I went back to Ohio last weekend for my cousin’s wedding, and while standing in the line for security in the Cleveland airport, I realized how well we as humans are socialized to follow rules and, literally in this case, stay in line.
The line to move through security screening at the Cleveland airport, like most airports I assume, has a line for first class and a line for everyone else. The line for the common-folk, naturally, snakes around ten times or so, and the wait is around twenty minutes. Then there is the “elite” line which goes around the edges of our line, bypassing all the snaking and the wait altogether. While the common-folk line is jammed-pack, the elite line is empty, saved for the occasional “special” person every few minutes.
The part about our socialization process enters here. Common sense would dictate that all of us in the common-folk line are fools for waiting in this line and not jumping into the empty express line. But our socialization process dictates otherwise. Because we’re taught to follow the rules, stay in line, and obey the authority figures, we simply do as we’re told and stay in the common-folk line. There is nothing stopping any of us from getting into the elite line — no barriers, no special ticket screening at the entrance of the line. At any point, any one of us could have simply moved under the railing and gone into the elite line. And had we done that, would the TSA agents checking our boarding passes and IDs said, “hey wait a minute, you aren’t first class — go back to the end of the line you belong in and wait”? No, they would have likely just passed us through like normal without questioning why we came from the first class line without a first class ticket.
Yet no one did this. Why is that? Why do we not disobey the rules when there is no apparent consequence for breaking the rules? Why do we still stay in line even when there is apparent reward for not staying in line? This is a very curious human socialization process question. Think about this next time you’re waiting at the airport.
