As SEPTA-obsessed as we’ve been lately, we’ve been a little remiss in not talking more lately about the inherent romance of the regional rail during this time of year, what with the peak foliage and the Nick Drake on the headphones and whatnot. (Hey, can you blame us? A little Willie Brown is enough to ruin any “mood.”) But a reader points us to this piece in Slate about the psychology of mass transit. It cites a 1978 study done at Bryn Mawr College which proved once and for all that, as our dear reader put it, “people from the Main Line like to eyefuck each other/have never seen Taxi Driver“:

“Another paper, by Clark McCauley, et al., published in 1978 in Environmental Psychology and Nonverbal Behavior, looked at the overall willingness to make eye contact in a commuter train setting in a city environment (Philadelphia) and its suburbs. Commuters were more gaze-shy in the city (only 13 percent of passersby were willing in Philly, as opposed to 31 percent in Bryn Mawr). The authors attributed the results not to rudeness but to the overabundance of information available to process—as they put it, ‘interpersonal overload leads to social withdrawal.’”

Let me tell you something: “Interpersonal overload” also led to some hot John Updike books as well. Oh, to live again in those crushed-velvet, corduroy times.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 12:49 pm.