Barefoot at Breakfast Bar

[poppydog]

Originally Posted by NM posts

Maybe - I just think the results are interesting. I wanted to keep it as close to the description here to avoid that but of course in a facebook poll post I didn't include as many details. Maybe I should have copied the text of the post, but the results difference intrigues me


Poll question (also in the picture I uploaded upthread)

"Is it ok for customers to be barefoot at a hotel breakfast buffet? Hot topic"

--YES who cares
--NO it's repulsive

And I didn't even provide my own preference until I'd received 10 or so responses

I wonder if it's because I said "buffet" rather than "bar"

I have a friend who works for RTI in survey research, maybe I could get her to design a proper survey for us, but I think you might have a little bit of bias in your question and answers, both.

Think about it like a 5 point scale where you have the Strongly Disagree at one end and the Strongly Agree at the other end and in the middle you have Neutral. Your answer, "YES who cares" is actually kind of merging Agree and Neutral. If you left it at YES and NO w/o the modifiers that would have been more even-handed, or you could have said something like this:

YES - of course it's okay! It's natural!
WHO CARES - if they're not my feet, it doesn't bother me
NO - that's repulsive!

I am definitely not an expert, but with only the two answers and a strong emotion tied to one, "it's repulsive", but not the other, "who cares" you are tapping into something and maybe leading folks toward the stronger emotion. Plus, "repulsive" is very strong wording. There's also a psychological thing going on where if someone says something is "repulsive" (or another strong negative word) then as the reader (or IRL) you think, "gosh, they think that's repulsive and really really gross, I guess it could be kind of inappropriate." If you just had "YES, who cares" and "NO, that's inappropriate" as your answers they would be more equally weighted, but really you have the potential to bring unconscious bias into it when you add any modifiers.

Another thing to think about is the way you have worded your question, "Is it okay..." This implies that it may not be "okay" or may not be allowed by some larger entity — the hotel, local laws, societal norms. Better wording might be something like:

"If you saw someone at a hotel breakfast buffet with bare feet how would you feel?"
A. Great, bare feet are natural!
B. Don't care, whatever, not my feet
C. Grossed out, bare feet are repulsive and should not be allowed there.