Situations Matter

by Sam Sommers

  In other words, good luck remaining uninvolved the next time you cross paths with someone in obvious need. Now you know too much to rest comfortably in your own inaction.

  EMBRACING THE POWER of situations does more than make us socially conscious, however. There are also strategic and even selfish objectives accomplished by learning about the real nature of helping. Understanding the factors that combat nonintervention pays dividends for any effort to nudge people from indifference to action. So reading this chapter can also make you more persuasive and resourceful when you’re in crowds.

  How can you prevent apathy in those around you? How can you motivate audiences, employees, students, and consumers to override basic tendencies and take action? For starters, avoid the mass e-mail phenomenon, in cyberspace as in person. I always make the effort to learn the names of every student in my classes, even the lecture courses with enrollment for more than one hundred. I don’t have a secret memory trick or clever mnemonic—I just rely on sheer persistence and rote repetition. Why bother? Because my knowing their names undermines the pacifying effects of sitting in a large audience.

  My goal isn’t to increase the likelihood that these students will leap to my rescue in case of a real midlecture emergency. That’s a lost cause. After my paper-dropping performance—not to mention their hearing about study after study with fake seizures and smoke-filled rooms—I’m pretty sure that I could suffer a real heart attack in front of the class and they’d all just stare at me, comfortable in the assumption that it’s just a ruse being recorded via hidden camera.

  No, the reason I learn their names is to ward off any temptation toward apathy in the more mundane, nonemergency aspects of the class. I want my students to feel accountable for their performance, both to me and to themselves. It’s far too easy to blow off assigned readings or sit there passively during discussions when you feel anonymous. It’s much more difficult to stay on the sidelines when you realize that your teacher knows who you are and will notice if you disengage. I’ve found that the fear of being called on with nothing to say is unparalleled in its capacity to motivate.

  The way I see it, there are bigger costs to not knowing my students’ names. There’s an urban legend in teaching circles about the student who dares to ignore a stern warning not to turn in the final exam so much as one minute late. When he finally walks to the front of the room with his test, the professor smugly explains that he won’t even grade it. As the story goes, the student replies, “Do you know who I am?” Flummoxed, the professor says nothing, so the student asks again, “Do you even know my name?” When the apocryphal professor admits that he does not, the student deadpans, “Didn’t think so,” shoves his exam in the middle of the stack on the desk, and walks out. This is one less problem I have to worry about when teaching.

  Outside the classroom, there are also lessons to be learned concerning how to manage situations to get the help you need. The key, as you now know, is to break through the barriers of anonymity and ambiguity that come with crowds. The next time you’re desperate for assistance, your best bet is to ask for it specifically and directly. Simply looking needy won’t cut it, and generic requests aren’t enough, either. Arizona State University psychologist Robert Cialdini provides a great example in his book Influence, an endlessly useful and entertaining compendium of how to get people to do what you want them to, culled in large part from his observations of experts like car salesmen and advertising execs. Here’s Cialdini’s prescription for getting emergency help:[I]solate one individual from the crowd. Stare, speak, and point directly at that person and no one else: “You sir, in the blue jacket, I need help. Call an ambulance.” With that one utterance . . . he should now understand that emergency aid is needed; he should understand that he, not someone else, is responsible for providing the aid; and, finally, he should understand exactly how to provide it. 15

  You can see this advice in action in those other Sally Struthers commercials, the charitable ones asking viewers to sponsor an individual child for a low daily rate. The ads make an unambiguous case that assistance is needed. They tell the individual donor that she can actually make a difference. Then they show her precisely how to do so, right down to the exact dollar amount. Each of these factors renders helping a more reasonable, realistic course of action offering concrete benefits.

