Invisible Influence (13 page)

Given her fame, it's no surprise that fashion houses started
sending her free handbags. Product placement is a standard marketing tactic that has been around for more than a hundred years. As a prominent TV star and celebrity, Snooki was seen by hundreds of thousands of eyeballs every week. Companies would send her free handbags to advertise their brands and thus increase their sales. A photo of her in
People
magazine could be seen by millions of people, so getting their handbag in the photo would be a powerful and relatively inexpensive form of advertising.

But free bags from their competitors? Why would fashion houses want to give their competitors more exposure?

It turns out that Snooki wasn't the only
Jersey Shore
cast member having an unusual interaction with a brand. That same year Abercrombie & Fitch offered to pay her costar, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino, a significant sum of money.

Again, paying famous people to wear clothes from a certain brand is a standard marketing tactic. Actresses receive huge sums to wear dresses from particular designers at the Oscars. Tiffany & Co. paid host Anne Hathaway $750,000 dollars to wear their jewelry at the Academy Awards. The expectation is that such placement will increase sales. Seeing items on their favorite stars will make people want them more.

But Abercrombie & Fitch wasn't offering to pay “The Situation” to wear their clothes. Quite the opposite. They were offering to pay him
not
to wear their clothes.

Suppose you're at a party and looking for someone to talk to. The friend you came with asked you to give them a couple minutes to
catch up with a work colleague, so you're on your own, hanging out by the bean dip.

You don't know anyone else there, but two people nearby look like potential conversation partners. One is dressed like an artsy hipster. He's wearing skinny jeans, scuffed leather boots, and a vintage shirt. It seems like he's stepped out of an ad for Urban Outfitters. The other person looks a little more professional. He's wearing a polo shirt, tan khaki pants, and leather boat shoes.

Who would you be more likely to talk to? The hipster or the prep? The American Apparel devotee or the person who looks like they just got off work at Brooks Brothers?

Made your pick? Now take a second to reflect on why you chose the person you did. Why you picked one person over the other.

You probably made inferences about each person based on what he was wearing. The artsy hipster might be from Brooklyn, skew a little liberal, and belong to the creative class. He probably drinks craft beer religiously, loves that new dubstep bluegrass album, and can recommend a good art house film.

You probably made different inferences about the preppy person. They might be from the South (or New England), skew conservative, and be really into college football. He might have gone to private school, worked in finance, or played lacrosse at some point.

Are these wild generalizations? Yes.

Can they dip into overly general stereotypes? Certainly.

Yet we make similar inferences dozens of times a day. Like an amateur Sherlock Holmes, we try to deduce things about the people around us based on their choices. Cars and clothes serve more than just a functional purpose. They act as a silent communication system, signaling information to others.

Think about how hiring works at a large financial services firm. Every time they post a new business analyst position, boatloads of résumés pile in. Hundreds of candidates applying for the same spot. It's hard to know who would be the best fit. Who has the right mix of aptitude and creativity? Which applicant will have the necessary quantitative skills and interact well with clients?

Ideally the company could give each applicant a trial run. Let each candidate perform the job for a couple weeks, measure performance, and pick the top performer. But that's unfeasible.

So companies use signals, like where an applicant went to school, the jobs they held previously, or other readily available information as a proxy for qualities that are difficult to evaluate. A candidate graduated from Brown? That's no guarantee that he or she will do well, but the company makes an educated guess based on what they've observed in the past. If Brown grads tend to perform well, the company will start to use that as a signal of who to hire.

The same holds true for social situations like the party with the bean dip. There's not enough time to ping-pong around, briefly sampling each potential conversation partner before deciding who to talk to. And while we could try collecting information about them from other people we know, that would be laborious and time-consuming.

So instead, we use people's choices as signals of who they are and what they're like. Someone who wears a North Face jacket might be outdoorsy. Someone who uses an Apple laptop might be creative. Research finds that people even make inferences about others based on their shopping lists. Whether someone bought Häagen-Dazs or generic ice cream, for example,
influenced others' willingness to let that person babysit their children.
¹

In some ways, these inferences seem silly. Does what ice cream someone bought really provide that much information about whether they'd be a good babysitter? Not really.

But, from another perspective, they make a lot of sense. Without making these, and many similar inferences, life would be a lot more difficult. How else could we get a sense of which person at a party we might enjoy talking to, or which job applicant might be a better fit?

Signals provide an easy shortcut.
²
A way to simplify decision making. We use observable characteristics like how someone dresses, how she talks, or what she drives as a clue to more unobservable characteristics, like whether she'd be fun to grab a beer or go to dinner with. We piece together clues to help us solve the puzzle.

And signals aren't set in stone. They can be revised with new information. If every time we met someone dressed like a hipster he was boring—or, even worse, stole our wallet—we'd probably stop talking to people dressed like that pretty quickly.

But we don't just make inferences about others; we also choose things based on who they are associated with.

Suppose you were asked to vote on a new welfare policy. It offers $800 a month for families with one child and an extra $200 a month for each additional child. In addition, it provides full medical insurance, a job training program, $2,000 in food stamps, extra subsidies for housing and day care, and two years of paid tuition at a community college. Benefits are limited to eight years, but the program would guarantee a job after
benefits ended, and would reinstate aid if a family had another child.

Would you be in favor or opposed to such a policy?

