The Influence of Status on Pedestrians' Failure to Observe a Road-Safety Rule

LEFKOWITZ, BLAKE, AND MOUTON (1955) found that some pedestrians were more likely not to obey the signals at a crosswalk when following the example of an offender of obviously high status (e.g., wearing a suit, a tie, and a hat) than when following that of an offender of obviously lower status (e.g., wearing dirty, heavy cotton trousers, and a faded tee shirt). The foregoing results may be related to those of McElroy and Morrow (1994): People tended to tolerate the physical nearness of high-status people and to distance themselves from low-status people. Moreover, such differences in behavior may explain why people assist high-status individuals more readily than they assist low-status individuals (Goodman & Gareis, 1993; Solomon, Solomon, & Maiorca, 1982). Whereas Lefkowitz et al. found that people’s “follow-the-leader” attitudes toward a high-status person were more positive than toward a low-status person, they did not use the actual violation rate, which is almost nonexistent under controlled conditions (i.e., when there is no example of violation of the safety rules), to evaluate the behaviors of the passers-by