Elevators

Elevators are great places to study social dynamics, it comes as close to the "deserted island" scenario as you can in this day and age, cell phone generally don't work, no food or water, dependent on others outside to find you...

I go up and down 10 floors in an elevator every day I take the shuttle to work, so I consider myself an "expert" elevator rider. I know exactly when to push the close door button to maximize efficiency, I know which corner I like to stand in, I know when the doors will open according to the bell ring.

I love studying the ways people fill up space on an elevator, like a subway, in elevators people like to stand as far away as everyone as possible. It's a great example of social magnetism, if you think of each person having the same polar magnetism, then we all want to stand as far away from everyone else as possible, thus the following scenarios occur:

two people: diagonal from each other, against the wall.
Three people, fill up the three corners, a triangle
Four people: 4 square
Five people:
* *
*
* *
and so on, until we reach the 8th floor and you just cram in, completely violating each others personal bubble we had so happily managed for the 7 floors below us.

It always amazes me when someone violates this polarity principle. If friends board the elevator, this dynamic changes, friends are allowed to stand in the vicinity of each other. But-the other case is so unusual, and always makes people nervous. When there are 5 people in the elevator, and 2 leave, the other 3 sort of rearrange naturally, pulling away from the other 2 folks in the elevator. But this doesn't always happen, and one person doesn't pull away -it is very rare that this happens, maybe once every 100 elevator rides? In my experience, it has been a foreigner, who I guess does not yet understand the physics elevator principle of us Americans!!!