For the past decade, Bohns and her colleagues have made their study volunteers ask a total of 14,000 total strangers for favors, ranging from the small (borrowing a cell phone) to the large (filling out, on the spot, a ten-page questionnaire) to the weird and vaguely unethical (writing the word pickle, in pen, in a library book).
[P]articipants asked strangers to vandalize a purported library book by writing the work “pickle” in pen on one of the pages. A number of individuals approached by our participants voiced their discomfort, expressing concern with getting into trouble, referring to the request as “vandalism,” and conveying a general reluctance to participate.
The study volunteers expected that just over a quarter of the people they asked would agree to the request — but in reality, more than 64 percent agreed. To write the word pickle. In pen. In a library book.
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