The Art of Seat Conquest - A Study

Public transportation in Britain always makes for an interesting time. Of course, by interesting I mean time-consuming, expensive and over-crowded. Before my move to America, I used to have to take trains a lot. I'd zip from Cardiff to Bournemouth, (changing at Southampton) where I went to uni, or direct to the bright lights of London where I worked for a short time. On these journeys I would study other passengers to pass the time and conduct little experiments in human behaviour. I don't know if anyone else does this, and maybe it was a little mean spirited, but I would try to adjust my body language and see how long it would take for someone to come and sit next to me. The point wasn't to look all mean and intimidating, but to modify "neutral" just enough to have an effect.

My conclusion was that it was amazing how little you had to do to expand your territorial bubble to encompass the next seat without interacting with it in any way.

In truth, I did get a good head start on my research by way of my appearance. I was a young male with a pointy hairdo and baggy clothes, so that's clearly a stay-away. The first impression is definitely a biggie in securing that seat. I am pretty small, but height is tougher to detect when seated. I would suppliment this by stretching my legs out wide, and cross my arms to make me seem bigger and defensive. I had filled the little bit of space that I had paid for, but of course it seemed to be much more. Wearing a slight frown and not smiling completed the effect.

People would board the train and walk down the centre aisle and pass straight by my empty seat for a good while, and it wouldn't be until the train was pretty full before someone would sit down next to me. I would smile and say hello.

Within the game there were variations that could totally change people's perceptions. Looking out of the window definitely made things harder, for it made interaction necessary (to enquire as to the availability of the seat), and urban dwellers hate to actually have to talk to one another. Here's another interesting one - putting your bag on the your lap seems to totally negate most of the body language stuff I mentioned, and makes you loads more neutral again. Instead of confidently projecting outwards (an open silhouette), the bag locked up within body space starts to become internalising force (closed silhoette), increasing the sense of nervousness and vulnerability, and people pick up on that. You have lost the status of that dominant persona, just from the position of that bag!

I remembered that I did this only the other day. For some reason I totally forgot about it whenever I finished my journey, but thinking about it now with much more experience in studying people, it all makes sense, and I have a handle on the subtleties as to why people reacted the way they did.

So um.... yeah. There we go. Animators all agree that people watching is an ace thing to get into for ideas and stuff. I guess manipulating people's brains is a good compliment to those endeavours. It certainly is interesting, and maybe you'll get a spare seat of it to put your bag on.


Was that a weird post?
Probably.