Free Money

I plan on going around Turlington Plaza for this assignment and see if there's a specific location that works best. It's a very central location and plenty of people walk through there constantly. Plus it will be easy to have somebody recording me and not have the people I'm talking to notice it. I'm going to go after people walking regularly and I'll also try going after people that are on their phones. They'll probably be open to talking to somebody and receiving free money. I'll probably start the conversation just by asking people if they have a minute and if I could talk with them. My idea to convince them to take the money is to tell them that I have a New Year's Resolution where every month I want to do something to brighten other people's day. It's a pretty simple explanation and believable. I think I'll be able to give away all five dollars. Who doesn't want free money?

After doing this exercise, I realized it's not as easy as it sounds. When you tell people you want to give them free money, people have very different reactions. I got three out of the five people that I asked to take the dollar. The two that didn't take the dollar seemed very weirded out about the whole process. They were very caught off guard. Even the people that did accept the dollar seemed like they thought it was weird. I think my initial prediction was wrong because I simply underestimated the assignment and thought it would be easy. It wasn't easy to make assumptions about the people I went after. I tried to go after people who seemed friendly but you can't really tell from a quick glance at somebody. In my video, I included one successful and one unsuccessful attempt.