They also tried to gauge the queuers' devotion to U2.

And they found out that the relative position of the cutter didn't seem to matter.

"You're equally screwed if you get jumped in line one ahead or five ahead or 10 ahead. You are still set back the same," said Helweg-Larsen.

To her surprise she found that people took just as much offence at people who cut behind as in front.

She said that if people were acting in pure self-interest, they would only take offence to people who cut in front.

In fact, as expected, super-fans had a tendency to get more upset by friendly line intruders than less devoted fans.

"We found that more committed fans were much more upset about a variety of situations and in general had different attitudes," she said.