn't tell me much, and I assume they're picking up trash because they live there.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 09:15 pm (UTC)I said the able bodied woman would have been employed, and the woman in a wheelchair would have been living there cleaning to make it look nice. I figure, the able bodied woman has a tool? She must be doing it as part of an organization who provided it (but not a big enough organization that they'd have uniforms or anything--I used to work for a place where I'd occasionally, as the office assistant, clean up the grounds), but a woman in a wheelchair would probably have the tool as part of the way they navigate the world. I also figured that someone in a wheelchair who was working/volunteering/doing community service would be given a different job, not something that would tax their physical abilities and/or energy.
Having read through the comments now, I'm surprised people would think someone in a chair would get assigned to trash clean up because they couldn't do anything else. That doesn't make any sense to me.
Also, thanks for dividing up the questions like that! I hate it when people say "Do X without reading Y" when Y is clearly visible--that's really hard for me!
no subject
Date: 2010-05-25 04:05 am (UTC)And FWIW, in the second question, just the first one seemed the most likely. I suppose I'd just expect people in power wheelchairs to be community-minded in other ways.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-25 04:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-25 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-27 03:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-09 01:43 pm (UTC)