IN 1980, TATTOOS WERE RARELY SEEN ON anyone besides sailors and prison inmates. Now you wouldn’t be surprised to see architects, accountants, doctors, judges, even professors with tattoos. According to a 2016 study, three in ten U.S. adults have at least one tattoo (Shannon-Missal, 2016).
The growing popularity of tattoos over the past few decades reflects the power of social influence. The many people who paid for permanent markings on their body didn’t suddenly sense the virtues of body art on their own; they influenced one another. The influence was sometimes implicit (“Look at that cool arrow Jill has on her ankle”) and sometimes explicit (“Check out our fraternity letters on my triceps; you should get them too”).
Social influence takes many forms and varies quite a bit along this implicit-explicit continuum. It contributes to prison guards abusing inmates, schoolchildren failing to stop a bully, homeowners recycling plastic waste and reducing energy use, soldiers suppressing their fear and charging into battle, and so on. Sometimes people consciously decide to copy others or to comply with requests; other times they just go along, unaware they’re being influenced. The power of social influence can be seen in studies of how much people within social networks influence each other. You are 15 percent more likely to be happy if a family member or friend is happy. You’re also 10 percent more likely to happy if a friend of your friend is happy and 6 percent more likely if a friend of a friend of a friend is happy. This pattern, which seems to hold through three degrees of connection in social networks, has been demonstrated in studies of drinking behavior, smoking, and obesity. If a friend of your friend is a smoker, you’re more likely to smoke too (Christakis & Fowler, 2013; Ejima, 2017).
This effect is due partly to shared genes and partly to what is called homophily, the tendency for people to associate disproportionately with people who are like them (see Chapter 9). However, not all these social network effects result from homophily and genetics. Some are the result of social influence. In one telling experiment, a researcher canvassed residents door-to-door and encouraged them to vote. The canvassing influenced not just the person at the door but other household members as well (Nickerson, 2008). Another study examined whether research participants playing a game with money at stake tended to cooperate with one another or focus on their narrow self-interest (Fowler & Christakis, 2010). Everyone played many rounds of the game, with each participant randomly assigned to a different four-person group each round. The investigators found that whether a person was altruistic on, say, round 3 was influenced by how selfish or altruistic that person’s groupmates had been on round 2. But participants were also influenced by what their round 2 groupmates had experienced with their groupmates on round 1. Because the participants were strangers randomly assigned to different groups, the results must have been due to social influence, not homophily or genetics. Thus, some types of behavior truly are contagious.
(A)(B)(C)SOCIAL INFLUENCE AND FASHIONSocial influence affects what we do and say and how we present ourselves to others. (A) In the 1940s, tattoos were rarely seen on anyone other than sailors and soldiers. (B, C) Today, tattoos are common on both men and women.
The topic of social influence highlights an important theme first raised in Chapter 1: Many elements of the situations people find themselves in can profoundly affect their behavior. Accordingly, this chapter discusses a number of “situationist classics” in social psychology—experiments that have become well-known in both the field of psychology and the broader culture for revealing how seemingly inconsequential details of a social situation can have powerful effects on behavior. ◼
CHAPTER
8
Social Influence
Why do people in some cultures follow rules more closely than people in other cultures do?
How do norms influence how people think, feel, and act?
Why are tattoos viewed so differently today than they were in decades past?
OUTLINE
IN 1980, TATTOOS WERE RARELY SEEN ON anyone besides sailors and prison inmates. Now you wouldn’t be surprised to see architects, accountants, doctors, judges, even professors with tattoos. According to a 2016 study, three in ten U.S. adults have at least one tattoo (Shannon-Missal, 2016).
The growing popularity of tattoos over the past few decades reflects the power of social influence. The many people who paid for permanent markings on their body didn’t suddenly sense the virtues of body art on their own; they influenced one another. The influence was sometimes implicit (“Look at that cool arrow Jill has on her ankle”) and sometimes explicit (“Check out our fraternity letters on my triceps; you should get them too”).
Social influence takes many forms and varies quite a bit along this implicit-explicit continuum. It contributes to prison guards abusing inmates, schoolchildren failing to stop a bully, homeowners recycling plastic waste and reducing energy use, soldiers suppressing their fear and charging into battle, and so on. Sometimes people consciously decide to copy others or to comply with requests; other times they just go along, unaware they’re being influenced. The power of social influence can be seen in studies of how much people within social networks influence each other. You are 15 percent more likely to be happy if a family member or friend is happy. You’re also 10 percent more likely to happy if a friend of your friend is happy and 6 percent more likely if a friend of a friend of a friend is happy. This pattern, which seems to hold through three degrees of connection in social networks, has been demonstrated in studies of drinking behavior, smoking, and obesity. If a friend of your friend is a smoker, you’re more likely to smoke too (Christakis & Fowler, 2013; Ejima, 2017).
This effect is due partly to shared genes and partly to what is called homophily, the tendency for people to associate disproportionately with people who are like them (see Chapter 9). However, not all these social network effects result from homophily and genetics. Some are the result of social influence. In one telling experiment, a researcher canvassed residents door-to-door and encouraged them to vote. The canvassing influenced not just the person at the door but other household members as well (Nickerson, 2008). Another study examined whether research participants playing a game with money at stake tended to cooperate with one another or focus on their narrow self-interest (Fowler & Christakis, 2010). Everyone played many rounds of the game, with each participant randomly assigned to a different four-person group each round. The investigators found that whether a person was altruistic on, say, round 3 was influenced by how selfish or altruistic that person’s groupmates had been on round 2. But participants were also influenced by what their round 2 groupmates had experienced with their groupmates on round 1. Because the participants were strangers randomly assigned to different groups, the results must have been due to social influence, not homophily or genetics. Thus, some types of behavior truly are contagious.
The topic of social influence highlights an important theme first raised in Chapter 1: Many elements of the situations people find themselves in can profoundly affect their behavior. Accordingly, this chapter discusses a number of “situationist classics” in social psychology—experiments that have become well-known in both the field of psychology and the broader culture for revealing how seemingly inconsequential details of a social situation can have powerful effects on behavior. ◼