Invisible Influence

by Jonah Berger

  It goes without saying that different people find different things attractive. Some people prefer blondes, while others prefer brunettes. Some women like their men tall, dark, and handsome, but others have different preferences (which is good news for the short, pale, and less handsome among us).

  So it’s not surprising that different students saw the various women differently. Some thought Woman A was a fox, while others preferred Woman C. Some liked Woman B’s eyes, while others found Woman D more appealing.

  But even with everyone’s idiosyncratic opinions, there was a distinct pattern.

  Women who had come to class more often were seen as more attractive. The woman who had come to fifteen classes was seen as more attractive than the woman who had come to ten, who was seen as more attractive than the woman who had come to five, and so on.

  Seeing someone more frequently made people like them more.

  * * *

  You might wonder whether the woman who came to fifteen classes just happened to be better looking. Maybe she was just naturally more attractive. But this wasn’t the case. Students who were not in the class found all of the women equally attractive. Without differential exposure, the four women looked the same.

  Could students have gotten to know the frequent attendees better? No again. While the women attended class, they never interacted, verbally or nonverbally, with any of the other students.

  Instead, students liked certain women more because they had seen those women more frequently. Students thought the frequent attendees were more attractive and were more interested in getting to know them. All from happening to see those women a few more times in class.

  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.5

  And while the notion that seeing something more times makes us like it more is intriguing in itself, there is another aspect of mere exposure that makes it even more interesting. We are completely unaware it occurs.

  When students in Moreland’s class were asked whether they had seen any of the women before, almost none of them realized they had. And if someone had asked the students whether seeing the women more frequently shaped their opinions, the students would have looked at that person like they were crazy. Of course not, the students would have said. Why would simply seeing someone a couple times more make them seem more attractive? And yet it did.

  Because, whether we realize it or not, we are all students in Moreland’s class. We underestimate how much social influence affects our behavior because we don’t realize it is happening.

  When we look for evidence that social influence shaped our behavior, we often don’t see any. We aren’t aware of being influenced one way or another, so we assume it didn’t happen. But not being aware of influence doesn’t mean it didn’t occur.

  HIDDEN PERSUADERS

  Play a quick game with me for a moment. I’m going to give you a memory test. Below is a list of seven words and I want to see how many you can remember. Take as much time as you need to read the list.

  Reckless

  Furniture

  Conceited

  Corner

  Aloof

  Stapler

  Stubborn

  Before you take the memory test, I’d like you to do something else. Below is a brief description of someone named Donald. Please read the passage and then answer a few quick questions about him.

  Donald spent a great amount of his time in search of what he liked to call excitement. He has climbed Mount McKinley, shot the Colorado rapids in a kayak, driven in a demolition derby, and piloted a jet-powered boat—without knowing much about boats. He has risked injury, and even death, a number of times. Now he was in search of new excitement. He was thinking, perhaps, he would do some skydiving or maybe cross the Atlantic in a sailboat. By the way he acted one could readily guess that Donald was perfectly aware of his ability to do many things well. Other than business engagements, Donald’s contacts with people were rather limited. He felt he didn’t really need to rely on anyone. Once Donald made up his mind to do something, it was as good as done no matter how long it might take or how difficult it might be. Only rarely did he change his mind, even when it might well have been better if he had.

  I realize you’ve never met Donald before, but based on this description, if you had to pick one word to describe Donald, what would that word be?

  * * *

  When asked a similar question, most people described Donald somewhat negatively. They thought he was reckless and a bit conceited. Crossing the Atlantic in a sailboat is pretty risky, after all, and the fact that he was “aware of his abilities to do many things well” makes him sound a bit full of himself. Others described Donald as stubborn (based on his unwillingness to change his mind) and somewhat aloof (because he didn’t rely on anyone). It’s not surprising if you described him negatively as well.

  But what if I had asked you to remember a different list of words beforehand? Rather than the list above, what if you’d been asked to remember a completely separate set? The description of Donald would be the same, but the memory list would be different. Would your perceptions of Donald have changed?

  Of course not, you’d say. That random list of words has nothing to do with Donald. It’s entirely unrelated. As long as the description of Donald was the same, you would have seen him similarly.

  And you’d be wrong.

  Because when a different set of people was asked to remember words like “adventurous,” “self-confident,” “independent,” and “persistent” before reading about Donald, it changed how they saw him. Donald now seemed like a much more positive guy. Rather than seeing his crossing the Atlantic as risky, they saw it as adventurous. Rather than seeing his lack of needing others as signaling his aloofness, they saw it as indicating that he was independent.

  Same Donald, judged completely differently. Why?

