Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

138 Chapter 5
Comparative Field Experiments
Naturalistic field experiments appeal to me because they are excellent for
comparative research, and comparison is so important for developing theory.
Feldman (1968) did five field experiments in Paris, Boston, and Athens to test
whether people in those cities respond more kindly to foreigners or to members
of their own culture.
In one experiment, the researchers simply asked for directions and measured
whether foreigners or natives got better treatment. Parisians and Athenians
gave help significantly more often to fellow citizens than to foreigners. In
Boston, there was no difference.
In the second experiment, foreigners and natives stood at major metro stops
and asked total strangers to do them a favor. They explained that they were
waiting for a friend, couldn’t leave the spot they were on, and had to mail a
letter. They asked people to mail the letters for them (the letters were
addressed to the experiment headquarters) and simply counted how many letters
they got back from the different metro stops in each city. Half the letters
were unstamped.
In Boston and Paris, between 32% and 35% of the people refused to mail a
letter for a fellow citizen. In Athens, 93% refused. Parisians treated Americans
significantly better than Bostonians treated Frenchmen on this task. In fact, in
cases where Parisians were asked to mail a letter that was stamped, they
treated Americans significantly better than they treated other Parisians! (So
much for that stereotype.)
In the third experiment, researchers approached informants and said:
‘‘Excuse me, sir. Did you just drop this dollar bill?’’ (or other currency,
depending on the city). It was easy to measure whether or not people falsely
claimed the money more from foreigners than from natives. This experiment
yielded meager results.
In the fourth experiment, foreigners and natives went to pastry shops in the
three cities, bought a small item and gave the clerk 25% more than the item
cost. Then they left the shop and recorded whether the clerk had offered to
return the overpayment. This experiment also showed little difference among
the cities, or between the way foreigners and locals are treated.
And in the fifth experiment, researchers took taxis from the same beginning
points to the same destinations in all three cities. They measured whether foreigners
or natives were charged more. In neither Boston nor Athens was a
foreigner overcharged more than a local. In Paris, however, Feldman found
that ‘‘the American foreigner was overcharged significantly more often than
the French compatriot in a variety of ingenious ways’’ (1968:11).
Feldman collected data on more than 3,000 interactions and was able to