Invisible Influence (14 page)

It's like renting a Mercedes for your high school reunion or using a ten-year-old photo as your dating website profile. To help them get what they want, the little frogs bluff.

Now bluffing, in itself, isn't bad. Everyone does it sometimes. Who wouldn't mind being a little hipper, smarter, or wealthier than they actually are? So people buy things that send these desired signals.

But when too many people start bluffing, or enough outsiders do something even for more functional reasons (like senior citizens and the Element), something interesting happens. It starts to change the meaning of that signal.

If lots of non-outdoorsy people start wearing North Face, either because they want to seem adventurous or just because they like the way the clothes fit, the brand may lose its value as a signal of rugged outdoorsmanship. Even worse, people may start to
associate the brand with wannabes. Something that signaled one thing may start to signal something else.

And that is what Abercrombie & Fitch was worried about when it saw “The Situation” wearing their clothes on
Jersey Shore
. Their press release stated:

We are deeply concerned that Mr. Sorrentino's association with our brand could cause significant damage to our image. We understand that the show is for entertainment purposes, but believe this association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans. We have therefore offered a substantial payment to Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino and the producers of MTV's The Jersey Shore to have the character wear an alternate brand. We have also extended this offer to other members of the cast, and are urgently awaiting a response.

Companies are usually overjoyed when celebrities wear their clothes. But Abercrombie was worried about what would happen if the
wrong
celebrities started wearing the brand.

Because if lots of
Jersey Shore
wannabes started wearing Abercrombie, then the clothes might stop signaling preppy WASP and start signaling something else. And if that happened, people who wanted to look like preppy WASPs might abandon the brand.

People don't just care about whether others are doing something, or how many others are doing it, they also care about
who
those others are.

The knock on the door was a welcome distraction. Karen had spent the last two hours struggling through her computer science
homework and was looking for any excuse for a break. She hoped that Catherine was coming by with a late-night snack, but when she opened the door to her Stanford dorm room, it ended up being two students in yellow shirts.

“We're from the Stanford Cancer Awareness Group,” the girl said, before giving Karen a yellow pamphlet. “To educate the community, November is Wear Yellow month at Stanford. We're going door-to-door to remind people of this important disease and to sell these wristbands to raise money.” The girl handed Karen a little yellow wristband in a plastic bag. “We're asking for a donation of one dollar or more, in exchange for a wristband, all of which will go to cancer research. If you don't have a dollar, we'll even take a quarter. Every little bit helps. It's a chance to contribute to cancer awareness and show your dorm pride.”

“Okay,” Karen said, “I'll donate. Just hold the door while I go find a dollar.” She went over to her desk, rummaged through the top drawer, and found a crumpled single. “Actually, let me get one for my roommate too,” she said. She brought back two dollars and exchanged them for two yellow wristbands.

“Thanks!” the guy said. “We're hoping to sell as many as possible to get the word out about the cause. Please wear the band over the next couple weeks and encourage the other people in your dorm to do the same. It will really help.”

“Will do,” said Karen, before closing the door and going back to her problem set. “Hope you sell a bunch!”

The following week, Karen was coming back from a sociology review session when she smelled something delicious coming from the lounge. She ducked her head in to see half her dorm
mates rifling through different boxes of pizza and the other half frantically circling numbers on sheets of paper.

“What's going on?” she asked one of her neighbors.

“Shh,” Lisa said, “they said we're supposed to write our answers down independently. Some sort of survey a couple of business students are doing. Do it and you'll get a free slice of pizza.” That sounded like a fair trade, so Karen took a survey from one of the students in charge and started filling it out.

In addition to general questions like how late she went to bed, the survey asked whether she owned and was wearing various cause-related items like a 5k T-shirt or a yellow Livestrong wristband. Karen wasn't wearing a 5k T-shirt, but she was wearing the yellow wristband she had gotten earlier in the week, so she circled “yes” to that one. She filled out a couple more questions, dumped the survey in a pile, and grabbed a slice of pizza.

When asked to describe your average Stanford student, “cool” is not the first word most people would use. “Techie,” sure. “Smart,” maybe. But “cool” would not be the first adjective. Yet, even among a sea of people studying to be biochemists or playing in the laptop orchestra, there is a hierarchy. And close to the bottom on the coolness totem pole would be SLE.

Structured Liberal Education, or SLE, is Stanford's academic focus dorm. The regular Stanford course load not enough for you? Incoming freshman who love to learn can apply to this special dorm and the extra academics that come with it. SLE students do additional readings, and attend extra lectures on topics such as Indian mythology and Christianity in the Middle Ages. Each fall the dorm performs Greek playwright Aristophanes's
Lysistrata
.

Not surprisingly, students who live in SLE are seen as the geeks on campus. People don't dislike the SLE students, they just don't think they're particularly cool.

How would people react if these “geeks” started doing what they were doing? If the geeks started wearing yellow wristbands, for example, would people like Karen keep wearing one or abandon it to avoid looking like a geek?

To find out, Stanford professor Chip Heath and I got into the wristband business.

First, we went door-to-door in Karen's dorm selling the wristbands.
⁵
Then, different research assistants returned to the dorm to collect a seemingly unrelated survey that let us measure how many students were wearing the wristbands. (Students will do almost anything for pizza.)

Next, came the geeks. We sold the same wristbands to the geeky academic focus dorm next door, SLE.

Finally, the research assistants returned to Karen's dorm after we sold the wristbands to the geeks to see whether Karen and her dorm mates were still wearing them.