  Even though people didn’t realize it, thinking about different words while reading about Donald colored the way he seemed. The words activated different ideas in people’s minds, which then spilled over to affect their perceptions of him. All without their awareness. And all driven by the power of nonconscious influence.

  INVISIBLE INFLUENCE

  This book is about the simple, subtle, and often surprising ways that others affect our behavior.

  When people think of science, they tend to think about physics or chemistry. Test tubes and microscopes and molecules twisting together to form a double helix. Laboratories with people in white coats and blackboards filled with chicken-scratch equations that look like a Martian took up calligraphy. Ideas you have to be . . . well, a rocket scientist to understand.

  But science doesn’t just happen in fancy labs. It’s happening all around us, each and every day.

  We make riskier decisions because someone patted us on the shoulder. We name our child Mia because names like Madison and Sophia were popular recently. Even strangers, or people we may never meet, have a startling impact on our judgments and decisions: our attitudes towards a welfare policy totally shift if we’re told it is supported by Democrats versus Republicans (even though the policy is the same in both cases).

  Just like atoms bouncing off each other, our social interactions are constantly shaping who we are and what we do. This science, this social science, determines everything from how you got your name to how you ended up picking up this book.

  Social influence, though, doesn’t just lead us to do the same as others. Like a magnet, others can attract, but they can also repel.

  Sometimes we conform, or imitate others around us. But in other cases we diverge, or avoid things because other people are doing them. Our older sibling is the smart one, so we become the funny one. We avoid blaring our horn in traffic because we don’t
want to be one of those people.

  When do we imitate others and when do we avoid what they are doing? When do peers motivate us to work harder and when do they drive us to give up? And what does all this mean for happiness, health, and success, both at home and at work?

  This book will address these and related questions as it delves into the myriad ways others affect everything we do. With the help of some amazing colleagues, I’ve spent over fifteen years studying the science of social influence. As a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, I’ve conducted hundreds of experiments, analyzed thousands of competitions, and examined millions of purchases. We’ve looked at everything from whether your neighbor buying a new car makes you more likely to purchase one to whether losing actually makes NBA teams more likely to win. Invisible Influence brings together these, and dozens of other insights, to shed light on the hidden factors that shape behavior.

  Chapter 1 explores our human tendency to imitate. Why people follow others, even when they know the answer is wrong. Why one man’s soda is another man’s pop. How mimicking others can make us better negotiators. And why social influence makes Harry Potter and other blockbusters hard to predict, even for industry experts.

  Chapter 2 examines the drive for differentiation. Sometimes people jump on the bandwagon and follow others, but just as frequently they jump off once it gets too crowded. We’ll discuss why most sports stars have older siblings, why babies all look the same (unless they’re ours), and why some people want to stand out, while others are happier blending in.

  Chapter 3 starts to explain how these competing tendencies combine. Whether we imitate others or do something different depends in part on who those others are. We’ll discuss why expensive products have fewer logos, why companies pay celebrities not to wear their clothes, and why people pay $300,000 for a watch that doesn’t tell time. Why skin tone affects school performance and why small green frogs are the counterfeiters of the animal kingdom.

  Chapter 4 examines the tension between familiarity and novelty, and the value of being optimally distinct. We’ll learn why prototypical-looking cars sell better, what chickens have in common with the thirtieth president of the United States, and why hurricanes influence the popularity of baby names. Why modern art might seem grating the first time we see it, but why, after looking at a couple Picassos, Kandinskys are more pleasing on the eye.

  Chapter 5 illuminates how social influence shapes motivation. Why having other people around makes us faster runners but worse parallel parkers. How our best chance at saving the environment may come from watching our neighbors. What cockroaches can teach us about competition and why losing at halftime makes professional basketball teams more likely to win

  * * *

  Just one note and one request before you dive in.

  The science described here can be (and has been) applied to all sorts of practical problems. Helping people get in shape and perform better at work. Saving the environment and getting products and ideas to catch on.

  As you read through the chapters, I hope you will be inspired to apply these ideas. Through understanding social influence, we can improve our own lives, and the lives of others. To help, at the end of each chapter we’ll discuss common problems people (and companies) often face, and how social influence can help solve them. When it’s better to follow the crowd versus go our own way, how we can increase our own influence, and how we can use these ideas to achieve more successful and fulfilling social interactions.

  Now the request. Throughout the book we’ll discuss how social influence affects people in ways you might never have thought possible. It’s tempting to read such research and assume that it doesn’t apply to us: Sure, other people might follow the herd, but not me.

  But while we think social influence doesn’t affect us, we’re wrong. So please keep an open mind. Through better understanding how influence works, we can harness its power. We all think we are alone in a crowd of sheep. But whether we are or not is a different story . . .