  But perhaps the shrewdest aspect of these pleas is that they present the allure of a specific recipient who will benefit from the assistance. The ads promise photos and personal information from the sponsored child, and in some cases even an opportunity to exchange letters. The charities know that it’s easier to maintain indifference toward a nameless, faceless crowd than toward a particular person. How else to reconcile our relative numbness to the abstract numbers of mass casualties with our more emotional response to individualized human-interest stories? Taken together, the tactics of these sponsorship charities are quite successful: the Save the Children group Struthers has pitched for recently took in over $240 million in annual private donations.

  The concrete lesson here is that our mental calculations regarding helping are colored by whom it is that we’re supposed to help. We’re more apt to assist those who are attractive. Or who are smiling. And—in a research finding that will do little to reassure your faith in the notion of altruism or the basic goodness of humanity—male drivers in Europe are more likely to offer a ride to a female hitchhiker who has a large bust size.16 If you’re surprised to hear that this is the type of scientific research finding published in an academic outlet titled Perceptual and Motor Skills, well, then, clearly you’ve never seen the journal’s annual swimsuit issue.

  What, pray tell, is the practical lesson for you of such research? Again, it’s that the best way to solicit help isn’t by trying to forecast who around you will be the most helpful person. Rather, it’s managing the situation. Like any other attempt at persuasion, when you’re looking for help, it’s all about the sales pitch.

  Why do organizations feature photos of children in solicitations? Because kids are cute, vulnerable, and seem deserving of our help. Deeming someone worthy of assistance is enough to tip the balance of an observer’s calculations toward helping. In evaluating a fictitious individual with AIDS, for example, respondents show more sympathy when the disease was contracted through blood transfusion than through unprotected sex or drug use.17 In the former case, they see the target as deserving of help; in the latter, they hold him responsible for his own fate. In short, the characteristics of the helpee are more important than those of the helper. Instead of focusing on the types of people most likely to offer you assistance, you should spend your energy framing the person(s) who needs help in the most sympathetic light possible.

  So whether you’re trying to raise consciousness for a humanitarian crisis or get someone to help you change a flat tire, remember that situations matter. From neighborhood to time of day, from group size to bra size, a wide range of contextual considerations feed into our calculations about helping and determine whether or not we even notice the need for assistance in the first place.

  When you need help, be direct. Target specific individuals. Paint yourself in the most empathetic light possible. Do whatever it takes to stave off the potential of anonymity and diffusion of responsibility to overwhelm your call to aid.

  And when you’re out and about, take off the blinders once in a while. Look into curious noises or suspicious activity. Don’t just figure someone else will take care of it or that if no one else seems alarmed by the unprecedented rates of return, then it can’t be a Ponzi scheme. We’re all better off if you err on the side of the unnecessary 911 call rather than relying on the blind assumption that I’m sure everything is OK.

  These are conclusions that aren’t available to you when you hew to the party line of WYSIWYG. None of these lessons emerge unless you’re willing to give up thinking of people in the oversimplified terms of helpful and unhelpful predisposition, no matter how reassuring such a stable worldview
might be. You now know better: at the end of the day, you don’t have to wait for the right tribe to come around—if you manage the situation right, you can turn almost anyone into a Good Samaritan.

  3.

  GO WITH THE FLOW

  CAMERON HUGHES IS THE CROWD WHISPERER.

  According to a litany of popular books and television shows, we’re now living in the golden age of “whispering.” Supposedly, there’s a wide range of self-taught experts out there able to regularly commune with horses, dogs, babies, and even ghosts. Well, Cameron Hughes has a unique skill set, too. He speaks the secret language of adult humans of a less-than-supernatural variety. The wild, unpredictable beasts that he’s learned to “read” and bend to his will are crowds of people.

  Hughes makes his living—and a nice one at that—riling up spectators at sporting events. He’s had paying gigs at close to a thousand games over the past decade, serving at the pleasure and on the payroll of big-name, big-league clubs like the Los Angeles Dodgers, Cleveland Cavaliers, and New Jersey Devils. At the 2010 Winter Olympics, organizers hired him to whip crowds into a frenzy at the men’s and women’s ice hockey venue. For two weeks, Hughes’s schedule was booked solid: when he wasn’t cheering and clapping through one of thirty games, he was scouring drugstores for throat lozenges and websites for Finnish cheers.