There are many reasons students should have kept wearing the wristbands. The bands were relatively novel and signaled support for a prosocial cause. And it's not like the band was something Karen and company knew nothing about. They were already wearing it. So, learning that the geeks were wearing it provided no new information about whether Karen and her dorm mates would like it themselves. Further, it's one thing to avoid something others are doing, but to give up something you already like? The motivation must be strong.

And it was. Even though the wristband signaled support for a prosocial cause, and even though people already liked and were wearing it, adoption by the geeks led them to abandon the band.
Almost a third of Karen's dorm stopped wearing the wristband once the geeks adopted it.

One might wonder whether students abandoned the band simply because they got bored of them, but that wasn't the case. We also sold wristbands to another dorm on the opposite side of campus. These students owned the wristband for the same length of time, but didn't live anywhere near the geeks, so there was less chance that someone who saw them wearing it would confuse them with one of the geeks. And, sure enough, these students kept wearing the wristbands.

Students didn't get rid of the bands because they were old, or because they didn't work anymore, the students abandoned the wristband because they wanted to avoid looking like a geek.

People diverge to avoid being misidentified or communicating undesired identities. Students ate less candy when they saw an obese person eating a lot, and professionals stopped calling their children Jr. once the practice was adopted by the working class. Minivan sales tanked when they became associated with soccer moms, and tech CEOs wear hoodies rather than suits to avoid looking like, well, a suit.
⁶

Misidentification is costly. Wearing a shirt with an indie band like Asian Spider Monkey emblazoned across the front is a great signal. It helps you meet other people that like the same music and maybe even find the perfect mate. (“You like them, too?!”)

But if fashionistas start wearing the shirt because they've heard the band is the next big thing, the T-shirt loses its value as a signal. Not only are you no longer unique, but observers don't
know whether someone wearing the shirt is an indie rock fan or a fashionista. Whether he loves guitar riffs or Prada's new spring collection. As a result, indie rock fans who wear the shirt may be ignored by potential mates and friends. And they may have to endure people coming up to them wanting to talk about whether black is really the new black.

Misidentification leads us to miss out on desired interactions and endure undesired ones. Even worse, it may lead people to think someone is a poser. A wannabe who copies the style of a subculture but isn't part of it.

Not all misidentification, though, is equal. Think about political affiliations or other groups arrayed on a spectrum. Moving from left to right there are Radicals (far left), Liberals, Moderates, Conservatives, and Reactionaries (far right). Members of each group would prefer to be correctly identified and not confused with other groups. But the penalty of confusion gets larger the further away groups are from one another. Sure, most self-identified liberals would prefer not to be thought of as moderates, but being seen as a conservative would be much worse. And conservatives feel the same way about liberals.

The greater the dissimilarity, then, the greater the cost of misidentification. It's never ideal to be thought of as someone you're not, but the more dissimilar the mistaken identity is, the worse it gets. Most twenty-five-year-olds don't want to seem like they're thirty, but they really don't want to seem like they're thirty-five (or seventeen).

The further the mistaken identity, the higher the cost. Seeming that much younger may lead to missed promotions and not being taken seriously. And seeming that much older may lead to being left off party invitations or emails to join that new kickball
league. The further from reality, the more detrimental the misidentification.

Rather than group identities per se, though, divergence is more about the subtle social characteristics that certain signals convey. Teenagers are unlikely to be confused with forty-year-old business executives, and grizzled members of a motorcycle gang are unlikely to be mistaken for balding accountants. But if accountants start driving Harleys to seem tough, people who see someone driving a Harley will be more likely to infer that the rider shares characteristics with accountants.

Imagine you're eating dinner at Hoffbrau Steakhouse. This family-owned and -operated steakhouse has locations all over Texas, from Amarillo to Dallas. And as one might expect from a Texas steakhouse, Hoffbrau's serves a meat-heavy menu. From the bacon-wrapped filet to the Texas Two Step dinner for two (dual sirloin steaks served on a bed of grilled onions), Hoffbrau's has everything to satisfy even the hungriest cowboy. All grass-fed, hand-cut, seasoned, and grilled to perfection.

You decide on the Smoked Sirloin. Hickory smoked and pepper crusted, it sounds delicious. There's only one choice left: Which size?

You're not feeling all that hungry, and when you look at the menu you see two options: the 12-ounce cut and the 8-ounce Ladies' Cut. Which would you choose? The 12-ounce or the Ladies' Cut ?

For women, this choice is easy. You'd probably pick the Ladies' Cut. Indeed, when researchers gave women a similar choice, around 80 percent of women chose the Ladies' Cut steak.

But what if you're a guy?

You're not that hungry, so you'd probably prefer the smaller steak. Heck, the 12-ounce serving isn't just a couple bites more than the 8-ounce one. It's 50 percent more steak. The choice should be simple, right?

After all, a steak is just a steak. People aren't going to think a guy is a woman just because he orders a Ladies' Cut. So guys should have nothing to worry about.

But when consumer psychologists gave men this choice, 95 percent chose the larger steak.
⁷
And it's not because they somehow decided they were hungrier than they thought. When researchers relabeled the smaller steak the “Chef's Cut,” men were more than happy to chose the smaller size. Men avoided the Ladies' Cut steak because they were worried about being perceived as less masculine.

Growing up in Washington, D.C., in the mid-1980s, Sidney had always done well in school. He wasn't the smartest kid in every class, but he usually did better than most of his peers. His report card was a consistent mix of As and Bs, and his standardized test scores were similarly high. When he took a basic skills test in ninth grade, Sidney scored well above his grade level, reaching college level in science, social studies, and language, and almost college level in reading and math.

By the time he reached eleventh grade, though, Sidney's teachers noticed a disturbing disconnect. Sidney's aptitude was there, but his performance was not. While his standardized test scores remained high, Sidney's grades fizzled, dropping to a C average.