Situations Matter

by Sam Sommers

  That authority could so drastically shape ordinary participants’ behavior supports the notion that real-life atrocities like Abu Ghraib are often perpetrated by “normal people” in abnormal circumstances.18 Milgram himself, in the very first paragraph of the first paper he published on the research, linked his investigation to the genocide of the Holocaust: “These inhumane policies may have originated in the mind of a single person, but they could only be carried out on a massive scale if a very large number of persons obeyed orders.”19 Once again, a profound human tragedy made possible by human tendencies like conformity, compliance, and obedience.

  Simply put, Milgram showed us that all it takes to goad regular citizens into electrocuting a stranger is a smartly pressed lab coat and a few vacuous words of encouragement. Just imagine what can happen when authority figures ratchet up the pressure, when leaders really put their minds to capitalizing on the pull of conformity and the potential mindlessness of social influence.

  FIGHTING THE URGE

  I don’t do the wave.

  That’s right, I refuse to follow my fellow sheep down the well-worn path of spectator conformity, much to the dismay of many a vocal fan seated in my section of the bleachers. The whole scene is just a little too Leni Riefenstahl for me. Having learned about the ubiquitous role conformity plays in life, it’s one opportunity I take to reassert some semblance of self-determination. I’ll resist even when those who take offense to my conscientious objection are loud, inebriated, and shirtless—and let’s face it, the bleacher wave dude is almost always loud, inebriated, and shirtless.

  Plus, if I may be blunt, the wave is stupid. It might’ve been clever the first few times it materialized spontaneously, but the whole act has grown a bit stale by now. Yeah, I know . . . some arenas put a creative twist on the routine, varying wave speed, number, and direction. Oooh, I’m really impressed. Short of genome projects and Big Bang simulators, my faith in human ingenuity has rarely been so bolstered.

  Just call this my one-man rebellion against the mindless capitulation that otherwise pervades life. I’ll admit that it’s hardly a stirring example of civil disobedience—a latter-day Gandhi or Thoreau I am not. But knowing how often and how thoughtlessly we conform in so many daily situations, I consider staying glued to my seat while the wave circles around me to be a worthwhile if symbolic gluteal gesture toward recapturing my independence.

  Not that there’s anything wrong with conformity per se. As discussed above, going with the flow serves productive purposes, and it’s hard to imagine society operating smoothly without it. It’s a social lubricant that helps make a positive impression and strengthens ties within groups: the secret handshake, regular hangout spot, repeated movie quote, and inside joke all initiate and reinforce bonds between group members. We like being with people who act like us.

  Conformity conveys practical advantages, too. Merging in traffic is less arduous when drivers stick to the established rule of alternating lanes. Without norms, all of Manhattan would grind to a halt, what with a million and a half people crammed into twenty-three square miles. And conformity is essential to efficiency in smaller-scale settings as well, like the busy lunch counter. My favorite burger place in graduate school had a precise ordering procedure so well established that it was printed on the menu: tell them your fried sides first, then burger size, bun type, veggies, cheese, and, finally, condiments. Adhere to precedent, and lunch was quick and delicious. Deviate, and—as posted signage warned—you “risk the scorn and derision of the cooks.”20

  So I admit that conformity contributes to the efficient functioning of society. But we conform so often that doing so can become a mindless default to which we defer in the effort to make life easier as opposed to better. Thus, my perceived need for periodic rebellion. Because as unimpressive as my token boycott of the wave may be, I can’t help but wonder how different the outcomes at Heaven’s Gate or Abu Ghraib might have been had just one individual—or better yet, several people—more forcefully questioned the direction in which their group was headed.

