What has been your experience when you have a run-in with authority? Is saying you are sorry as effective as this article claims? Why is it that some people seem to have so much trouble saying it? What do you think of Ross and Day’s idea and the validity of their study? How much are the results that they found culture-specific?
Firstly, I don’t think the results of this study can be such easily generalized. In my opinion, the fine depends on too many factors to draw any certain conclusions. It depends on the personality of the policeman, but also on your car, your looks, gender and many other factors. From my own experience, the police tend to give higher fines to wealthy looking people in expensive cars and much lower fines to people in old rusty cars. Other thing to consider is the personality of the particular policeman. One can be very strict and give everyone the same fine no matter what, while others may be much more liberal in this and more often give warnings rather than tickets.
ReplyDeleteI think that the article contradicts itself in one part. At the beginning the article states that if you exceeded the speed limit by only 10 mph the excuse actually increased the fine by about $27. But at the end the authors of this study generalized that “Apologies may not always help, but they do not tend to hurt.” I think that if you should pay $60 ticket, but you try to excuse yourself and the ticket price increases by another $27 (which is just an average value, therefore in some cases it will be more) it is a relatively large increase. More than 30% in fact.
Also I think that studies like this one have negative impact on the drivers. It seems to me that the article takes speeding as a normal thing that everyone does. It shows the readers how to cheat the authorities and avoid paying the fine. Then people may gain a feeling that it is just a game and they have just to say sorry and everything is all right. I think that people should realize that the most effective way to avoid the ticket is to not exceed the speed limit.
In my opinion, the article is a great reflection of how police can be easily influenced in favor of a law breaker. After all, every law breaker hopes to reduce his fine to be paid to the minimum. Funny thing is, however, that a single word of apology, one simple sorry, is sufficient to change a situation of paying the huge fine significantly. It is true that a good behavior is a key to success but I do not think that this should also apply to paying fines due to the violation of the law.
ReplyDeleteDespite of how beneficial good behavior is, differentiation between speeds that have been over limit seems horrendous to me. How can somebody who has been riding 30 km/hour have a greater “discount” of a fine than somebody who has had the speed exceeded only by 10 km/hour? That is absolutely unfair. Very similar example is how women can charm police by their beauty and thus spare some money as well. What about men and women with the less luck of beauty? Thus, regardless the gender or beauty, I definitely think that police should do their duty and let the law breaker to pay the full fine instead of reducing it. How are they going to teach citizen to abide the law otherwise? Though when the fine is reduced most of the time after apology, they will always count on it and ride over limit. The only possible solution for this is to pay the full fine or do not break the law. Is it that harmful? But I agree that the apology is pleasant. Problem is, however, that it does not solve anything.
Here is Zuzana's comment:
ReplyDeleteThe fact that people who said excuses such as “I didn’t realize I was speeding” saw their fine increase by about $27 was very surprising to me. I thought that if I was ever caught speeding by police, this would actually help me a little. But I never got stopped by police, even not for a regular check, so I can’t compare it with my experience. However, I can imagine that saying sorry may be a good way to get a reduction. In addition, even my father advised me to be very polite and nice when it comes to police officers. It might not work with some of them, but I know about cases where people got by with only a warning instead of paying a 60 Euros fine.
Another surprising fact is that the fines are so high in the U.S. and Canada. But I researched a little and in Slovakia, if you speed 29km/h (roughly 18 m.p.h) over the limit, the fine is 100 Euros in towns or villages and 80 Euros outside them, as opposed to $130 in Canada. For a 22km/h speeding (14 m.p.h) you get a 70 Euros fine in towns and 50 Euros fine outside, which is a huge difference in comparison with the U.S., where you get $128 (according to what article states). But of course, we need to take into account our economic position, so I think that the Slovak fines are still high for most people and I guess that so are the fines in the U.S. and Canada.
I think that Ross and Day’s study might not be valid and accurate. They had a sample of 512 people from the U.S. and more than 500 Canadians, but both of these states have a huge population. Canada has roughly 33,100,000 citizens and in the U.S. it is 305,689,000, according to TrueKnowledge.com. This is a huge number in comparison with the size of the sample, but I guess that it must have been difficult to even collect stories from 500 people. And still, the results are surprising.
