If I told you that people’s behavior is heavily influenced by social factors, you’d agree. You see it all around you, every day.
But if I asked you if you felt influenced by what others do and what society expects of you, you’d likely disagree. In fact, this has been borne out repeatedly in social psychology research.
Doesn’t make sense, right? It’s like the cognitive bias known as illusory superiority, where most people consider themselves above average in intelligence and ability, when of course that’s not how “average” works.
In short, people could see social influence affecting others’ behavior, but not their own. This is the topic of the aptly-named Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior by Wharton School professor Jonah Berger.
We are all, in fact, heavily influenced by social factors. We just can’t easily detect that influence on ourselves. Here’s an example from the book.
For extra credit, students in a University of Pittsburgh psychology class were shown photos of four women and asked to rate the attractiveness of each. Unbeknownst to the students, the four women were plants who had attended the class on varying occasions.
The woman who had attended the class the most was rated the most attractive. Second place attended the second most frequently. Same for third place. Last place had never shown up for class at all.
Maybe this was just a fluke, in that the women were actually that relatively attractive. Nope — another group outside of the class rated the four women equally.
Put simply, the more we are exposed to people, the more we like them. It’s no wonder that most people find their “soul mate” at work or school, when it’s really just the influence of repeated exposure:
- The idea that mere exposure increases liking may seem strange at first, but it has actually been shown in hundreds of experiments. Whether considering faces in a college yearbook, advertising messages, made-up words, fruit juices, and even buildings, the more people see something, the more they like it. Familiarity leads to liking.
Given the proliferation of “social media marketing,” you can bet many are studying Berger’s book for new tactics. Perhaps it’s smart to understand the power of this invisible influence on your decisions in order to make better ones?
Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior
Keep going-
Brian Clark
Further
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further: sharing
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