What other places in life do we want people to choose for us (assign us a seat) and thus relieve us of this burden of choice?ītw, this post could be titled: behavioral scientist uses southwest airlines boarding process as justification for paternalism □ This freedom to “choose” our seat may actually be a burden and can cause us more headaches than we’d have otherwise, given the same circumstances. We feel in control of our decisions and yet, because the world is still random, we must admit this is only an illusion. You lean back and offer the stressed-out mother of the crying baby your free pretzels.īy offering us the option to choose our own seat, Southwest Airlines provides us the illusion of agency. You learn to appreciate the mom for her deep love for her daughter. Instead, you make the most of your situation. You don’t rewind the chain of events and imagine what would have happened had you bought the ticket 2 hours earlier or 2 hours later. You don’t endlessly play back the process by which you came to sit in this seat. You may sigh with the resignation of someone who has a few less than peaceful hours ahead of them. But this time, the airline assigns you this seat. Imagine the same scenario with the baby and mom. Next time, you whisper under your breath, next time you will do better.Īnd it explains why many times, it is better for the seat to be chosen for us. But now, now you are stuck with the baby and the chatty mom. He was already curled up into his book and she would have watched movies. You should have chosen the middle seat a few rows up, between the older man and teenage girl. You quickly determine that, in retrospect, it’s easy to see where you went wrong. You easily imagine all the other seats you could have chosen and how nice it would have felt to sit in silence. You ask yourself, could it have ended differently? It pushes you back in time to that critical moment when you choose the seat next to the chatty mom and the baby. She has a lot to get off her chest.Īs soon as this happens your mind rewinds. And, it turns out the women to your right is a mom going to visit her child at college for the first time and she just wants to talk it out. This baby starts crying before the plane takes off. You pick a seat but you didn’t catch that there was a baby sitting right behind you. The other way this could end is if you have a less than peaceful flight. You open your laptop or your rest your eyes and before you know it, you’ve arrived at your final destination. You could sit down between two people and have a very peaceful flight. This makes your stereotyping even quicker and thus more offensive (if that’s possible). This whole process is made more difficult because everyone who is already seated is desperately trying to look away and avoid eye contact with you in fear that you’ll choose them. We scan for age, looks, weight, race and make quick judgments about seatmate compatibility that would put even the best tinder swiper to shame. No one is spared -you must find the most desirable people to squeeze between. There is no turning back now.Įach person in each row is evaluated. You take quick glances at first but then as you get halfway down the plane, you start stealing longer glances at potential seatmates with the realization you’ll have to make the decision very soon. It’s debatable, but we may be the very worst version of ourselves at this moment.Īs you’re walking down that airplane aisle, you start the scanning process. You need to choose the two people you are going to sit between. What happens next is an agonizing and rapid process of extreme stereotyping. The only thing left is a sea of middle seats. The aisle and the window seats are long gone at this point. See, the last 1/3rd of people boarding are destined to sit in a middle seat. Their decision is ‘ who do I want to sit by?’ It may seem to people who have not experienced the Southwest Airlines boarding process that the decision one must make is, ‘ where do I want to sit?’ Yet for the last 1/3rd of people boarding the plan, their decision is much deeper than that. Once you get on the plane, there is a big decision to make. If you have a low number you board first and if you have a high number you board last.ĭo not be mistaken though - the Southwest Airlines boarding process is much more than this initial lineup process. Instead, they assign you a pre-determined order in which you must board the plane. People get to pick their seats when flying Southwest Airlines.
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