  You may find it easy to rationalize those examples—mass suicide and prison abuse—as extreme episodes involving aberrational individuals. But the dangers of conformity are apparent elsewhere as well. For instance, less than two years before President Kennedy’s successful navigation of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the same administration fared far less impressively in another international affair centered on the island nation. In April 1961, a U.S.-led attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro failed spectacularly. The end result of what was intended as a covert invasion at the Bay of Pigs included more than one hundred casualties among U.S. and exile forces, over one thousand men captured, and the dismissal of the director of the CIA.

  Many a postmortem has suggested that the failed operation resulted from a lousy plan based on unrealistic assumptions. And conformity greased the skids for the flawed decision making behind it all.21 Though several in Kennedy’s inner circle harbored private doubts about the invasion’s feasibility, few voiced concerns during group meetings. According to Yale psychologist Irving Janis, the advisers didn’t want to disrupt the presumed consensus of the team or the momentum behind a plan that had existed in some form since the Eisenhower administration. Each man assumed that the silence of the others indicated agreement; group cohesion was prioritized over sound decision making. As Arthur Schlesinger would later rue, “I can only explain my failure to do more than raise a few timid questions by reporting that one’s impulse to blow the whistle on this nonsense was simply undone by the circumstances of the discussion.”22

  Kennedy’s advisers emerged from the Bay of Pigs fiasco looking a lot like the participants who evaluated Asch’s lines. This emphasis of team unity over rigorous debate—this phenomenon of groupthink—has also been implicated in other high-stakes group decisions gone awry. Like NASA’s inattention to mechanical concerns during two ill-fated space shuttle missions. Or the failure of the financial sector to fully appreciate the risks posed by the housing bubble and subprime mortgages. And, perhaps only slightly less famously, Van Halen’s repeated inability to successfully replace a departed lead singer.

  WHAT, THEN, are this chapter’s concrete lessons? First, if you’re out to change the behavior of others, keep in mind how invaluable a tool conformity can be. Much like the crowd whisperer, you can create new norms by modeling the very actions you hope to see in others. Stuff a few dollar bills in your own tip jar to raise the expectations of future customers. Recruit friends to populate a long line outside your restaurant, club, or gallery opening. Make use of reciprocity and public commitment when trying to win over new clients. Give your spouse the type of gift that you hope to receive in return.

  And when your goal is the opposite one—to curtail conformity among those around you—look to the case studies of riled-up sports crowds and cults. Then reverse engineer these situations in the direction of independence. Anything you can do to emphasize individual identity has the potential to reduce conformity.

  For example, in a clever Halloween study, researchers instructed visiting trick-or-treaters to take one and only one item from a candy bowl placed inside a house. But free candy is hard to resist, and the kids were all too eager to follow the lead of the costumed gluttons preceding them: 83 percent took extra candy when the first kid in their group did likewise .23 However, when the adult at the door had previously asked the children their names and what street they lived on—stripping them of their anonymity and reminding them of their individuality—candy-stealing conformity dropped to 67 percent. Those little ghouls and goblins with the confectionary misfortune of being asked their name and arriving at the house solo, without anyone to set a bad example? A paltry 8 percent left with extra candy.

  Learning the names of all the neighborhood kids isn’t the only way to combat conformity around you. When it comes to group decisions, create a new set of expectations in which disagreement, not unanimity, is the norm. We may enjoy being around similar others, but there�
�s a big difference between harmonious decisions and wise ones. From Abraham Lincoln’s famed “Team of Rivals” cabinet24 to the sniping of judges on reality TV competitions, diverse perspectives and debate are hallmarks of rigorous decision making. So if your committee meetings are peaceful or even pleasant affairs, start asking whether the group is getting as much out of its members as it should be. Instead, fill out your board or panel with people of varied backgrounds and perspectives. Keep changing up your work groups before a norm of complacency sets in. Force yourself to compare notes with those who are likely to disagree with you.

  And if you want to initiate debate within an already established organizational structure, research offers specific suggestions for tipping the situation to your advantage.25 Find an ally in dissent: breaking with the group is hard work, but it’s not as big a burden when someone shoulders it with you. Be consistent and stick to your guns: hesitation and vacillation are luxuries that minority factions can’t afford.