  Published profiles of Hughes invariably refer to the affable Canadian as a “superfan” or “professional sports fan.” But these descriptions don’t do justice to his craft. Hughes is practiced at the art of pulling a crowd’s strings. He’s an expert at manipulating situations to shape group behavior.

  Like so many discoveries, Hughes stumbled upon his expertise through trial and error dashed with a pinch of serendipity. That, plus a fair amount of alcohol. In attendance at an NHL game in Ottawa fifteen years ago, he was frustrated by the staid demeanor of his fellow Senators fans and emboldened by more than a few plastic cups’ worth of Molson. The result was a maniacal, impromptu piece of performance art in the aisle, comprising equal parts dance, step aerobics, and cheerleading. In retrospect, Hughes simply describes what he did as “going crazy.” The crowd responded in kind, its quiet detachment transformed, almost instantly, into rollicking enthusiasm.

  Exhausted, Hughes plopped back into his seat. When team officials with walkie-talkies approached, he figured he had earned himself an ejection from the arena. Instead, they offered him a few hundred loonies to come back and do it again the next week.

  I talked with Hughes recently to learn more about what he does and why it works so well. From the outset of our conversation, it was clear that this is a man who takes his job seriously, even though much of his workweek is spent clapping, stomping, chanting, and preening. These days, there’s no alcohol before performances, just careful planning and choreography, as well as a whole lot of stretching and ankle tape.

  For example, though Hughes sees himself as an entertainer, he doesn’t draw self-comparison to the Will Ferrells of the world. No, the surprising analogy he turns to is that of the symphony. That’s right, Cameron Hughes is more Royal Philharmonic than Phillie Phanatic: “I’ve become an expert at being an orchestra leader,” he told me. “What I do, it’s . . . a calculated experience of how to move people to action.”

  Our conversation revealed to me three specific keys to Hughes’s success. First, he’s able to turn the power of crowds upside down. Hughes changes the experience of being in a mass of people from one that inhibits action to one that promotes it. The previous chapter focuses on this former notion, the inertia of inaction that ensues when we observe the complacency of those around us. However, crowds can also lead us to act in ways we ordinarily wouldn’t. In groups, we can get caught up in the flow of action, not just inaction, as demonstrated by your average bachelor party reveler or stay-at-home mom at a Jimmy Buffett concert.

  Sometimes it takes but a single person to set into motion this type of social influence—just one individual to alter a group’s sense of what’s expected and acceptable. Of course, being the first to take action isn’t easy, but that’s where Hughes comes in. “The phenomenon of being in a crowd is that once one person does it, you know, it becomes contagious,” he explained to me. “It’s like everybody is waiting for someone else to do something . . . it’s like everybody is waiting for permission to cheer.”

  In other words, Hughes’s strategy is to spring the first leak in the levee. Once he does, a tidal wave of conformity surges behind him. He makes following his lead as easy as possible by taking his own act to the absolute height of frenzied non-self-consciousness: compared to the multishirt striptease that’s now a staple of his oeuvre, a little bit of rhythmic clapping doesn’t seem like such a big deal to the fan two rows down. Essentially, Hughes is a disciple of the jackass school of influence, as in, If this guy can make such a jackass of himself, I guess I can at least stand up and cheer. As he admitted to me, “What I do at games is so not normal. It’s just not.”

  But if I may beg to differ with my fellow student of situations, it is precisely because he seems so normal that Hughes is so successful. Indeed, this is the second key to his effectiveness: he looks like an average, ordinary fan. This isn’t some costumed mascot or a superfan with a mask and cape. Hughes is dressed like everybody else at the game (but for the aforementioned baker’s dozen of T-shirts lurking underneath; it’s no wonder the cool environs of the ice hockey rink are his preferred work locale).

