The idea that we’re morally obligated to help other people when they’re in trouble is deeply ingrained in our society, though in practice, it rarely works out that way. Our inclination to help another person can be influenced by everything from whether we think people are watching to how busy we are.
In 2010, New Zealand Star reporter Celeste Gorrell Antiss performed an experiment to see if people would be more inclined to help a blonde or brunette stranger carry some heavy boxes or assist her with car trouble. Though her sample size was small, limited to only a few encounters over a few days, the results showed that as a blonde, Celeste received help four times as often as she did as a brunette.
In another social experiment, brunette student Elyssa Goodman found that when she donned a blonde wig, it only took about 30 minutes for someone to call her a whore to her face. Goodman was wearing exactly the same clothes she’d worn the previous week—the only change was her hair color.
These aren’t cherry-picked examples, either. The so-called “blonde effect”—that is, the phenomenon of men openly treating women differently based on hair color—has been noted by many female bloggers. It’s even been studied by scientists, who have observed that blonde women, along with being far more likely to receive help from men, are paid more than other women in the same positions.
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