  Don’t forget about reputation, either. Having been a loyal citizen in the past—one who has consistently toed the party line—you’ll have more banked capital to spend in later disagreements than will the chronic nonconformist. It carries more currency when the dyed-in-the-red-wool Republican suggests that the GOP should reconsider a position than when the same call comes from the moderate with a long history of breaking rank. So choose your battles carefully, building up and saving the credibility you may need to later challenge your group’s momentum.

  Moreover, just as I argued that becoming acquainted with the obstacles to helping behavior can change how you look at subsequent emergencies, simply understanding the basic tendency to go with the flow can short-circuit your automatic deference to conformity. Knowing now about Asch’s findings, you probably wouldn’t abandon your personal line-judging instincts in a comparable situation. I’m sure you’d take a similarly principled stand against a nattily attired researcher asking you to administer electric shocks.

  Such lessons also translate to novel, unfamiliar settings. Maybe in the form of efforts to resist your supervisor’s ethically problematic directives. Or the resolve to break from your pack to pursue objectives that will make you happy rather than popular. Just recognizing that going with the flow is a double-edged sword can be enough to jar you out of mindless action, prompting you to question whether you’re engaged in harmless conformity in the name of smoothing over social relations or perhaps caught up in a more problematically short-sided form of groupthink with graver potential consequence.

  So stop resting easy on the assumption that you’re a freethinker who isn’t swayed by those around you. If you want to avoid undue conformity, you have to stay vigilant—against both the intentional efforts of others as well as your own mindless tendency to go along with the crowd. The subtlest strategies of social influence usually only work when the target isn’t aware of them; realizing that someone is pulling your strings is enough to get you to yank right back.

  Who knows, after all this new reflection on conformity, you just might stumble upon your own symbolic form of protest—your own variation on boycotting the wave. Maybe it’ll be an unwillingness to capitulate to a standing ovation for merely average performances. Perhaps a conscious effort to avoid the grating catchphrase of the month, be it “Don’t go there,” “It is what it is,” or the use of “literally” when speaking figuratively. Or a refusal to follow blindly the waitstaff’s admonition that the plate is hot and cannot, under any circumstances, be touched. That’s right, the vicarious pleasures offered by sitcom norm violators are also available to you personally if you’re willing to risk public excoriation in the bleachers and minor burns when dining out.

  Such deviations from expectation once in a while are liberating. They allow you to feel “more like yourself ” even in a mass of people. These dollops of disobedience can make our obligatory forms of societal conformity that much easier to stomach.

  Still, I’ll admit, as with all norm violations, they also come with strings attached: I asked Cameron Hughes what he’d do with a guy like me, someone who deemed himself too refined for an exercise as proletarian as the wave. He quickly disabused me of the notion that I’m any sort of nonconformist, informing me that he runs into stubbornly sedentary spectators everywhere he goes. Then he warned me that “the guy you’re talking about . . . is just great fodder for the crowd. It makes it too easy.”

  So you wouldn’t just leave me alone and let me sit in peace? I asked him. “No way,” he replied with a laugh.

  You mean, staying in my seat actually just puts a bigger target on my back? “Absolutely,” he said.

  Dammit. The costs of going against the flow just keep piling up.

  Fine, Cameron, I’ll do the freakin’ wave once in a while. But no one’s going to force me to have a good time doing it.

  4.

  YOU’RE NOT THE PERSON YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE

  JUST WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE ANYWAY?

  We humans make it a habit wrestling with questions about the self. Existential musing lies at the heart of our most beloved forms of art. Music. Poetry. John Hughes films. It dominates our internal commentary as we stare in the mirror each morning; it’s the recurring story line of our diaries. The question of who we really are sends us off on inspiring journeys of self-exploration but also toward sobering epiphanies of personal shortcomings. Not to mention interviews with Barbara Walters and Larry King.

