Invisible Influence (21 page)

Too novel and it's unfamiliar. Too familiar and it's boring. But in between and it's just right.

When British psychologists examined how much people liked different last names, for example, they found just this pattern.
¹³
Students were asked to consider sixty different surnames, randomly selected from the telephone directory. Half the students rated how much they liked the different last names, while the other half rated how familiar the names were.

Very unfamiliar names, such as Baskin, Nall, and Bodle, weren't liked that much. At the other end of the spectrum, highly familiar names such as Smith and Brown were also disliked. So what did people like?

Turns out the names people liked the most were the ones that fell in the middle. Names like Shelley or Cassell that were moderately familiar (at least to Brits). Right between unfamiliar and too familiar was just right.

Familiarity and novelty can also be mixed in the same item. Some elements of a song (a chord progression or singer's voice) may be familiar, while others (the lyrics) are new. A new recipe for turkey chili takes something you've made many times before (chili) and puts a novel spin on it. Just like similar sounding names, these variations on a theme increase liking.

Moderately discrepant things also tend to garner more attention.
¹⁴
Take an infant who has just learned a set of expectations about what a dog looks like. How many legs a dog has, that it has fur, and a range of typical sizes.

Seeing a dog picture they've seen before is less interesting because it is wholly familiar, and seeing something that looks
completely different from a dog (a whale, for example) should be so unfamiliar as to be confusing and incomprehensible. But something that is moderately discrepant from their existing knowledge or expectations (a hairless dog) should be particularly intriguing because it doesn't fit with their existing notion of what a dog should be. It's similar enough to be comprehensible, but different enough to evoke interest and exploration.

The right blend of familiarity and novelty also drives what becomes popular. Classical music is more likely to be popular if the transitions between notes are somewhat similar to classical music in general, but different enough from music composed at that time.
¹⁵
High-impact scientific research is grounded in prior work with a sprinkling of unusual combinations of prior ideas.
¹⁶
And hit fashion styles, such as skinny jeans, often take something we all know well (jeans) and add novelty (a new cut).

Things that catch on, then, whether in music, fashion, or any other domain, often hit this Goldilocks range. Similar enough to what is already out there to evoke the warm glow of familiarity, but novel enough to seem new and not just derivative of what came before. Similarity shapes popularity because it makes novel things feel familiar.
^III

Returning to hurricanes and baby names, similar names have the benefit of being new and old at the same time. If Karen is a popular baby name this year, people may be all Karened out. The
name sounds too familiar, and no longer sounds unique, so next year's parents will move on to something else.

But as they pick amongst the other names out there, that Karen was popular may sway their choice. Similar names, like Katy or Darren, may sound better, even if the parents that pick them don't realize why.

Sam, a junior at Princeton University, had just finished her political science homework, and was headed to dinner when she came across the table set out in front of the eating club. Someone was giving people Starbucks gift cards in exchange for filling out a quick survey. It seemed easy enough, and she had a couple minutes before her friends were supposed to show up for dinner, so she dove right in.

The first few questions were simple demographic information. Year in school, age, gender, and so on. The next question asked: Which of the following best describes your fashion style? Preppy, trendy, athletic, classic, edgy/rock, bohemian, indie/hipster, punk/skater, or other.

Sam hated being boxed in, and even after thinking about it for a minute, none of the categories seemed right. She checked the “other” box and wrote in “eclectic!”

One crisp fall evening a few years ago, I was taking the dog for a walk when I noticed two guys about a block in front of me. It was a Friday night, so there were lots of people going out to dinner, or grabbing drinks with friends, but these two guys stood out.

They had medium builds, and one was a few inches taller than the other, but they grabbed my attention because of what they were wearing. In addition to jeans, and some normal-looking sneakers, both were wearing shirts with horizontal brown stripes. Shirts reminiscent of old-fashioned prison garb (albeit in brown) or what you might look for in a
Where's Waldo?
book.

It's not unusual to see groups of friends dressing similarly. On a Friday night, one crew of guys might be wearing untucked button-downs or polo shirts while another group will wear V-neck T-shirts and jeans. One group of girls might be blousy tops and heels, while another will wear Ugg boots and hooded sweatshirts.

But while button-down shirts or Ugg boots are common, brown horizontally striped tops are a bit more rare. And it wasn't as if they were wearing the exact same thing. One guy had on a polo shirt and one had on a sweatshirt. But both had horizontal brown stripes, with either white or grey between them. Weird.

Were they on the way to some striped theme party I hadn't been invited to? Or might their fashion faux pas tell us something deeper about how social influence shapes behavior?

Professors Cindy Chan, Leaf Van Boven, and I decided to take a trip to Princeton University to find out.
¹⁷

In 1853, Princeton University's trustees and faculty voted to ban fraternities and secret societies. The university was wary of how these groups divided the student body (in this pre–Civil War time period, groups often formed around opposing sides) and worried about the cliquishness they developed.

The ban in itself would not have been an issue, but combined
with the lack of campus dining options, students were forced to begin to take their meals in boardinghouses around town. Options flourished. By 1876 there were over twenty such places that catered to the students. They became known as “eating clubs.”

To this day, eating clubs are the center of social life at Princeton. While fraternities were reinstated in the 1980s, the few that exist remain unhoused, and only a small percentage of the students participate.

Instead, social life revolves around the eating clubs. Not only do most upperclassmen take their meals in the eating clubs, but many also go there to study, hang out, and play sports. Thursday and Saturday nights most of the eating clubs host parties, and different clubs have yearly events or concerts that cater to their members.

