My second question is: Can you supply a real- world model, instead of a

Milgram-type controlled psychology experiment, that uses your system to

illustrate multiple psychological tendencies interacting in a plausibly

diagnosable way?

 

The answer is yes. One of my favorite cases involves the McDonnell Douglas

airliner evacuation test. Before a new airliner can be sold, the government

requires that it pass an evacuation test, during which a full load of passengers

must get out in some short period of time. The government directs that the test

be realistic. So you can’t pass by evacuating only twenty-year-old athletes. So

McDonnell Douglas scheduled such a test in a darkened hangar using a lot of old

people as evacuees. The passenger cabin was, say, twenty feet above the concrete

floor of the hangar and was to be evacuated through moderately flimsy rubber

chutes. The first test was made in the morning. There were about twenty very

serious injuries, and the evacuation took so long it flunked the time test. So

what did McDonnell Douglas next do? It repeated the test in the afternoon, and

this time there was another failure, with about twenty more serious injuries,

including one case of permanent paralysis.

 

What psychological tendencies contributed to this terrible result? Well, using

my tendency list as a checklist, I come up with the following explanation.

Reward-Superresponse Tendency drove McDonnell Douglas to act fast. It couldn’t

sell its airliner until it passed the test. Also pushing the company was

Doubt-Avoidance Tendency with its natural drive to arrive at a decision and run

with it. Then the government’s direction that the test be realistic drove