Stanley Milgram is renown for his work on abedience but The New York Times has an interesting article on an earlier piece of work. Seemly innocuous, it involved getting students to travel on the subway in New York and to ask passengers to give up their seats. New Yorks have a reputation for being hard nosed but the survey uncovered two interesting things.

1. 68% of people when asked directly gave up their seat
2. It was very hard to do. It traumatised the students who were doing the asking because it violated social mores.

That was 30 years ago. So has 9/11 and modern life generally toughened up the New Yorkers. The experiment was undertaken again recently and, guess what, 93% of people gave up their seat.

Even in hard bitten New York it seems people are more compassionate and considerate than they were in 1974. What a good news story.

Read it here.