That Way Others Get Us to Follow Them

Everyone wants to get another drink, except you.  But you get one anyway.  Why?  Do you always follow others, or are you the one others follow?  How much of your behavior, preferences, choices every day are your own, and how many are because you are following others?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

It's That Popular Podcast. Mitch Prinstein is a psychology professor at UNC Chapel Hill and the former Chief Science Officer at the American Psychological Association. Aaron Keck is a political scientist and award-winning radio host. Together, they discuss the popular and not so popular quirks of human behavior. Welcome into That Popular Podcast. Now, here's Mitch and Aaron.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

So I'm going on a cruise, and I'm glad that we're recording this before I go on the cruise so that I don't have to worry about this particular fun obligation that this is already taken care of because there's going to be a lot of fun obligations on this cruise. So Brad and I are going on a cruise to the Panama Canal. It's going to be super fun. And we are going with a group of people that we met on the last cruise. And Brad refers to these people, and now this is a great phrase. He refers to them as good time Charlies. Oh, I know some of those. Such a useful phrase because I say it, and even if you've never heard it before in your life, you know exactly the sort of person that I mean. Like we're here for a good time. It's going to be awesome. And when you're with a group of good, if you're with one good time Charlie, you can you can manage the one good time Charlie. When you're in a group of eight good time Charlies, they are managing you. And they are managing you towards having a good time with a capital T and a Capital G and a capital I with an umlaut over it. It's that level of good time.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

You know, I I might have once upon a time been a good time Charlie. I think as I get older, like good time Charlie is defined more like, let's stand up and like walk across the room like it used to be. Like more like, come on, let's go. Like, let's go out. Let's do this. Like, you know. But I I might have been one at some point.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

I can't I can't remember when I would have been one. I'm always, I've always ever been the one that's been dragged along by the good time charge. And I'm very happy to be dragged along. I'm never the leader. I'm always the leady.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Yeah. Wait, are you are you always happy? Or is there some point where you're like, okay, I really am done. You want to rest.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

100%. Yeah. I'm actually pretty good now in my in my dotage. I'm pretty good now about, okay, I personally have hit my limit. I'm going to step away, and you all have a good time for the next hour and a half. Yeah. And Brad will continue to have a good time for the next hour and a half because he's a year and a half younger than me.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

But in that year and a half, he will know that's a critical 18 months of youth and vigor.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

He will know dotage sooner or later. But but there are definitely times when we're out with the group and it's like, oh, let's just have one more. And it's like, all right, yeah, I'm having a good time. Yeah. I'm having a good time. I'm feeling kind of charlie. I will I will have one more.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

So let me ask you like, so how much do you feel that you're being, you know, cajoled into doing something you you pretty much don't want to do, or versus like, well, I was kind of on the fence of doing it or not. And sure, I'll just do it anyway.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

For me, it's something that I'm on the fence. For me, it's something that objectively, like in a vacuum, it's something that I would want to do. And the only reason I don't want to do it in this particular moment is because I've been up all day and I'm tired, or my bandwidth has been exceeded because I'm I kind of have to be an extrovert for my job, but I am introverted enough that at a certain point, like you start to drain. Or just alcoholically, if I've had three drinks, the fourth is gonna be my limit. And if you're asking me to have a fifth one, that's that is that is a reach. I'm not always gonna say no to a fifth one, but I will almost always say no to a fifth one. And if I ever say yes, I regret it the next morning.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's some lone neuron in the front of your brain, like, no, no matter what they're saying and doing, don't have that fifth one.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

He's got a pith helmet on. That's right. Like, I will stand alone against you, army of orcs.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

So I'm curious, and I'm asking questions about this because there's actually like a whole thing about how you know peer influence occurs. But I've got some questions here.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

How much is it you are being kind of moved towards, you know, let's have another round, let's go out, let's go to another club, versus just things like, hey, um, I want Chinese, I want Italian, and then someone maybe more like, no, we're going to Greek and here's why. And like, and everyone just goes along with them. Like, is it all decisions or the Good Time Charlie's mostly about drinking and partying?

