The psychology behind the SEP field

I came across a very good article on another blog which has some research on what is commonly known as the “Bystander Effect”. Read more about it here.

Security in the Home: Vacation Electrical Timer

One of the items mentioned in the NRA Refuse to be a Victim class is a simple electrical timer to turn lamps or TVs on/off at various times in order to make it look like someone is home. Such timers are also good for other purposes, like saving money by running a water heater only during the times you usually need it. In my case, I got one to save money on running a recirculation pump on my hot water supply (in addition to the ones we have for controlling lamps, and in the winter, our Christmas tree lights).

At the low end, you can get a mechanical electrical timer for about $10. Amazon sells one (The Intermatic TN711C 24-hour timer) which is adequate for controlling a few lamps, and features a “randomizer” that causes the on and off times to vary by a few minutes either way to avoid the “timer-controlled” predictability. You can probably find a mechanical timer even cheaper without the randomizer, but the randomizer is a good feature to have, and my experience with the cheaper timers is that they don’t keep time reliably. When I used one with my recirculation pump, I found that after a week, the time was off by enough the the pump wasn’t running when I needed it.

Also, if you have a power failure, the timer just stops while the power is off, and the time will be off by the length of the power outage when it comes back on. That might not matter much if your primary usage is to run lamps on “vacation mode”, but if you are using it for saving money by turning off appliances when unneeded, it’s a bother.

A better solution in that case is a digital timer. While the mechanical timer is a bit simpler to set up, it is much less versatile. A digital timer, depending on the features, will run two or three times the price of a mechanical one. My wife purchased a GE 15079 Digital Timer, which features up to 20 different on-off times over a 7-day period, so you can set up different times for weekends and weekdays, etc. For security purposes, it has a simple push-button random setting. One of the nicer features of this timer is a built-in battery backup, so power failures don’t cause the timer to lose the time of day. That also means that you can un-plug the unit and move it to another location without having to completely reprogram it, making it a portable timer.

We did find one drawback to this unit, namely, the instructions were written in teensy-tiny print on a small slip of paper, which can be a problem for folks in the trifocal generation. My wife took the instruction sheet and scanned it into her computer so she could enlarge it enough to read easily. Overall, though, we have been very pleased with this unit, especially after discovering that it has several useful features that weren’t even mentioned on the outside of the retail packaging, such as the count-down feature.

Break the SEP Field

I was sorta’ hoping that somebody would comment on the SEP field, but I am guessing that at this point, I either don’t have enough readers, or not enough of them are Douglas Adams fans. SEP stands for “Somebody Else’s Problem”, and the term “SEP Field” was used by the late Mr. Adams in his famous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Deluxe hardcover 25th Anniversary Edition). Whether or not Adams coined the phrase, it reflects his remarkable insight into human nature.

The SEP Field is a psychological force that causes people to ignore (and forget) things that they either don’t understand, or don’t want to deal with. It also describes selective recall when a person observes something that contradicts his or her world-view or superstitions. A typical (almost canonical) example is a story about a rape-murder of a young woman in New York City by over a dozen male gang members, which was witnessed by over 30 people, none of whom called the police. The really sad things about this story is 1) it is a real story, and 2) it isn’t just one story, but a summary of many almost identical stories. To the multitude of witnesses hearing the young woman’s screams for help, it was Somebody Else’s Problem.

When might the SEP Field become your problem?

Supposed you had some sort of accident which put you into a life-threatening situation, but you were still conscious and able to call for help? Yelling out, “Somebody please help me!” is not the most effective way to get help, because people hear “somebody”, and mentally translate that to “somebody else.”

Then what is a better tactic?

“Sir, you with the blue shirt, I need for you to call 9-1-1, and tell them to send an ambulance for a white male age 59 with leg and back injuries. Please do that now.”

What does that do? It breaks the SEP Field, because the problem is no longer Somebody Else’s, but it now belongs to the man in the blue shirt. What’s more, when someone does come to your aid, that action will cause others to do likewise.

The key is to single out a specific person, and make a very specific request for help to that individual, using something that clearly identifies who that individual is to anyone else in the vicinity. It may not work, but it has been demonstrated to be far more effective than a general call for help.

Edit: Just read a similar post on a blog entitled “You Are Not So Smart”.