Zuzana
First of all I would like to compliment the editor for the articles he had been posting in May as I found myself very interested in the ones I was supposed to comment on. When I came across this article my level of interest grew tall, as it seemed very unlikely to me that simply saying “sorry” after going over a speed limit would convince the police to reduce the fine I’m suppose to pay. Nevertheless, as it is mentioned in the article, the survey that has been done by the psychologists Martin Day and Michael Ross at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, proved this strategy as credible (at least in Canada and The States). In my opinion, however, that is the basic stumbling-block of this study; it has only been done in these two countries. As for Slovakia, this would less likely be the case. What I base my assumption on is the fact that Canada and The States have much better social relations. To demonstrate this I will sketch a situation where a Slovak driver apologizes to a Slovak police officer after being caught for speeding,
ReplyDeleteSlovak driver: “I’m sorry, Mr. Officer,”
Slovak police officer ironically: “That is sweet from you, but frankly you don’t have to be as you’re getting a ticket anyway!”
You see my point?
Nonetheless, there are always exceptions. Even the numbers in the article suggest that the fine reductions differ from officer to officer. However in Slovakia these kind of exceptions may not always be as selfless as they seem. The reason is that in Slovakia the law says you aren’t aloud to change the value of a fine. Therefore many Slovak police officers decide to catch someone for speeding, however omit putting it down into their official notepads. This way they don’t have a problem with lowering the fine as the whole profit goes into their pockets.
Finally, whether you experience the lucky exception or not, it is always good to apologize for two reasons: 1. the study’s results might also apply to your country and 2. An apology can never be bad.
Branislav Skocek IB3
Here is Petra's comment:
ReplyDeleteThere have always been discussions about what is the best thing to do after being pulled over for speeding. And even without quantitative justification like Day and Ross provided, it has been known for a while now that an apology is the best option one can go with. Fortunately, Day and Ross’s research confirmed this general belief.
Even though most of us can more or less intuitively understand why the apologies have been so successful, I am quite sure that there is more to the explanation of this phenomenon than a mere gut feeling. When I look at all the ways that, according to the article, people usually use to try to avoid speeding fines, only the apology seems to imply that they admit that their speeding was wrong. While silence or denial might provoke the police officers to even increase the fine, those who made an excuse or tried to justify the speeding might be seen as trying to defend what is legally seen as wrong behavior. And this could automatically lead the policemen into thinking that the particular person not only did something wrong, but is also trying to defend it. Only the apology can let them know that they realize the mistake and thus the police officers may find that there is a lower chance that they will do it repeatedly than by those who tried to defend their illegal activity.
However, there is one thing I cannot understand at all, and that is, why policemen tend to cut down the higher fines more substantially than the lower ones. One possible explanation for this is that they do it proportionately and that is why the lower cuts came off as insignificant in the results of the experiment, still, this does not explain why the lowest exceeding of the speed limit never get cut. Who knows… Maybe someone does research on that, too.
Firstly, I have to say that speeding (generally) is against the law and therefore there is no surprise in giving fines for speeding. What amazed me is the fact that there is no clear rule for giving the speeding ticket its value (or at least it looks like that). As was proven in many cases (and that is a deal mainly for America) there are “holes (blank spaces)” in the law. Sue out hundreds of dollars for washing a cat in the washing machine that somehow miss the sign: “not suitable for washing cats”, seems like a foolishness for me, but maybe the law could be improved just in the way the weakest parts are improved (as the chain is as strong as its weakest part). It is important to think about the fact that people (especially in the U.S.) are testing (and obviously with pleasure) the law and in reality they are successful in finding the “blank spaces” mentioned. However, the policemen are in the charge of giving bills indeed.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing is to take a think about “the word” itself. It makes me sorrowful to see how people wonder about using the apology or not. It looks like a clear thing to me, and it was already mentioned in the article itself: “Apologies may not always help, but they do not tend to hurt.” Why not to use “the magic word” if it could help or in the worst case do nothing. If people use these words naturally, they could evade some problems they definitively met with absence of “good manners”. The real problem is that people are not use to use excusive words and that is the first problem. Another thing is that it is hard for them to use them because it suggests that they have made a mistake (and this reality is probably the most significant problem for them).
What is the worst, people invented excuses that seems like unassailable, but it may seems strange for the policeman checking the cars speed to hear about tens of “sisters giving birth” a day. People even created so many replies that they are categorized: apology, excuse, justification, denial, /silence/. The strangest thing for me is that there is a real RESEARCH about which type is the most successful. Not only that people are impolite, they also try to find the best usage of their impoliteness. I would rather open some clubs to teach good manners.
To conclude, I want to point at the contemporary situation. Not only are people trying to find the best way how to avoid to be punished, they even wonder if apology is appropriate. I see whole problem in the human nature itself. It is problematic for them to say excuses as well as they still try to somehow overcome the law. They break the law, they do not apology and they even look for the most convenient method for themselves. I think that law rules should be assigned more precisely in order to evade “holes” that are many times used in a bad way. And I still do not understand why people do not use excuses: if it would not help, it will not make any harm. It is just about admitting failure…
Certainly, this is an interesting and more importantly humorous study. In my opinion, modern sciences including psychology are starting to get boring, and academic text is harder and harder to read. It does not contain any refreshing jokes or funny highlights that can wake up a reader. This study is an example of such highlight among black and white horrors of facts of academic literature.