SPEAKER_01 4:37

And I think for me, when I'm the leady, when I'm the lead, it's it's the Good Time Charlie decisions. In the in your other example, I think just as often I'm the one who will butt into a crowd of people that can't make up their minds on something and say, okay, but for serious, we have to do this. Yeah. Yeah. And we're gonna do this, and it's gonna be fine, and you're gonna have an amazing evening. Yeah. I will do that then.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

What are some like trends or things that you think you have fallen into doing that you look back later and you're like, why did I do that? Everyone was doing that. Like, I'll give you an example. I in high school, I poured Clorox directly onto my jeans to make them look like cool acid wash jeans. A thing that no one would understand unless you grew up with, you know, I know exactly what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

But yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

I mean, now people like my kids are like, wait, what? You're you know, but no, no, no. I absolutely did that. I I ruined pairs of jeans to make them look acid washed. That only makes sense if you knew that back then everyone was wearing this, and that was like the thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

Are there things that you're looking back and you're like, yeah, I was pretty influenced by stuff?

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Swearing in high school for me. Really? Yeah. I never swore at all until I got to high school and I fell on with a group of friends who oh my grandpa didn't like them at all. Uh he didn't like one of them because he had green hair. Like he had his own reasons. Like these guys were fine, but they did swear a decent amount. And so I started doing that. Yeah. And I was kind of sweary for like a good couple of years before I grew myself out of that. Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

Yeah. Well, so you know, this is a huge, huge topic that, like, actually so many areas of social science have spent a lot of time on. I didn't realize that. Like in psychology, there's a lot of people interested in this because how we're influenced by peers. We we care about this for kids because kids are, of course, especially in adolescents, there's that time when they're more likely to be influenced by peers, and there's some biological reasons for that. But in health psych, there's a huge interest in this because like smoking or drinking, or you know, just as you're saying, like a lot of those risk behaviors tend to be influenced. You know, social psychologists or criminologists are really interested because um the crime that you commit after you leave jail is more likely to be your cellmate's crime than your prior crime. Really? Apparently. Yeah. Because there's that kind of way in which we're influenced. And then in schools, you know how like sometimes schools will put all the kids doing really well in math in one class and then average, and then the kids maybe a little bit more troublemaker.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

Turns out that makes everything worse because you're grouping together all the kids having a hard time with behavior together. So that's changed. So educational people are just an impure influence. Everyone political scientists because we we have the same political views and voting patterns as who lives on our block.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

Not just because we all move there. So all of this comes down to questions that people started asking in like the 60s, which was is it it's called homophily. Is it the case that we are similar to others because we have selected people who are already similar to us on those dimensions?

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

Which they call selection effects. Or is it the case that we are similar to others because once we are near and close to others, we adopt their behaviors, thoughts, swearing habits, drinking patterns, you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

How and how much of it might be one versus the other if it's you, like in this behavior, in that behavior, in that situation.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Because the correct answer is it's both. And it's and it's a feedback loop, right? Like you gravitate towards people who you find an affinity with in the first place, and then you just affinity each other to where you get closer and closer together the more time you spend together, right? Like is what I assume it would be.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

Yes. But let's talk about the good time charlies. Because do you so so researchers have actually said, yeah, but here's the thing. Let's say you're a five beer a night drinker, and someone, you know, you you've got like four friends, you've got two five drink a night drinkers, and you've got two two drink a night drinkers. So do you end up with the average? Do you all end up drinking the average of what the group of the group or do you all go to the highest? Oh. So you all rise to the five drinker.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

And I love that you never present, does any everyone reduce down to the two? It's even an option. That's not happening. No.

unknown 9:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

So what is it? Like what what what's the result?

SPEAKER_02 9:24

Well, so what's happened is that the research shows that we tend to egg each other on and we're more likely to be influenced towards the more, you know, the the higher, the higher threshold. Or but but really we tend to get increasingly charly. Yeah, we get increased charlie. And we get increasingly polarized, we get increasingly kind of um more radical because when you're with well, there's a whole there's a whole thing about why we're influenced by others, but just but for now the question is do we get influenced by others? And yeah, we pick friends that are similar to us, and then we all get more on that quality together.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Interesting. Yeah. The recidivism is the fascinating part for me. Because I because you know, like if you anyone who has studied incarceration and the after effects of it, like will tell you first first out of their mouth that the recidivism rate for people in jail or prison is super high. Like people get out of prison and a huge percentage of them will commit crimes and wind up right back in prison again, which says a lot about the prison system and how and whether it works, and let's talk about that. But I didn't realize that the recidivism is whatever it is your cellmate. Yeah. That's fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

So it's but it it's just interesting. Like, you know, if you think about it, I mean, this happens even when you're a teenager. Like, why did you start having well whatever drinking or smoking or drugs or whatever anyone might have done or just skipping school? Why did you pick that behavior?