  Much of the power of Hughes’s performance lies in the fact that most in attendance think he’s a fellow fan, not an employee of the home team. Cheerleaders and mascots are expected to act like this; regular spectators are not. Hughes is able to get people to follow his lead because the fans view him as one of their own, as part of the group. In fact, some in his inner circle have cautioned him not to give interviews because he might “let the cat out of the bag” and attract too much attention to his position on the payroll.

  In the end, Hughes realizes that much of his appeal derives from his Everyman persona. After all, his endearing calling card remains the partial striptease that even grandma can enjoy, performed in decidedly unerotic fashion by a six-foot three-inch redhead, who, per his own description, is no “svelte model type.” He’s not Chris Farley in that old Saturday Night Live Chippendales sketch, but he ain’t early-1990s Patrick Swayze, either.

  The third key to Hughes’s effectiveness is that he’s a master of situations, in precisely the manner alluded to throughout this book. As he started on his unique career path, his apprenticeship involved going to arenas and studying people. He paid attention to which attempts at firing up a crowd worked and which fell flat; he learned the right time to start the wave and the right time to sit back and leave the focus on the game. “With crowds, you’ve got to read them and you’ve got to feel out when they need it and when they’re ready,” he told me. “There’s nothing worse—even for me, and I do this for a living—than starting a cheer and no one responds.”

  Throughout his entire routine, whether channeling Richard Simmons or Little Richard, Hughes is busy, in his own words, “reading people.” Their body language, their subtle nonverbals, the cues that many of us fail to pick up on in daily interactions. He uses this information to determine when to push a little bit more and when to pull back, whether a particular fan is fair game for more needling or whether he should steer his antics in a more self-deprecating direction. He spends his work nights gauging the reactions of individual fans but also the temperament of the crowd at-large.

  Cameron Hughes doesn’t view the world through the lens of WYSIWYG. It doesn’t matter to him who’s in attendance—he’s confident that he’ll get through to them. Of course, other people still see him as having a stable predisposition. Many a fan running into Hughes outside the arena is surprised to find him acting normally, just waiting in line patiently at the Home Depot like everyone else. It’s as if people expect him to start dancing right there in the paint section: “You get invited to a lot of pa
rties.... People expect you to be like that more often than not. But what I do is exhausting.” Just imagine how they’d react upon learning that little Cameron was “pretty shy as a kid. I used to cry just going to school.”

  At the end of our conversation, I asked Hughes about one of the major themes of this book, the idea that appreciating the power of situations gives you a leg up in life. Specifically, I wanted to know whether his ability to “read” people comes in handy outside of sports arenas. Is he adept, say, at sweet-talking the customer service rep, getting out of speeding tickets, or picking up women at bars? “Um, yeah, I’m pretty good at it,” he responded with a chuckle, confirming that while reading crowds and individuals isn’t the same art form, it is a crossover skill. He said he’d prove it if I stopped my tape recorder, which I did. Off the record, he named some of the famous women he has dated.

  Take my word for it: Cameron Hughes’s mastery of situations has helped him compile a little black book just as impressive as his professional résumé.

  WE’RE NOT ALWAYS THE freethinking, independent-minded individuals we think we are. This chapter explores why even though you fancy yourself the master of your own destiny, the people around you still have a dramatic impact on how you think and act. The previous chapter touches on this tendency to go with the flow, focusing as it does on the contagion of inaction. But as the fired-up sports fan knows all too well, being in a group also has the power to goad individuals into action, often in ways we’d never dream of when on our own.

  There’s a silly, albeit innocuous side to this social influence—for example, the sudden fashionability of men’s capri pants or babies named after states or boroughs. Then there are the notoriously reckless things college students do in groups, like fraternity initiations or spring break escapades fueled by peer pressure, hormones, and alcohol. (Or so I hear—in the social circles in which I traveled in college, it was a bunch of us switching off the freezer in the dining hall soft-serve machine, then watching as student after student pulled the lever to get sprayed by melted ice cream. Good times.)