ReplyDeleteAs you may have seen in my previous comment on Gaby Rodrigues article and her fake pregnancy project where I have criticized the outcome and scientific nature of her experiment, I think that this is something completely different. Even though this is an example of a good academic study, I can imagine that some people may criticize this too, but this study is worth defending. Who would expect that the fine reduction would be smaller in lesser speed limit violations? It is not straightforward and not obvious at all, and I would set absolutely opposite hypothesis. I would expect that fines would be reduced only when a small breaking of speed limits occurred. In this case policeman may think that the violation was small, and the apology may cover the small disobedience of speed limits. Whereas on the other hand, in the case of big violation, I would expect that policeman considers the driver arrogant and will not accept any apology, and consequently would not reduce the penalty so that the driver would rethink his/her action.
However, my thinking may be only culturally biased, and in Slovakia the trend of penalties may be different as in America and Canada. Therefore, I would appreciate if such experiment would be carried out in Slovakia also to prove my speculations. Though, the more reasonable study would be the statistics whether the fines had gone to the state repository or to the policeman’s pocket but that is another topic for discussion, and probably not very popular in our state.
Mojmir
to Brano:
ReplyDeleteI see where you are heading. You say that this appliance would not be valid for Slovakia for the different culture and social relations. Therefore Slovaks are less likely to manage to refine their fines for speeding. You even included one example that says that police here is so strict and they usually take your apology ironically. But what I have in my mind is that police of Slovakia might not value your apology but they are not hostile after all. Surprisingly, all of the fines that my parents were supposed to pay were reduced because of a good behavior towards police, with no anger and no blame. Once, when my mum started crying, she even got the whole fine forgiven. Thus I would conclude that the fines could be reduced with a good behavior even in Slovakia. But yes, I guess that the showed remorse in our country will never reach 32% success of not getting a ticket. That is right, indeed.
Responding to Rado’s comment:
ReplyDeleteRado, you are making a good point here. It depends on various factors such as gender or nature of the policeman, however, I think that this article is trying to solve the dilemma whether you should be sorry for speeding up or to pretend that you were unaware of it. Basically, it tries to find the best strategy whatsoever. If you would apologize to a strict policeman he would not reduce your fine, but there is also a possibility that you may meet an understanding policeman who will take your regret in consideration. Thus, being sorry does not hurt, is polite, and in addition, this study shows it may help.
Furthermore, you said that the value of a fine differs when giving to the rich and the poor. Indeed, I experienced this on my own skin. I was driving with my cousin and we got stopped by policeman, and he gave us a fine. My cousin said that she thought that big fines are only for expensive car owners. The policeman replied that he possesses Fabia and Renault Megan is for him expensive (we were in Renault). Lastly, being a woman is a stereotypical excuse, and it works in my opinion even though I have never experienced this with my mother for example. Despite your skeptical analysis of this study I would say that the project generally proves that an excuse can help.
Mojmir
Responding to brano_in_peace:
ReplyDeleteYour first notice just present the overall idea of people. You are surprised how powerful this word could be. There is nothing personal in that, I just want to say that it reflects general world situation. People are not used to use “magic words” and therefore they are often surprised by the outcome of its usage. This is caused mainly by the fact that people do not use the world in their ordinary life (as within the family), therefore they are not aware of its power (what is according to my opinion quite sad). But, at least, there is also sensation for me, and that is the fact it really decreases the value of the bill - probably it does not work in the same way here in Slovakia, as you commented also. The point is that this work in America – and whether we want or not, there is certainly different system.
As I do not know much about social relations, I am not in the position to compare if Canada and The States have them better or not. But what can I say is that your example situation is highly probable, you have the point. On the other hand, this is very subjective and depends on much more factors then just the country. The gender, age, position, situation, circumstances are important as well. I am afraid that you are too much one-sided in what you said about Slovakian police officers. I know there is some stereotype about them but I am not as courageous as you and I would not say this appeal to all Slovak guardians of the law.
Anyway, I am happy that you have come to the conclusion like that. Eventhough that particular system would not work for our country, my opinion is that using the apology would not make any situation worse. To comment your comment, I would say that you really see what there is, but on the other side, you are often one-sided. Try to look at the problem from more perspectives. Independently of that, you make the point. Your conclusion is just exactly sharing my opinion.