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 11:00

And why did you do it when you did it and with whom did you do it? Yep. You know, and a lot of it is based on what's cool in that crowd, in that school. You know, we had in my high school growing up. So, first of all, my I grew up in like a school where we followed all of the teen movie tropes. Like we literally had our own vocabulary of, you know, words that were cool in just that high school. You know, there was a thing where um we had our car keys on like those long telephone cord, twirly swirly, you know, spirally cords. And you would walk down the hallway, even though you were not coming from or towards your car, you would just swing your keys around on that telephone cord. Of course. There's no apparent reason why. That made no sense, but you would never hold them up without one of those telephone cord kind of keychains, and you would never walk down the hall without twirling them around. It was just that was the thing.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Well, it's a fidget spinner effect. Like it's it's a cool thing to do with your hands and it feels good, and you can like whip it back and forth. Like I used to do that with what are the what are the things that you get at conferences, like the the necklaces. Lanyard, that's it. Like if you've got something that's weighty on the edge of that, you can like grab the lanyard between two fingers and spin it around back and forth. I'll do that at every conference I'm ever at.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

It's just so weird, but like so many of these things are it makes absolutely no sense. The only reason why you're doing it is because everyone else is doing it. Or it's not that everyone else is doing it, it's that the people who are doing it are people that you aspire to be aligned with.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Yes. And that leads to, and we've had a variation of this conversation before. I can't remember how many episodes ago it was, but this also relates back to the categories that we put ourselves in, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you are in high school and you think of yourself as a geek, then you're going to want to gravitate towards stereotypically geek things. Yeah. And this also relates to like masculinity, right? Like if you can s if you think of yourself as a man and you think of that as like a part of the. If I think of myself as a part of my identity and that that's important to me and I want to like live out that identity, what is it that men do? Yeah. And you mentioned, you mentioned beers, and that reminds me of another thing. And I didn't do this for masculinity purposes, but it was another thing that I went along with the crowd. Like when I was in grad school, we would go out to the grad student bar, doll's place, every Thursday night, R.I.P. It's no longer there, sadly. New Brunswick, New Jersey is all the worse for it. But but they would get beer, and I would get beer. Yeah. And beer is not what I would ordinarily get if I were just going out and ordering of my own accord. Not that I don't like it, but there are other things that I like more. But here I get beer because that's what everyone knows. That's the thing. So also like relates to masculinity because like masculinity is so often associated with independence and courage and standing up against the grain and doing your own thing. And it's also associated with you have to wear these clothes and you have to do these things and you have to believe in this. So like what is what is the manliest man? The one who gets a beer at the bar or the one who orders a cosmopolitan, even when all of his friends are gonna make fun of him for it.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Right, right. That would be the but but look, we are all influenced by peers. Even the people who are doing the opposite, they are still paying attention to what is the norm. They're doing the opposite of that norm for the body. Are deliberately bucking it, yeah. They're still being influenced by what the norm is. That's why they're doing the opposite in some cases. Yeah. In some cases, people might be like, I'm just doing what I want. I don't care about the social norm. But it's remarkable. A couple things. Like one of the things you were just talking about, there was a research study done on a college campus. Do you remember um when everyone was wearing those yellow Lance Armstrong bracelets? Yes. Oh my God, everyone had those. Like it was just crazy how that became a big influence thing.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Right up until some point. I can't remember. Something must have happened.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

I think it was the whole thing with Lance Armstrong.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

Exactly. I don't who knows. But anyway, no one like no, these were not like, oh, well, I'm already wearing bracelets, so why am I, you know, no, no, no. People were adopting a brand new behavior of wearing these. So a college on a college campus, some researchers, it was happening on uh at one dorm and it was like a cool dorm. So they slowly introduced the bracelets at a dorm that was nearby. And that dorm was really interested in doing it because they wanted to be like the jock dorm that was close by. And they saw the behavior grow, but then they went and introduced it to like the nerdy dorm. And as soon as the nerdy dorm kids started wearing it, all of the jocks and the others took it off because it changed the signal. It was like, okay, wait, if this is a thing that cool people do, then I want to join that. But as soon as the non-cool people start to do it, you've changed the signal of what that thing means. And now all the cool people are like, well, I don't want to be thought of as one of those nerdy people. So I'm gonna stop doing that behavior.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

