Shopping cart test reveals: are you antisocial or super considerate?
Simple question: do you return your shopping cart to the line after doing your groceries? Or do you leave it in the parking lot? According to the internet and this American psychotherapist, the answer says everything about your personality.
Why would you put your shopping cart back in line with its friends? Sure, to get your shopping token or your hard-earned fifty cents back, but other than that? There’s no law requiring it, and you won’t get a punishment or fine if you leave your cart somewhere else. Still, everyone agrees that you’re supposed to return your cart to the place where you picked it up. According to the Shopping Cart Theory, which has been circulating online for a few months now, the extent to which you want to comply with this unwritten norm says something about your personality.
In a nutshell: people who return their carts are good people; those who leave them standing around are not.
I know what it’s like
According to people who return their carts, it’s a matter of respect. In response to the theory, Bekkah writes on Twitter: ‘I know what it’s like; I worked in stores for years. I don’t have to return the cart, but why wouldn’t I? I make someone else’s workday a little easier.’ Julia laughs at people who say they’re perfectly OK, but sometimes simply don’t feel like returning the cart. ‘That’s exactly the point! That you do it anyway, even when you don’t feel like it!’
Also throw rubbish in the street
Right on the nose, says psychotherapist Tati Silva. ‘You can tell what kind of personality someone has by seeing how that person behaves when asked to do something, such as returning a shopping cart, without any punishment or reward involved.’ She even suggests that people who don’t return their carts probably also throw rubbish, cigarette butts and chewing gum into the street. ‘Laughing when someone else falls, or not holding the door open for someone else, also falls into this category. There’s a good chance people don’t even realise they’re doing it; the selfish behaviour has become a habit. But you can change your behaviour—and improve your personality in the process.’
Bananas separated from the bunch
This shopping cart personality test can be expanded even further: putting misplaced groceries back randomly in the supermarket? Reading magazines from cover to cover and then putting them back? Taking an apple from the basket of children’s fruit? Pulling bananas off the bunch because you only need three? Taking a biscuit in the coffee corner, tasting all the cubes of cheese and not buying any cheese? An offer of three different products for a fixed price—and then choosing the three most expensive ones? Hoarding the last packs of pasta? A supermarket visit is actually one big personality test!
The shopping token keeps us in line
In the Netherlands, this shopping cart theory is difficult to test. We get fifty cents or a shopping token back when we neatly return the cart—and the question is whether that proves we’re all lovely, kind people or whether we’re actually antisocial but very frugal. Just look at the car park of a DIY store (free carts) or Ikea (same): sometimes it’s like slalom-driving between abandoned shopping carts.
Read also:
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