  1. Monkey See, Monkey Do

  What could be easier than matching the length of two lines?

  * * *

  Imagine you were asked to participate in a basic vision test. In front of you is a pair of cards. On the left card is a line. And on the right card are three comparison lines, A, B, and C.

  Your job is simple. Just pick the line on the right that is the same length as the target line on the left card. Decide whether line A, line B, or line C is the same length as the target line. Should be easy, right?

  Now let’s add one more wrinkle. Rather than doing the experiment alone, you participate with a group of your peers.

  You show up at a nondescript building on a university campus, and walk up a flight of stairs to room B7. You see that six other people are already seated around three sides of a square table, so you grab the last remaining chair, the second from the end.

  The experimenter gives the instructions. He reiterates that your job is to pick the line on the right that is most similar in length to the one on the left. The group will do a number of trials just like the one above. As the group is small, and the number of trials relatively few, he’ll call on each person in turn to announce their choice, which he’ll record on a special form.

  The experimenter points to the person on the left side of the table and asks him to start. This first participant has red hair, is wearing a grey collared shirt, and seems to be around twenty-five years old. He looks at the same lines you saw on the last page and, without missing a beat, reports his judgment: “Line B,” he says. The next participant seems a little older, maybe around twenty-seven, and is dressed more casually. But he reports the same answer. “B,” he says. The third person also says B, as does the fourth, and the fifth, and then it gets to you.

  “What’s your answer?” asks the experimenter. Which line would you pick?

  * * *

  When psychologist Solomon Asch designed this line length study in 1951, he was testing more than people’s vision. He was hoping to prove someone wrong.

  * * *

  A few years earlier another psychologist, Muzafer Sherif, had conducted a similar study and found surprising results.1 Sherif was interested in how norms form—how groups of people come to agree on common ways of seeing the world.

  To study this question, he put people in an unusual situation. In a dark room, Sherif displayed a small pinpoint of light on the wall. He asked people to stare at the light and not move their eyes for as long as possible. Then he asked them to report how far the point of light moved.

  The point of light was immobile. It didn’t move at all.

  But for individuals in the room, the light seemed to shift ever so slightly. Gazing at a small dot of light in an otherwise dark room is tougher than it sounds. After staring in the darkness for a while, our eyes fatigue and move involuntarily. This tendency causes the point of light to seem as though it moves even though it doesn’t.

  Sherif studied this phenomenon, called the autokinetic effect, because he wanted to see how people might rely on others when they were uncertain.

  First he put people in the room alone, by themselves. Each person picked a number based on how far they thought the light moved. Some people thought two inches, others thought six inches. Different people’s estimates varied widely.

  Then, Sherif put those same people into groups.

  Rather than making their guesses alone, two or three participants would be in the room at the same time, each making estimates that the others could hear.

  People didn’t have to agree; they could guess whatever they wanted. But when placed together, what was once a discordant mix of differing views soon became a symphony of similarity. In the presence of their peers, the guesses converged. One participant might have said two inches when she was by herself, while another might have said six inches. But when placed together they soon came to a common estimate. The person who said two inches increased her estimate (to something like th
ree and a half inches) and the person who said six inches decreased his estimate (to something like four inches).

  People’s estimates conformed to those around them.

  This conformity happened even though people were unaware it occurred. When Sherif asked participants whether they were influenced by the judgments of others, most people said no.

  And social influence was so strong that it persisted even when people went back to making judgments by themselves. After the group trials, Sherif split people up and had them return to making guesses alone. But people continued to give the answers that they had settled on with the group, even after the group was gone. People who had increased their estimates when others were in the room (from two to four inches, for instance) tended to keep guessing that larger number even when they were by themselves.

  The group’s influence stuck.

  * * *

  Sherif’s findings were controversial. Do people just do whatever others are doing? Are we mindless automatons who simply follow others’ every action? Notions of independence and free thought seemed at stake.

  But Solomon Asch wasn’t convinced.

  Asch thought conformity was simply a result of the situation Sherif used. Guessing how far a point of light moved wasn’t like asking people whether they like Coke or Pepsi or whether they want butter or cream cheese on their bagel. It was a judgment most people had never made, or even thought of making. Further, the right answer was far from obvious. It wasn’t an easy question. It was a hard one.

  In sum, the situation was ripe with uncertainty. And when people feel uncertain, relying on others makes sense. Others’ opinions provide information. And particularly when people feel unsure, why not take that information into account? When we don’t know what to do, listening to others’ opinions, and shifting ours based on them, is a reasonable thing to do.