The same phenomenon happens whenever mainstream media picks up on a new word or phrase that's in like the youth culture. That's right. Like whenever, you know, whenever you've got people at the Oscar ceremony doing the 6'7 dance on stage, it's gonna stop after that.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

Actually, it's so funny you say that because the the big thing that we always talk about when talking with like parents of adolescents is if you want your adolescent to stop doing something, you as the adults have to start doing it. Because as soon as you start doing it, it is so uncool to the adolescents, they will stop it immediately. Absolutely. That's what happened with 6-7. That's what happened with Facebook. Yep. As soon as all of us got on there in our, you know, like adult life, the teens were like, no way.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Well, I'm in my dotage, but I'm not old.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

And then as soon as our parents all got on, it's like now we are like, wait a minute, this is like a boomer thing. Like, I don't, you know. So, but it's very much that thing of where we are being in, it's not just who we pick as friends, but like we are looking out there and we're noticing who's doing what, and is that making me want to do it more or less? And am I wanting to do it more because I'm aligned with or I want to be seen as one of them? I don't know. That's not the only reason why we emulate others, but it's a huge part of it.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Aaron Ross Powell So is that healthy or unhealthy or just something we should be aware of?

SPEAKER_02 17:32

So this is a big debate. You know, to the extent that uh everyone usually talks about peer influence as a bad thing.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Right.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

But in some ways that can be a really good thing. I mean, if it's helping us to do good things like let's say recycling, you know, suddenly we notice that the the really thoughtful, caring community outreach people are doing this, maybe like, okay, well, I'll start doing it.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

In poli sci, there's a they've done studies like bandwagon studies. If you know that all of your neighbors around you are voting, that makes you more likely to vote.

SPEAKER_02 18:04

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it can be a good thing. It's basically the way we are a herd species, and it's kind of the way that we are constantly checking with our herd and being like, all right, am I falling in line or not in line? And is this a good thing? But then sometimes it's just it works too well. Like, you know, that classic experiment you maybe you've heard of psychologists would have people go into an elevator, but they had filled the elevator with people who were secretly in on the experiment, and all the people in the elevator were facing the back. So the people walk in and they're like, uh, oh, okay. And they walk in and turn around and face the back, also, even though there's no door. Clearly, there's no it's not gonna open that way. But just you see that everyone's doing it, and you're like, I guess that's the thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

I would absolutely face the side. Oh, yeah, if that were me.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

Just to yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Just to mess with literally everybody.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

No, I mean this happens to me every day. So the parking lot where my daughter's bus comes, we all uh every single morning we go, and it drives me crazy because for some reason, and this is the only parking lot in all of Chapel Hill, I swear that this happens, but everyone backs into their spot. I hate backing into the spot. I don't know why.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

It takes so long. You're sitting there waiting for this guy to like eight-point turn into their spot.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

For weeks I would get there and I'm like, why is everyone backing in? Is there something about the traffic pattern coming into this parking lot? Is there something about there is no reason why? Um, there's no logical reason why you would need to back in their spot. But I swear, every single day, everyone comes in the parking lot, they back into their spot. It just makes no sense whatsoever. But it's the elevator thing. We are so herded, we're so used to being a herd species that we're just like, oh, I guess that there's some reason we're supposed to be doing this, so I'll just follow along.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

I mean, if it's an elevator thing, you know what you can do. Yeah. Park to the side. Just cross over four spaces and just walk away.

SPEAKER_02 20:02

It is really funny. Like, um, there are some things that really come in handy. When you ever you go to, like, imagine you're going to Costco or the grocery store and there's like seven checkout lines, you will always find that the lines all the way to the left and the right are shorter than the ones in the middle because that you people gravitate towards the center for the same reason. And then even though those lines are much longer, people still get on the middle lines. Interesting. It's so weird. So there are other, there are like all these little hacks to kind of either take advantage of how we emulate one another or or not. But it's interesting to think about for ourselves like what are the things that I'm doing, I'm wearing, I'm eating, I'm believing in. And are those mine, or am I kind of just following along? And am I the leader or am I the one being led?

SPEAKER_00 20:55

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