Given how important these clubs are, my colleagues and I wondered if which club people belonged to would influence how they dressed. Just like the two friends wearing brown-striped shirts, would students from the same club all dress in a “uniform” of sorts? And would these uniforms be distinct enough that observers could tell which club someone belonged to based on the clothes they was wearing?

We picked two popular eating clubs. The first was the Cottage Club. Founded in 1886, the Cottage Club (sometimes known as the University Cottage Club) is the second-oldest eating club at Princeton and one of the most traditional. Members are chosen through a selective interview process complete with secret deliberations. The building was designed by a world-renowned architect and set up to mimic an Italian villa with paneling modeled after a palace of Henry VIII. Yearly photos of the club look a bit like an ad for J.Crew or Vineyard
Vines, replete with men in khaki shorts and loafers and women in pastels and sandals.

The second club we picked was Terrace. Known for being liberal and quirky, Terrace was the first club to abandon the restrictive admission process, instead picking members based on a simple lottery system. Meals include vegetarian or vegan options and the club motto is “Food = Love.” The club looks more like an Austrian ski haus than a dining hall and has been nicknamed “Mother Terrace” and “the Womb.” Members are more hipster than preppy with Chuck Taylors, skirts over tights, and a generally alternative or vintage vibe.

One late afternoon in May, we set up tables in front of each eating club, and offered students $5 for completing a short study. In addition to filling out a quick survey, we took a head-to-toe picture of each student to get a sense of what they were wearing.

Then, we blurred out everything in the photos besides the person's clothes. We concealed the person's face, background, and any other identifying information. It was impossible to tell who someone was and even best friends would have trouble identifying each other from what was left of the photos. All you could see was an outfit.

A few days later, we followed up with people who completed the initial survey. We showed them photos of the other people, one at a time, and asked them a simple question: Which club does this person belong to, Cottage or Terrace?

There are many reasons this question should be hard to answer. After all, the two groups are not
that
different. Both are made up of people who attend the same university, are of the
same age, and come from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. It's not like one group was made up of senior citizens and the other of punks dressed in head-to-toe leather.

And members could wear whatever they wanted. There was no required uniform at either club, and students wore a wide range of colors, brands, and styles.

Yet, even though they were given only a tiny bit of information, what top, bottom, and footwear each person happened to be wearing when we snapped the photo, observers had no trouble guessing which club people belonged to. Eighty-five percent of the time they sorted photos into the correct bucket. Cottage Club members were correctly identified as Cottage Club members and Terrace members were correctly identified as Terrace members.

Observers correctly guessed membership because people tended to do the same thing as those around them. Cottage Club members tended to dress like other Cottage Club members and Terrace members tended to dress like other Terrace members.

But that wasn't all. Just like the horizontally striped twosome I observed on my walk, members of a given club dressed similarly, but they didn't dress identically. Cottage Club members tended to dress preppy, but some wore lighter khakis, while others wore darker khakis. Terrace members tended to dress more alternatively, but some wore ripped blue jeans while others wore ripped black jeans. Imitation was at work, but so was differentiation.

And the differentiation wasn't random. Students who reported caring more about being different stood out more. They wore a T-shirt with an unusual dragon pattern or had a bit of lace fringe on the bottom of their preppy skirt.

Students with higher needs for uniqueness still looked enough
like their peers that others could guess which club they belonged to, but also dressed in ways that differentiated them from the pack. Similar but different. Consistent but unique.

One might wonder, though, whether clothing choices were really driven by social influence. After all, maybe students with similar tastes joined the same club to be around others like them. Preppy kids might like hanging out with other preppy kids, so they all joined Cottage because it had a reputation as a preppy eating club. Thus, it wasn't that being around other preppy students caused them to dress preppier, they were preppy to begin with, and merely chose to hang out in a place with other preppy folks.
^IV

Alternatively, maybe there were norms that encouraged everyone to dress similarly. Show up to a black-tie formal and no one would be surprised that everyone is wearing similar clothes. It's not about social influence; it's about the norms or rules of the situation.

Most situations don't have such strong norms about how
to behave, but many have implicit guides or suggestions about what to do. Going to the beach? Most people would wear bright, happy colors as opposed to dreary ones. Going out to a nice place for dinner? Might want to dress up a bit. Similarly, groups of guys or girls might all dress similarly on a Friday night because they're going to a type of place where people tend to dress a certain way.

To tease these explanations apart, we conducted a more controlled experiment. I walked around a different college campus and asked people to complete a brief survey. Respondents were shown four options and asked which they would prefer.

The first choice involved cars. Participants choose between a grey Mercedes Sports Sedan, a blue Mercedes Sports Sedan, a grey BMW Coupe, and a blue BMW Coupe.

Another choice involved backpacks, with two different options from each of two brands. Participants were given some information about each product, like how much it cost and some of the features, and then asked to circle whichever option they would buy.

To examine how social influence shaped choice, we also manipulated whether people were given information about what “other people” had chosen.

Half the people made their choices based on just the product information. They were shown the options in each category and made their choice independently.

Other people saw “someone else's” choice before they made their own (similar to the study on line lengths). They were told that, given limited budgets for academic research, each paper survey was designed to be used by multiple people. Rather than just one person completing each survey, two could fill it out, which would save the costs of paper and copying.
¹⁸

Under the question “Which would you buy?” there was a line for two different responses, one labeled “Respondent 1” and one labeled “Respondent 2.” If participants did not see any prior answers, they were told to fill in the line labeled “Respondent 1.” If the answers of Respondent 1 were marked already, they were asked to fill in the line labeled “Respondent 2.”