Original Research Article
Year: 2015 | Month: August | Volume: 2 | Issue: 8 | Pages: 487-491
Sex as Factor in Salt and Pepper Passage: Updating the Research
Pat Minér
Professeur Principal Adjoint, École des Sciences Sociales et Communications, Université Collège du Québec, 350 Boulevard du Collège, Québec (Québec) J9X 5E5, Canada.
ABSTRACT
This paper reports a proposal to examine the factor of sex in salt passage. Eighty undergraduates (40 males, 40 females) complete questionnaire with snacks and drinks on hand and a salt shaker and a pepper shaker on the table. They are asked by another male or female who is ostensibly also completing questionnaire, but who is actually a confederate of the experimenter, to pass the salt or pepper. It is anticipated that all participants comply, but would be slower to respond to pepper than to salt and to someone of the same sex compared to someone of the sex opposite. Response times would be slowest when a male asked a male to pass the pepper. Implications for similarity theory and attraction theory are discussed and suggestions are made for the future research.
Key words: sex differences, salt and pepper passage.