One of the components of the fourdimensional behavioral model proposed is “social influences”. Now,
social influences can be divided in two categories: (1) peer influences and (2)
authority influences.
In order to get a better
understanding of the differences between the two types of social influences we
should go back a bit to the structure of human society. From its early forms, (pre)human society was hierarchical. Now, don’t
think about the “classical pyramid” of hierarchical structures since our
distant ancestors were not educated in MBA programs. The essence of hierarchy is
that not every member of a society is perfectly equal to other members of the
same society. Reasons for this are numerous and include age, physical strength,
dominance, gender etc.
To make a long story short, let’s
just say that hierarchical societies are
more efficient at achieving the ancestral evolutionary macro-goals of survival
and successful reproduction.
A hierarchical structure, by its nature has two dimensions: horizontal
and vertical. On the vertical we have the actual hierarchy such as “Master –
Servant”. On the horizontal we have relationships based on “equality” in status
and competition for higher status.
The vertical dimension or the
power of authority will be addressed in a later post. Now I would like to focus on the horizontal dimension.
Apparently the horizontal dimension presents a paradox, namely that relationships are characterized by both
equality of status, solidarity and competition for higher status. To better
understand how these things work, let’s make a leap of imagination and picture
ourselves as “proletarians” in a large scale factory.
We are proletarians, you, me, and
all the others around us. We are somehow all equal in status because we all
have to answer to the (oppressive) management. At the same time we exhibit
solidarity in the sense that we are proud to be proletarians and we go on
strikes together to fight for our rights. Moreover, we attend union meetings
and have similar leisure (such a bourgeois term) activities such as frying
burgers and drinking beer. However, not everything is smooth and nice in our proletarian
world. Some of us want to show that they are better skilled than others and
compete for the “employee of the month award”; others want to exhibit their
leadership skills and run for chairman of the labor union; while others simply
want to be the most popular in the group. All these inner wishes lead to
competition for status.
Despite being in competitive
relationships, we have a need to belong to a group, which in the aforementioned
example is the “Proletariat”. In an earlier post I have explained why we needto belong to a group.
In order to belong to a group we (have to) conform to the group’s
social norms. These norms can be formal or informal and just as a hint,
informal norms are usually more powerful than formal ones.
Conformity to group (informal) norms was demonstrated by psychologist Solomon
Asch in the 1950 in a series of experiments which have been informally named
Asch’s lines experiment.
To briefly describe the
experiment take a look at the next picture. The question asked in the
experiment was a trivial one: “With which of the right hand lines is equal to the
left hand line?” Unless you are blind or have a serious seeing problem (and not
wear your glasses) the answer is clear as daylight.
Your answer is “A” and correctly
so. But there is a bit more to this experiment than just testing one’s visual
ability.
Imagine that you are in a room
with another five people who are as far as you know just like you (peers). Every
person gives the answer out-loud and you are the last to respond and your peers’
answers are as follows:
Person 1 Answers: “B”;
Person 2 Answers: “B”;
Person 3 Answers: “B”;
Person 4 Answers: “B”;
Person 5 Answers: “B”;
Now, it is time to give your
answer. What will it be “A” or “B”? Now,
with you in front of the screen you might say that for sure you will say “A”
(which by the way is correct, while “B” is not), but when in a room with five other people just like you all saying “B”
there is a good chance that you will conform and give the erroneous answer “B”.
There are numerous versions of
this experiment and what they have shown is that about 75% of people conform at least once and give the wrong
answer that the other participants were instructed to give. There are some
nuances to the conclusions of the experiment. First, people conform only when the answers are spoken out-loud; when
asked to write down the answer virtually no one gives the wrong (group) answer.
Second, if at least one person out of
the previous five gives the correct answer, then the last participant (who is
the only real participant) will not conform to the group’s norm.
One particular criticism of this
experiment is that it is the product of social norms of the US society in the
1950s. The counterargument suggests that students (who were the participants in
the experiment) in the 1950 were more likely to conform than students in the
1990s since there have been consistent changes in the society overall. My
opinion is that this criticism has some value in the sense that in today’s
society there is a larger variety of “norms” that we conform to. For example
non-conformists that buy “apple” products do not conform to the “norm of
majority”, but conform to the norms of a minority. At the same time, conformity
to social norms still exists.
Another characteristic of the
experiment is that the correct answer is
obvious. I believe that the main strength of the results comes from this very
feature. Everyone sees and knows the correct answer and still in some cases
people give the wrong answer which is the social norm. In the real world, however, we encounter numerous situations in which
the “correct answer” is not straight-forward.
In day to day life we have to
handle many situations which are at least slightly ambiguous and going with the
group can be a good rule of thumb. One example of such an ambiguous situation
is the “bystander effect” described in Despite 30 People Witnessed a Crime No One Intervened… It’s Not DESPITE; It’s BECAUSE! (1)
The bystander effect is an extreme example and (fortunately) we
encounter less dramatic ambiguous situations in which we go with the group. Let’s
see some simpler examples.
First, you might have noticed
that on websites there is a “facebook”
area where you see who “Likes” the page. The script behind is designed in
such a way that you see in the list your
“Facebook friends” who like the page… this is well designed since if you
see that some of your “peers” (or at least people you know) “like” the page you
will be more likely to “give a Like” to the page. The unconscious reasoning
goes something like this: “If my friends like this, then there might be
something interesting here for me too”.
Second, if you ever shopped on
Amazon or searched a movie on imdb, then you might have noticed the area that
says “People who bought this also bought…”.
In this case, the only thing that you have in common with the group is that you
and they have a common interest (bought something). Despite this very weak
link, these recommendations have the desired effect, namely to at least look at
another product (and sometimes buy it).
Third, in many advertisements
there is a mention of “X thousands /
millions satisfied customers”. This is another way to say that “The social
norm is to buy our product” and it is aimed at making you conform to this norm.
Fourth, in both on-line and
off-line commercials a certain product is mentioned as “Popular choice” which has the same meaning as the “X million
satisfied customers”.
Fifth, especially in the on-line
environment, but not exclusively, you can find “user ratings” which are another form of establishing a norm. The unconscious
reasoning goes like this: “If other people say this is a 8.5 (on a scale from 1
to 10) product, then it must be reasonably good”. Moreover, some websites also
say how many evaluations have been made. The more people say something is good
or bad, the stronger the norm is.
Up to now, I gave a lot of
examples related to marketing, but conformity
to social norms has by far many more applications.
One of my favorite examples of
using conformity to social norms is in the public transport system in
Rotterdam. Everyone checks in and out of the tram (bus) and thus not doing so
(free-riding) is diminished by the social pressure. This is not the only factor
that influences honest behavior, but it is one of them.
What we have to be aware of is
that conformity to social norms has a
very serious “Dark side”. We know that people conform to social norms (or
in other words go with the group). What is essential is which norm people conform to.
I come from a country which (still)
has serious issues with corruption and at least part of this phenomenon is
based on social norms. Of course the formal norm (law) is against corruption,
but there still are informal norms which go for corruption and not against it. I
will not expand this topic since it is not my purpose to make an analysis on
corruption behavior. The key is that conformity
to norms does not always mean that people conform to the “right” norm.
Before ending this post, I’d like
to make one final mention on conformity. People conform to the norms of groups
that they want to belong to. If we take a person and place her in a group that
she dislikes, most likely she will not conform to the group’s norm. In fact it
is very likely that the person will actually act in the opposite way than the
norm suggests.
Here’s a video about the Asch’s
Lines experiment
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