People are awful, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences seemed to suggest this week: We're perfectly okay to be miserable as long as no one else appears to be happier than we are.
The study done by business professors Michael Norton of Harvard and Katherine DeCelles of the University of Toronto concluded that, if there's a first-class section on a plane, passengers are 3.8 times more likely to behave poorly. That level of passenger rowdiness doubles again if those in economy class have to walk through first class on the way to their seats.
This is a bit like one of those "fairness studies" where, when a monkey completes the task of handing a scientist a rock, he's rewarded with a slice of cucumber. Monkey is delighted with his slice of cucumber –– until he sees the monkey next to him get a grape for completing the same task.
A grape! A whole grape! Vegetable-rewarded monkey then loses his monkey mind at this injustice. Cucumber is thrown. Then rocks.
In one case, monkey picks up a rock, studies it, then tests it by tapping it against the glass before trying again.
"Is it my work that's the problem?" monkey seems to be asking. "Do I not deserve a grape?" his eyes say.
I've always sensed that too much of monkey's self-worth, his identity, is tied to the crudité selection at hand, but clearly there is a monkey wage gap at play here.
Like the disparity in airline seating, this visible inequity can build in otherwise reasonable simians a burning desire to throw snacks at one another. Some of us want to throw pieces of cucumber, some of us want to throw packages of smoked almonds – the root cause of our rage is much the same.
The authors "posit that the modern airplane is a social microcosm of class-based society, and that the increasing incidence of 'air rage' can be understood through the lens of inequality."
Their perfectly reasonable suggestion is that we recognize the "importance of considering the design of environments – from airplanes to office layouts to stadium seating – in understanding both the form and emergence of anti-social behaviour."
This makes sense, but I'm not sure hiding the grape-eating monkeys who sit in first class is the answer.
First of all, there are a few things we could do to improve the lot of those of us in cucumber-class that don't involve adding more drapes to planes. It's already like a cover of Architectural Digest in there and sometimes window treatments just aren't the answer.
For starters, I think we should charge for carry-on and let everyone check their baggage for free. No, put down those rocks, please, monkeys. Hear me out.
Trying to game the carry-on system has become an international pastime. I'm sorry, sir, but if that hockey bag with what appears to be a net and half the team in it is regulation carry-on, I'll eat the hat, fanny-pack, computer bag, handbag and diaper bag carried on by the woman seated next to me.
This woman-with-a-diaper-bag on my last flight had no baby, by the way. Which is unfortunate, because I am that passenger who wants to sit next to your screaming baby on a flight. Spare me your complimentary excuse-for-headphones, airlines. There should be a box you check when you book your flight: (a) I want to stick niblets in my ears and be subjected to an Anne Hathaway vehicle; or (b) I want a sense of purpose – pass me a howling infant.
I do, of course, want to get where I'm going. I've been on several flights where takeoff was delayed while exasperated flight attendants ran around the plane attempting to stow baggage as if they were on some kind of weird seventies game show.
Once or twice the pilot has come on and chided everyone that the plane wasn't going anywhere until homes had been found for everything. This meant that all the baggage got hauled from the overhead, pulled out from under the seats, and then put back in the overhead and under the seats in a different order to see if that worked out.
It must be like trying to fly a goddamn Rubik's Cube, and all of this is done so that when we land we can all stand in the aisles for 40 minutes and hit each over the head with "Dr. Livingstone, I presume"-sized trunks as we pull them down.
Check your damn suitcases, people. Surely it's better to stand in the open space by that miracle of technology that is the luggage carousel than to duck fearfully in the cramped aisle of a plane, surrounded by our own waste, debris and personal effects.
It's like war in the trenches the minute the plane lands. It's nightmarish; in contrast, who doesn't love the loud beep of the carousel as it rolls into action and the first bag tumbles down the chute and begins its lap of victory?
That's why they call it a "carousel," people. It is an adorable fair ride for adults, the last place where the painted ponies still go round and round for us.
There's camaraderie by the carousel. So much so that I think that, not only should we stop letting people take their hulking great bags on the plane for free, we should stop serving them free liquor on planes as well.
Down rocks there, monkeys.
Liquor on planes, like the carry-on permissiveness, often ends badly. Allow no more booze and casket-sized bags on planes, but open a nice tiki bar at the carousel. Everyone would want to be there.
As for instituting a social revolution on our jets – and, as a relatively small woman, I can say that, if there were ever a place for "From each according to his ability, to each according to his knees, do they fit?" it's on a plane – I still have to say: Not so fast.
A more careful reading of this air-rage study, coupled with a more cynical view of humanity, suggests that redesigning planes may not be the answer.
All we need to do to make people behave is add a third metaphorical monkey to the mix.
Third metaphorical monkey would get the airline travellers' equivalent of chunks of zucchini – the devil's vegetable. Zucchini Class monkey would put the World Traveller Plus monkeys, with their grapes, in perspective for all us riotous monkeys stuck in economy.
You can see where I'm going with this, can't you? Airlines should put one guy at the front of every plane, wedge him into one of those tiny school desks, put his legs in an actual bench vice, and then hire someone to poke him with a stick over and over during the flight.
They should make seeing this guy an option on the inflight entertainment system. That way, when a passenger starts to feel upset about his lot in flight, he need only tap the icon of a crying stick figure in a box, the one next to that flight-tracking page, and all will seem entirely right with the world.