Tip, but what for?

I learned several things coming to this country and one of my quickest lessons related to tipping. In many countries, it is customary for patrons to leave monetary gratuities, but in America, tipping seems to have reached plague proportions.\nAccording to a report in ,i>The Christian Science Monitor, there are over 35 professions in this country where tipping is expected. It equates to a $28 billion industry.\nThe origins of the word "tip" are debated, but the most popular opinion is that it comes from patrons of eighteenth-century English taverns who would leave coins before ordering "To Insure Promptitude." This might explain the acronym TIP, and would also coincide with many people's belief that tipping encourages good service.\nBut what if I was to tell you that tipping has little to do with good service? What if I said tipping practices actually reflect more about the ego and insecurity of consumers, or the sex and physical attractiveness of the service worker, than anything relating to service?\nMichael Lynn, an associate professor of consumer behavior and marketing at the Cornell University School of Hotel Management, has been studying tipping for the last 20 years. "Bill size allows me to explain 70 percent of the variability in tip amount," he told The New York Times, "less than two percent of the variability can be explained by how the diner rates the service."\nWhen tipping customs around the world are compared, countries with the most extroverted and neurotic citizens were also the biggest tippers. The U.S. topped the list in both categories. \nLynn explained his findings to CNN: "Extroverts are outgoing, dominating, social people -- and tipping is an incentive for the server to pay you attention. Neurotics are prone to guilt and generalized anxiety -- maybe they tip more because of guilt over status differences between themselves and the server."\nAttractive waitresses earn significantly larger tips than both less attractive waitresses and waiters in general. Back in 1984, April Crusco and Christopher Wetzel published what was to become a well-known study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. They found a waitress who touched her customers, whether male or female, when asking how their meal was, raised her tips from 11 percent to 14 percent.\nThe alternative to tipping is a European style built-in service charge. The most common objection to replacing the tip is that it would reduce the incentive to provide good service. But the increase in tips is so small that Lynn says "most servers won't be able to detect improved tips as a consequence of excellent service." Indeed, when surveyed, 50 percent of waiters and waitresses saw no relationship between the service they gave and resulting tips.\n So, what exactly are we tipping for?\n Many service workers are unable to live off their wages. They rely on tips, which can make up 40 to 70 percent of their income, to bridge the gap.\nApparently then, we are picking up the bill for employers who fail to adequately pay their workers. This seems to be the primary reason why tipping exists, at the scale that it does, in America. An often-reported argument by restaurateurs against wage increases is that it would raise the cost of food, customers would stop coming and businesses would consequently struggle. This doesn't seem to be the case in Australia, or many countries in Europe -- what makes America so different?