Before you read this answer this; how much do you think others influence you?

Berger, a professor at the Wharton School, researches and writes about natural language processing, word of mouth, influence, consumer behaviour, and why things catch on. All of which are subjects that interest me a lot, so do not get surprised if I write about his other books later on.

This book is about how others affect our behaviour in simple, subtle and surprising ways. And there are a lot of them.

Today, I will be sharing the ways I found the most interesting in the book. These are;

• How familiarity affect attraction?

• Why people conform instead of getting what they want?

• Our drive for differatiation

• How social influence shapes motivation?

Let‘s begin with a small introduction.

Introduction to social influence

We all think we are alone in a crowd of sheep. But whether we are or not is a different story.

So what is social influence?

It is the scientific definition that explains how our social interactions shape our personalities, decisions and behaviours.

In the book, Berger states that 99% of the decisions we make, whether consciously or unconsciously, have been influenced by others.

That might initially sound scary but when you think about it, we can accept that our thoughts and decisions are a collection of everything we are exposed to; from conversations we have to information we consume.

Berger also adds that we can notice when our friends or family is being influenced by others but not ourselves.

One reason can be, he says, that being influenced is seen as a negative thing. We think we need to be original and live above influence. Even when being influenced is a positive thing, we seem to not accept that we have been influenced. But according to him, we are wrong.

One reason why we were attracted to our partners is; they influenced us by their presences.

Want to make a happily married friend angry with you? Try suggesting that they might have been equally happy with someone else.

We all love our partners for better or worse, with their imperfections, and it is tough to imagine ourselves with someone else.

When we look for a partner, we all look for a soulmate, our better half, our other sides of the coin. We all want to believe that we are princes with a glass slipper searching for our Cinderella, or we are Cinderellas waiting for our prince to find us. It is a romantic but an unrealistic story. 

Statistics, however, tell the actual story. According to the book, 33% of Americans meet their spouses at one of two places; work or school. Berger admits that this is not surprising since we spend a lot of time in work or school, and he puts it as “it’s tough to fall in love with someone you never got the chance to meet”. But he argues that if there is only one person, one princess/prince for us, how lucky we must be to find that only person in the same school or workplace? 

That’s when he explains a study.

In a psychology class, at the end of the semester, students were asked to participate a short survey. In the survey they were expected to compare the attractiveness of 4 women (labeled A,B,C and D) with questions like; how attractive do you find each woman, would you become friends with her, do you think you would enjoy spending time with her etc.

None of the four women were distinctive and the only difference between these women were, that they attended the same class with the students for different amounts of time, and they did not interact with any of the students. 

Woman A attended 0 classes, B attended 5, C to 10 and D to 15.

I‘m sure you can see where this is going. The woman who showed up to most classes was seen as more attractive.

If you think she might just be more attractive than the others; they also made another survey with another class whom never seen these women, to create a control group, and found out that four women were found equally attractive. 

More importantly, when the students were asked, whether seeing this woman more frequently shaped their decision, they said; of course not.

—

This phenomenon is not only restricted to human interaction. The more we see someone or something, the more we build a trust for it.

That’s why creating familiarity is also one of the main strategies of advertising. Brands spend incredible amounts of money, just to increase their exposure, link their brands with moods, feelings and even catchphrases from daily life. The more we are exposed to their brands; the more we trust them and select their products compared to others.

Why do others’ actions affect us? The power of conformity

Imagine looking for a parking spot. After driving around for what seems like forever, you find a whole side of a street free of cars. Success! But excitement quickly turns to concern: If no one else parked here, maybe I shouldn’t either. There might be street cleaning or some special event that makes parking there illegal. 

Every day, with or without realisation, we conform with other members of our society. 

We do this when we check reviews of the restaurant we want to go, when we check blogs to plan our next trip or when we want to select preschools to send our children. We want to know if others were happy about the decision we intend to make. It is much easier than trying out many restaurants to find which ones we like or exploring a city without any information.

By conforming with others, we save time by accessing information faster and guarantee our positive experience. It reduces the risk and help us make better decisions. It is definitely a useful shortcut. 

However, Berger states that it is more than just method of information gathering but a behaviour. 

He states we also conform with others to fit in, to be a part of the group. Most of us want to be accepted if not by everyone at least by the people we care about. And if we don’t conform with the group, we stand out and there is a possibility that we can be kicked out of this group. This possibility of course creates a social pressure.

