All the way across the country, people in Hawaii have a similar experience when they press the walk buttons at certain intersections in Honolulu, according to a 2004 Honolulu Advertiser article by Mike Leidemann, who noted that “pushing the button at 35 percent of all intersections (especially in Waikiki and other high-pedestrian areas) doesn’t do anything. The lights will change and the walk signs will come on at predetermined intervals, no matter what.”
Still, these statistics don’t stop pedestrians from continuing to lay on the button. Ed Chronicle, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Hawai‘i-Manoa whom Leidemann interviewed, explained why: “The buttons provide an expectation that something will happen, so you keep pressing even if you have a suspicion they don’t work. Besides, the cost to you is minimal, so you might as well do it.” He also stated, “It’s part of our evolution to do something and expect a result.”
The Door-Close Button
When someone enters an elevator and is in a hurry, the door-close button can seem like an irresistible shortcut to a quicker ride, but it’s an exercise in futility more often than not. In an eloquent April 2008 New Yorker article about elevators, Nick Paumgarten wrote that “elevator manufacturers have sought to trick the passengers into thinking they’re driving the conveyance. In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works … Elevator design is rooted in deception—to disguise not only the bare fact of the box hanging by ropes but also the tethering of tenants to a system over which they have no command.”
As Paumgarten indicates, it would appear that the primary function of the door-close button is not to act as a mechanical instrument, but rather to soothe its users psychologically. This graph from GraphJam attests to the mental shift that occurs as an elevator rider presses the button repeatedly: the more he does so, the shorter the time he believes it takes the doors to open—even though the actual door-close time remains constant.