When we think about attitudes toward social policies like these, we usually think they are driven by our personal opinions. Our own beliefs about or feelings toward the issues. Some people are more liberal and others are more conservative. So it wouldn't be surprising if conservatives preferred more stringent welfare policies while liberals preferred more generous ones. Indeed, when Stanford professor Geoffrey Cohen examined how people felt about this relatively generous welfare policy, he found that liberals loved it and conservatives hated it.
³

But Cohen didn't stop there. He also gave some conservatives the same policy, except this time he added just one additional piece of information: that Republicans tended to like it. He told people that the policy was supported by 95 percent of House Republicans and that Republican lawmakers felt that the policy “provides sufficient coverage. . . . without undermining a basic work ethic and sense of personal responsibility.” Same full medical benefits, same guaranteed job after benefits ended, same generous policy overall.

Conservative should hate this policy. It goes against everything they believe in. In fact, no real-world welfare program at the time was more generous than the policy stated here.

But they didn't. Simply telling conservatives that other Republicans liked the policy was enough to completely switch their views. Now conservatives loved the lavish welfare policy. They didn't just support it, they were extremely in favor of it. All because they thought their party liked it.

If you're liberal, this probably confirms what you've felt for a
long time. That Republicans are weak-minded conformists who just do whatever the party says. They don't really think critically about the issues, they just follow the party line. No wonder Republicans have run the country into the ground. Democrats are more thoughtful and pay more attention to the actual issues, right?

But not so fast. Because liberals were just as susceptible to social influence. When just given policy information, liberals preferred the generous welfare policy to a more stringent one. But adding group endorsements completely changed their views. If liberals were told that Republicans liked the generous welfare policy, they said they opposed it. And when liberals were given a stringent welfare policy but told that other Democrats endorsed it, they favored it as well. In fact, they liked it even more than the generous policy in the absence of group information. People's attitudes entirely depended on who the policy was associated with.

When people were asked what drove their policy attitudes, though, their party barely figured in the discussion. They said that the details of the proposal and their own philosophy of government drove their decision. What the typical Democrat or Republican believes? They said it barely mattered at all.

And they were wrong. Because people's attitudes weren't just slightly nudged one way or another depending on group endorsement, their attitudes completely changed based on which party supported or opposed them. Regardless of whether the welfare policy was generous or stringent, conservatives supported the policy if they thought Republicans favored it and opposed it if they thought Democrats favored it. And liberals did the same, albeit following what they thought Democrats supported (and opposing what Republicans liked).

When it came to political views, party was stronger than policy.

When Honda launched a new compact crossover called the Element, the company tried to appeal to twenty-somethings. The SUV was designed to cater to the adventuresome, with fold-down seats and a back that could fit a kayak or mountain bike. Their ads took a similar approach. They were filled with hip, loud music and cool twenty- and thirty-somethings surfing, snowboarding, and doing other extreme sports.

Clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch also projects a certain image. Their ads show highly sexualized, grey-scale photos of toned adolescents hanging out on the beach or just having fun. Abercrombie stores convey a similar aura. Dim lights, attractive salespeople, and the smell of youthful privilege emanating from the walls.

The message from both companies is clear. Want to be like these people? Buy from us. You're not purchasing a product, you're buying a ticket to a certain lifestyle and everything that comes with it. If you like outdoor sports, the Element is the right car for you. If you want to have a hot bod, or date someone who does, wear Abercrombie.

But do companies have full control over what their brands signal?

Honda pitched the Element as a dorm room on wheels for college-age folks and twenty-somethings looking to haul bikes and surfboards, but it also ended up appealing to other demographics. The Element was just as popular with thirty- and forty-somethings who found it perfect for hauling around children
and groceries. And senior citizens loved its easy entry, spacious interior, and relatively low price tag.

Soon the Element stopped signaling hip and started communicating something else.

Something similar happened with Abercrombie. But before returning to their story, we first need to learn about small green frogs.

It's tough being a small male green frog. Life starts as part of a huge floating egg mass with thousands of your brothers and sisters. Hatching happens less than a week later. If you survive being eaten by dragonfly larvae and fish, you soon grow to become a tadpole, competing for algae and whatever else you can get your little amphibian lips on. But as you bulk up, you become more appealing to herons, mallards, and other ducks looking for a snack. Fewer than one of every 250 of your peers survive to become frogs.

Being a full-fledged frog isn't any easier. Now you have to find a mate. And it's a tough market. Ladies aren't looking for love, they're looking for someone with a nice, safe place to lay their eggs. Guys with the best spots might even get to mate multiple times during the season. So, in late spring to early summer, you leave the comforts of your primary wetland habitat and migrate to a breeding site, looking for the best corner of pond you can find.

After much hopping about, you finally see it. There, in the fading light of the afternoon, you find the perfect spot. Shady, nicely vegetated, and not too deep. Time to use your vocal cords and let the ladies know you're single and ready to mingle.

But before you can find Ms. Right Now, you hear a noise.
A throaty
boink
(like the plucking of a loose banjo string) that sounds just like yours, only a bit lower and deeper.

Not good.

Someone has come to steal your territory.

The sounds green frogs make tend to be associated with size. Bigger frogs make deeper noises. And bigger frogs almost always beat smaller frogs in a fight.

So what's a small frog to do? How can you hold on to your spot?

Turns out that small green frogs do something clever. They fib. Just a little bit.

Rather than sending their regular call in response to a large male call, small green frogs switch to something else.
⁴
Something a little richer and deeper than usual. When faced with a rival that might steal their spot, small green frogs produce a lower-frequency call that makes them sound bigger and tougher than they actually are.