Human psychology never ceases to amaze me:

[KFC] Restaurants summoned extra help to keep pace with the crowds, yet some customers waited an hour and a half as the chain gave away millions of the meals Tuesday, Wednesday and part of Thursday.

That is a snippet from a recent AP article about KFC’s botched marketing campaign where they, in conjunction with Oprah Winfrey, were offering a free two-piece grilled chicken meal worth $3.99. It is simply amazing how people behave under the perceptive influence of getting something free. All reason suddenly flies out the window, logic takes a vacation, and an uncivilized “horde as much as you can lest we starve” mentality from a primitive section of the brain takes over. I’m not bashing on folks who are down on their economic luck and truly need to take advantage of a free meal. I am talking about vast majority of average, free-willed people standing in line, clutching their computer-printed coupons, who could afford to think rationally about the prospect of wasting hours of their time and sanity for $3.99 worth of fast food — and even staging civil rights era-style protests when they did not get their way.

To put this in perspective: $3.99 is the price of a cheap beer at a local bar, 1/3^rd the price of a single adult admission to a movie theater, the price of a small bag of popcorn at that same movie, and only 16 minutes worth of pay for a person making $30k annually (not far above the poverty line). In perspective, $3.99 is not a lot of money. Yet we humans, time and again, completely lose perspective when offered something of even minor value for free.

We’ve seen examples of the same attitude regarding “free”, time and again. Last year people waited in line for two hours at Denny’s for a free meal worth $5.99 (that still required cash tip for the server, making its net worth even less). Every year for Black Friday, people camp out in parking lots for upwards of 8 hours — and sometimes trample others to death — to save a few dollars on retail merchandise. It’s not pretty. It’s not rational. It’s animal. It’s fascinating.

I deleted my free chicken coupon today. I’d rather go pay for my lunch.

Now, I’m the type of person who has a long fuse and whose passionate rage is rocket-fueled by only a few things, of which include being called or implied a liar, treated unfairly, or simply written off as a sheep who won’t stand up and swing back. One stern but respectful phone call was all it took. Today my brand new pair of Bushnell Binoculars arrived in the mail and I am happy to say that the lenses line up beautifully. But I had to wonder how many Bushnell customers have received the same letter as I did and simply chose to fold. Persistence pays.

The first Dinner Discussion^® topic is Thought-Communication Disparity: the incredible difference between the vast complexity of what goes on inside the human brain versus the relatively very simple communication channels we have to express it. Picture a huge, dammed lake where only small amount of water can get through the flood gates at any moment. For every word you utter (or type), millions of pieces of data process through your brain – from emotions to external sensations to associations and memories. What vast breadth of problems (personal, social, political, etc) arise from the extremely limited communication bandwidth between your brain and the other party? what can we learn from it? What opportunities exist because of it?

Examples: Have you ever overheard a stranger on their cell phone getting into a heated discussion? It’s usually not difficult to infer that the person is so frustrated at their inability to communicate effectively what is going on inside their head that they revert to their emotions to carry the bulk of the ill-fated argument. And what about the natural “filtering” effect of the thought-communication disparity, such that we are forced to filter out irrelevant details in order to communicate efficiently? Is it really efficient or just impaired?

I say, somewhat ironically, discuss.

I would love to hear about a specific situation you have experienced where the Broken Window Theory applies. Feel free to tell your tale in comments section for this post.

I’ll start off with a small example of my own…

When I was a Peer Leader (Resident Advisor for the Freshmen) in college, I set somewhat abnormal ground rules at the beginning of the year and enforced them stringently. Many of them involved keeping hallways and common area looking nice, and proper etiquette for the community bathrooms (note: up to 30 people would share the bathroom, which had about 5 stalls, 4 urinals, 10 sinks, and 6 shower head). I was dead serious when I told them that I would not tolerate people leaving toilets unflushed, sinks messy with hair, or the remnants of their dinner on the floor after a night of heavy drinking. They understood that these rules, while not official housing policy, were for the betterment of our community. It didn’t take much enforcement before I found that my residents were actually holding each other accountable to the unofficial policies. I was dumbfounded and amazed! I remember one resident coming back drunk, late one night, and getting sick in the bathroom — and by the time I woke up the next day, he had already cleaned it up himself. Accountability goes a long way toward personal responsibility.