The “science” of locker rooms

Here’s the motivation for this post:

So, over the course of my internship with Zynga I’ve started to work out more. They give us a free membership to the World Gym right down the road, which can’t be beaten.

The gym, like any other, has a snack bar, a workout floor with machines and free weights, benches, and even a tanning area. None of those are what I’m talking about here though. Here, I’m going to look at one of the most important parts of any gym – the locker room.

For some reason, this doesn't seem right.

If you’re like me (and some terrible accident caused you to be this way), then you go into the locker room to change, and pick one of the more remote spots of the locker room, where you know that you can have to privacy while changing. Everything works out fine, right until you come back to change out of your sweaty workout clothes. That’s when chaos ensues.

Consider this your warning. If you go no further, I understand.

That perfect locker you carefully chose before is now the site of 5 half-naked men (or, I could assume, women). What happened? Maybe it was a coincidence. That’s what I thought. But, each day without fail, the same process repeated itself over and over again, just like someone who finally found a good move or two in an early Mortal Kombat game (crouching uppercut, anybody?).

Or, you know. This.

As an analytical guy, I decided to take a crack at why this could be happening. Disclaimer: if I don’t cite a number, it’s an estimate and could be wrong. Also, I have very little working knowledge of psychology, and if anyone could shed some psychological insights, I’d be grateful. Anyway, here goes.

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*Edit: So I think I just hit a bad week. Never-mind about this whole thing. Sorry all.