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We often think that self-control comes from within, but many of our actions depend as much on our friends and family as we do on ourselves. Those around us have the power to make us fat, drink more alcohol, worry less about the environment, and be more risky with sunscreen, among other things.
It's not just a matter of peer pressure, in which you deliberately act in a certain way to become part of the group. Instead, he is largely unconscious. Under your conscience, your brain constantly captures information from people around you to inform your behavior. And the consequences can be serious.
It is now well accepted that our personal sense of self comes from other people. "The more group-based your identity is, even when you're not surrounded by this group, the more likely you are to defend those values," says Amber Gaffney, a social psychologist at Humboldt University. "If you identify a large part of your identity as a student at a university or, like me, an academic, that's what you carry in most interactions with others. First of all, I see things from an academic point of view. Students, for example, tend to have a stronger attitude than the rest of the population, for example by legalizing drugs or supporting the sustainability of the environment.
These are called social norms. And while these norms are generally stable, interesting things happen if only one person in the associated group acts out of the character.
Think about the following study, which found that people were likely to change their minds about green travel if they found that their peers were hypocritical.
Students from Humboldt State University reside in a small, socially liberal northern California city that is proud of its environmental assets. The students are largely concerned with the environment. You would expect that the scorn of peers for carbon emissions will not diminish well.
After listening to an interview with a student at the university who had insisted on the importance of walking or cycling short distances rather than taking a car, then confessed to having driven to the school. interview, participants were asked about their own opinions about the environment. They did it while they were sitting next to an actor. The actor played the role of a third student wearing a university sweater or an elegant clothing professional. When the hypocrisy of the interviewee was revealed, the actor made a negative remark about his behavior or remained silent.
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The way in which participants felt the importance of walking or cycling short distances depended on the person with whom they had listened to the interview and the reaction of that person. When they sat with someone who they thought was another student and shared their environmental values, participants reiterated the importance of cycling. When sitting with an outsider, it was not so clear.
A stranger who commented on the hypocrisy of the interviewee elicited the strongest environmental feelings among the participants. In defending the interviewee from the critics, they reinforced their own view that cycling was important. This may be because they felt that the interviewee would normally be more responsible to the environment. Conversely, if the stranger remained silent, the participants judged the importance of cycling to be the lowest. So how a stranger judges our peers has a big impact on whether we support them or not.
"It was an interesting study," adds Gaffney, "because we have managed to make some people less environmentally conscious. Normally, this is not something we would actively like to do, but understanding where these points of view come from could help us to move people in the opposite direction. "
In the face of criticism from a stranger, we could help our peers. But if left to their own opinion, we interpret hypocritical behavior as a sign that we can relax our own views. This is what is called proxy dissonance.
"Indirect dissonance is when you see someone behaving inconsistently with your attitudes, so you change attitude," Gaffney said. "I should be embarrassed to see you acting in a non-environmental way, but that does not always happen. I will not necessarily start copying you, but I will change my attitude to reflect your behavior because I feel like you and I see you as an extension of myself. "
This study is inspired by several Australian works on indirect dissonance around the use of sunscreen. Again, a person who acts hypocritically would relax the attitude of people to the application of protection, where the standard is to be extremely vigilant.
The way we talk about our health choices with friends can also have a significant impact on our decisions, both positively and negatively. Talking about an anti-smoking campaign with friends helped reduce cigarette consumption, perhaps because these conversations gave smokers an opportunity to determine what information was most relevant to their lifestyle – and 'Act in consequence. This is supported by a meta-analysis of 28 studies totaling 139,000 participants.
"The leading causes of death are preventable health behaviors, such as smoking and obesity, and we have access to a great deal of information online, but we continue to smoke and we do not practice of exercise, "says Christin Scholz of the University of Amsterdam. "Everything our friends do influences us consciously or not. Their presence can decide whether we act on this health information or ignore it. "
Scholz asked American students if they had talked to someone from a recent alcohol-related experience and whether these conversations were positive or negative. If they had talked positively about alcohol consumption, they were more likely to drink more the next day and vice versa. These models, however, are strongly influenced by the social circumstances in which we find ourselves.
When we make decisions, we constantly re-evaluate the value we could derive from each choice – a process called maximizing value. Our decision to take the stairs rather than the elevator depends on the amount of meals we had at lunch, whether we have already done our daily run and whether we have entered the building with our fellow triathlete. No effect of a conversation with friends can ever be seen in isolation. And that's why our will fluctuates.
"Let's say I had a conversation with a friend the day before about some of the negatives of alcohol but the next day I find myself in a bar with other people – I would always say that the conversation has some influence on me, "says Scholz. . "However, it is a fairly simple representation of the human decision-making process. We are not always [very] rational – we make these decisions fairly quickly. The importance of certain types of information changes during the day. "
Our choices are influenced by who we are with when we are asked, how they have reacted, all the conversations we have had before, and our basic understanding of what is normal for this group of friends. But if we still doubt, the easiest way is to look at what others are doing and copy it. We do it all the time and we may not realize the impact it has.
When we eat with people who eat a lot, we eat more
"When we eat with others, we tend to use their behavior as a guide," says Suzanne Higgs, who is studying the psychobiology of appetite at the University of Birmingham. "Many studies have shown that when we eat with people who eat a lot, we eat more. People do not often realize that they are influenced in this way. They might say it's the taste, the price or the hunger rather than the people around them. "
The phenomenon was first described from an analysis of food diaries by John de Castro in the 1980s. These detailed diaries detailed what people ate, but also where, when and with whom. He was then able to control the effects of the festive meals, the consumption of alcohol or not, if the meal was held on the weekend, as well as any other factor likely to influence the amount of food consumed.
These effects have since been repeated in laboratories. Higgs asked the students to lunch with a friend or in isolation in a laboratory. This seems to happen even when you eat with another friend in a highly controlled environment. But, this effect only happens with people you know well.
The presence of another person obscures our ability to pick up signals from our body indicating that we are satisfied
Higgs suggests that the presence of another person harms our ability to pick up signals from our body to tell us that we are satisfied. The normal process of feeling full is disturbed by feeling stimulated by our friends. Other distractions, such as watching TV, increase the consumption of food.
Then, Higgs conducted field research to see if eating behaviors could be influenced by other social cues. She wanted to encourage people to choose vegetable-based side dishes by providing information about the choices of other guests using posters. "Of course, we know that saying explicitly that vegetables are good for you does not work," says Higgs. Instead, the posters display data made on the side dishes that most customers have purchased. Higgs puts a dish of vegetables at the top.
"These posters simply describe the behavior of other people – that's enough for some," says Higgs. "When we enter a new environment, we look for clues about how to behave. So, seeing that some choice is the most popular really helps us. "
The effect was observed even after the removal of the posters. Higgs had created a new standard.
"There is good reason to believe that when we adopt normative behavior, we feel good because we are in contact with a social group," said Higgs. "If you are with a new social group, you are more likely to mimic the behaviors."
Our decisions may not always be in our hands. But it also means that we can use our influence for good. "In the same way that negative behavior can spread through a network of people, positive behavior can spread across a network," says Scholz. "We have evolved to live in groups to spread positive actions and seek the approval of others."
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William Park is @williamhpark on Twitter. Javier Hirschfeld created the illustration of this article.
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