  As with much of daily life, this process of self-perception is subject to the power of context. That is, the conclusion that situations matter isn’t limited to public behavior or how we think about others. Even the most private of perceptions—our very sense of self—is shaped by where we are and who we’re with, though we may resist this notion.

  How do I know this? How can I be so sure that situations shape self-perception? For that matter, how do you even begin to gauge someone else’s private thoughts about the self? Well, for starters, you can use simple fill-in-the-blanks.

  Below you’ll find the same phrase repeated five times. You should complete each statement with the first word or words that pop into your head, making sure to provide five different responses in the end. Go ahead and do it now, preferably in ink so that the next reader has to pony up for a new, clean copy of the book. If you’re reading an electronic version—or if you just insist on being a stick-in-the-mud—you can do the exercise in your head.

  Remember, don’t agonize over what to include or what not to—just complete each statement with the first words that come to mind:1. I am ______________________.

  2. I am ______________________.

  3. I am ______________________.

  4. I am ______________________.

  5. I am ______________________.

  Researchers refer to this as the “Twenty Statements Test.”1 Clearly, you took the abridged version.

  You have tremendous flexibility when taking the Twenty Statements Test. There are dozens and dozens of ways in which you can plausibly describe yourself. You could start with physical descriptors, like “tall” or “left-handed.” You could go with different roles you play in life, including occupation or family status. You could draw upon categories including gender, race, and religion. Of course, you could also rely on WYSIWYG by using personality traits like generous, curious, shy, and others.

  Bottom line? You have almost unlimited possibility here because identity is a multiheaded beast. In fact, you have so many choices available to you that it’s reasonable to ask whether your responses would have been the same had you filled in the same five blanks yesterday. Or last week. Or had you been situated in a different room or in a different mood.

  Actually, I’m confident that the answer is no—you wouldn’t provide the same answers if I gave you the same test in another setting. Without question, your responses would have been different ten years ago, right? But even smaller changes in context have big effects on how you see yourself, with one of the critical factors influencing your identit
y—whether or not you realize it—being who’s around you.

  Because there are so many aspects to identity, different dimensions of the self-concept become salient in different situations. As just one example, research suggests that we tend to think of ourselves in terms of that which makes us distinctive.2 So when I give my students the Twenty Statements Test in class, they rarely respond “college student.” But given the same test at the train station or doctor’s office, their status as students is more distinctive and therefore more accessible as they flip through their identity Rolodex.

  This principle explains why in most of America, whites are less likely than people of color to mention race on the Twenty Statements Test. Drop a white student on a Historically Black College campus, though, or a white pedestrian in the heart of Chinatown, and whiteness quickly becomes salient. For the same reasons, exchange students more often describe themselves using nationality when abroad than at home, men are more conscious of gender at a baby shower than a baseball game, and blondes give more thought to hair color in Seoul than Stockholm.

  In short, just as context influences how we perceive and interact with others, it also colors the way we see and think about the self.

  PAGING DR. PHIL

  In pondering self-perception, the first step is to pose a question we rarely ask: Where do beliefs about the self actually come from? We infrequently consider the origins of self-knowledge because we usually take this information for granted.

  How do you know your strengths and limitations? Your likes and dislikes? Your brightest dreams for the future and deepest regrets about the past?

  You just do, that’s how.

  But there’s a more profound answer to such questions. In fact, there are several, though you wouldn’t know it from listening to the presumed experts, the gurus of self-help who populate the bestseller lists and the couches of daytime talk shows. The cottage industries of self-help, self-insight, and self-actualization suggest that you come to know yourself by exploring your own thoughts and feelings—by turning the lens of social vision inward. A core treatise of these books is that you need to locate your true, “authentic” self. You have to get in touch with who you really are, they keep telling us. Thou can’t be true to thine own self if that self remains a mystery, the thinking goeth.