If the average life expectancy of a human is 81 years old, then missing socks cost us a whopping R43 198 over our lifetime!
We all keep that ‘one of each sock’ in our wardrobes in the faint hope that one day the other will ‘turn up’. But why is it that even after a year of no shows, we insist on keeping those single socks? Probably because the moment you throw one of them out, the other is guaranteed to re-appear. But how did it come to be that we all suffer the same fate of forgetting, misplacing and losing our socks one at a time and almost never the same pair at the same time?
Luckily, leading scientists have unravelled the cause of one of life’s greatest mysteries by discovering the secrets to why our socks go missing in the wash. Their research has led them to devise a mathematical formula to predict the probability of ending up with odd socks after a washing load spinning cycle.
The study, commissioned by Samsung in light of the AddWash™ washing machine launch, surveyed 2,000 people living in Britain who were representative of global population groups and happy to discuss their dirty laundry in public.
Through a series of in-depth face to face interviews, it found that the participants lose an average of 1.3 socks each month (and more than 15 in a year), leaving them with numerous mismatches. If the average life expectancy is 81, these cleaning catastrophes lead to the equivalent of 1,264 lost socks each over a lifetime, costing the average study participant a whopping R43,198.21.
The formula, dubbed the ‘Sock Loss Index,’ is: (L(p x f) + C(t x s)) – (P x A).
In the formula, ‘L’ stands for ‘laundry size’ which is calculated by multiplying the number of people in the household (p) with the frequency of washes in a week (f).
‘C’ stands for the ‘washing complexity.’
This includes how many types of wash (t) households do in a week (darks and whites) multiplied by the number of socks washed in a week (s).
‘P’, or ‘positivity towards doing the laundry’ is subtracted from the sum of ‘L’ and ‘C’.
This is measured on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being: ‘Strongly dislike doing clothes washing’ to 5 which represents ‘Strongly enjoy doing clothes washing,’ the result of which is multiplied by ‘A’ which stands for ‘degree of attention’.
This is the sum whether washers check pockets, unroll sleeves, turn clothes the right way and unroll socks before a wash.
The formula revealed that the larger the wash, the higher the likelihood of losing socks and could even be used to work out the probability of losing a sock in a single week using this version: Prob= 0.38 + (0.005 x L) + (0.0012 x C) – (0.0159 x P x A).
The survey identified four psychological themes that may contribute to the loss of socks during washing. They are:
Diffusion of responsibility: Individuals involved in doing the washing assume someone else will take responsibility and consequently, no-one does, meaning clothes get lost.
Visual awareness, or heuristics: Heuristics are mental problem-solving shortcuts we use to save time and effort.
This means we look in the most obvious places for socks or a TV remote, for example, and if they are not found abandon all hope and assume they’re lost forever.
Confirmation bias: This occurs where we tend to believe something is true if we want it to be true.
So in this case, if we can’t see any odd socks, we convince ourselves there are no odd socks.
Behavioural errors of omission and commission: Human error accounts for many accidents, mistakes and mysteries, including in the wash cycle.
Omission is demonstrated when someone sees a sock on the floor, for example, and fail to pop it into a wash bin or washing machine, while ‘commission’ is when we do something we shouldn’t, like sneak a white sock into a dark wash, or hide it in a random place to avoid having to find its pair.
Chartered psychologist Dr Simon Moore and statistician Geoff Ellis applied science to socks in a bid to discover the factors which contribute to washday blues.
Many fanciful theories have been put forward for these laundry losses, including theft by gremlins, but the team’s work ultimately revealed:
- The main factors causing missing socks are the complexity of the washing load. The way the batches are divided up, based on whites, colours and different temperatures and the number of socks in each wash cycle.
- There are many practical reasons for sock loss. Research interviews found the common causes included items falling behind radiators or under furniture without anyone realising; stray items being added to the wrong coloured wash or separated from its matching sock; not being properly secured to a washing line or they are simply carelessly paired up.
Although it won’t help prevent the First World problem from happening, it may finally shed some light on why it happens in the first place.
by 