For example, imagine you are at a dinner with your new boss and colleagues. It was a hot and long day and you really would like to have a beer.

However, while waiter takes the orders, you realise none of your colleagues ordered an alcoholic drink. Now it is your turn, waiter asks what you want. You know you want a beer but you also don’t feel secure about your decision anymore. You feel like you should pass. There is no law saying you can’t drink a beer alone, yet you feel weird ordering one.

According to the book most people decide to pass on the beer and go along with the group. They decide to be a part of the group rather than stand out. 

We don‘t always feel that way though. Let‘s see when we decide to  stop conforming and differentiate ourselves from the crowd.

The drive for difference

Most of us don’t want to be the only one doing something, but if too many people start doing it, we go ahead and do something else. When kale or quinoa becomes too trendy, there’s a backlash. And when everyone starts talking about how dots are the new stripes, some of the initial dot wearers move on. Even if it means giving up something they like because others like it as well.

When too many people start following the group, it gets crowded.

“Snob effects” are described as some cases when the more other people who own or use something, the less interested people are in buying or using it. Again, it is a practical behaviour. Naturally when demand increases, queues get longer, tickets get more expensive and restaurants get booked up. 

But Berger argues that it is more complicated than that.

He states; if we are early to find something or use something we get attached to it, and when it gets more populated and others are joining, it makes us feel less unique and less special.

Uniqueness is important for us because it creates rewards. Being taller gives you advantage at some sports, and being attractive gets you more dates.

But that is not all.

Through differentiation, we categorize everyone and more importantly we define the self and find who we think we are amongst billions of people, according to Berger.

Similarly, he continues, differentiation is one of the reason why teenagers act like they do. As children are an extension  of their parents until they are 11-12 years of age, they start differentiating themselves from their parents. That‘s why they start dating bad boys and roll their eyes when they pick them up.

They just start discovering who they really are.

If everyone were identical, it would be hard to have any sense of self. Where would that self start and others end? Differentiation helps establish a sense of identity. Delineating both who someone is and isn’t.

For example if someone introduces themselves as a professor, that puts them in a category in our heads. We might think that they like reading and enjoy thinking for example. And this information also tells us that they have different values and interests from the people who don‘t introduce themselves as professors.

At the same time simply saying I’m a human being, doesn’t provide much information. 

How come having an audience can make performing tasks better and worse at the same time?

Having others around improves performance (e.g. speed and accuracy) on easy, well-learned tasks but decreases on unfamiliar and thus more difficult tasks.

Others makes us faster tying our own shoes, but slower at tying a bow tie (at least for most of us who don’t tie one often). 

I’m sure we all experienced the both sides of this phenomenon. 

I personally have. In the last year, in addition to my favorite workout type, running, I have started body weight training. Even though, I lifted weights before, I struggled to move my body weight around.

It was tough to learn (still is) but when I look back at my progress, I made the biggest steps when I was alone at the gym rather than all fit people around me.

At the same time, I had no trouble being with other faster runners around me in races. In fact, I (and most runners) achieved my personal record in a race.

Berger states that there are few reasons for this to happen;

1. Others are distracting.
   They take our attention away from our task. 

2. Others increase impression management.
   We want to look good to others, so we try harder.

3. Others increase physiological arousal
   Our heart rate quickens, our blood pumps faster and our body readies for action. 

These factors, according to Berger, lead us to be better on tasks that are well rehearsed or we are natural at. They allow us to get competitive, push our limits that we know about and as a result we perform better.

However, for the tasks that are more difficult and needs more of our attention, it leads us to overthink the whole situation. We worry about failing, we become insecure thus we perform worse.

How can all this help us?

Now that we are aware  how social influence work, we can harness its power and use it to achieve our goals. Berger claims, influence is a tool, if we can understand it we can use it.

For example, next time we are in a restaurant, we can be the first so we can get what we want. When we want to learn a skill, we can first practice it in private and then we can perform them in public. Or if we want to improve on a skill we can find a peer for us in order to motivate ourselves further.

That‘s it. As I said in introduction, this is a subject that I enjoy to read a lot. And if it interested you as well, I would definitely recommend you to check this book out. And more importantly, if you know books like this, recommend me any time.

I am again closing with the quote of the week. This one is from the book itself and I think it suits very well to the subject.

You can’t be a nonconformist if you don’t drink coffee.

-South Park