Last weekend, I saw an entertaining rerun of a MythBusters segment on the Science Channel. The episode is 10 years old (Season 16, Episode 5), but I hadn't seen it before. I thought the results were surprising enough that it was worth posting about.
In the segment, Kari Byron went under-cover in a coffee shop on three different days in order to test the myth that women with larger breast sizes in the service industry tend to receive larger tips from their male customers.
According to evolutionary theory, the idea is that women with "full cleavage" signal that they have better reproductive potential, and men who find this trait attractive tend to be more successful at reproducing their genes. After millions of years of evolution, this attraction spreads far and wide, and it influences the ways that men behave.
So, here's how the MythBusters experiment went down.
Kari wore the same clothes, wig, and contact lenses every day, worked the same shift at the coffee shop, and gave the same level of service on all three days.
On day 1, she worked the shift with a D bra size, on day 2, she had her chest taped down to a B bra size, and on day 3, she wore DDD prosthetics.
And what did they find?
For day 1 to day 2, when she changed from a D to a B bra size, there was no difference in tips. So, after two days, the myth was under threat of being busted. But then came day 3.
From day 2 to day 3, when her bra size went from B to DDD, her tips went up dramatically. So, we can say that this myth was confirmed. In fact, and not surprisingly, tips from men increased by about 30%.
But here's the surprise ending. Women outspent the men. Kari's tips went up by 40% among the female customers on the day that she was sporting the DDD fake breasts.
I'm not sure how evolutionary biology would explain that. 😉
If you're interested, here's a YouTube summary clip:
Of course, this is just a single experiment, so take it with a grain of salt, but it was an interesting outcome, anyway.
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