CONFORMING TO SOCIAL NORMS
FIGURE 10: This is a representation of two cards used by Solomon Asch in his famous social conformity experiments. The length of the line on the first card (left) is
obviously the same as line C, but when a group of actors claimed it was a different length the research subjects would often change their minds and go with the crowd
rather than believe their own eyes.
The experiment always began the same. First, there would be some easy
trials where everyone agreed on the correct line. After a few rounds, the
participants were shown a test that was just as obvious as the previous ones,
except the actors in the room would select an intentionally incorrect answer.
For example, they would respond “A” to the comparison shown in Figure
10. Everyone would agree that the lines were the same even though they
were clearly different.
The subject, who was unaware of the ruse, would immediately become
bewildered. Their eyes would open wide. They would laugh nervously to
themselves. They would double-check the reactions of other participants.
Their agitation would grow as one person after another delivered the same
incorrect response. Soon, the subject began to doubt their own eyes.
Eventually, they delivered the answer they knew in their heart to be
incorrect.
Asch ran this experiment many times and in many different ways. What
he discovered was that as the number of actors increased, so did the
conformity of the subject. If it was just the subject and one actor, then there
was no effect on the person’s choice. They just assumed they were in the
room with a dummy. When two actors were in the room with the subject,
there was still little impact. But as the number of people increased to three
actors and four and all the way to eight, the subject became more likely to
second-guess themselves. By the end of the experiment, nearly 75 percent
of the subjects had agreed with the group answer even though it was
obviously incorrect.
Whenever we are unsure how to act, we look to the group to guide our
behavior. We are constantly scanning our environment and wondering,
“What is everyone else doing?” We check reviews on Amazon or Yelp or
TripAdvisor because we want to imitate the “best” buying, eating, and
travel habits. It’s usually a smart strategy. There is evidence in numbers.
But there can be a downside.
The normal behavior of the tribe often overpowers the desired behavior
of the individual. For example, one study found that when a chimpanzee
learns an effective way to crack nuts open as a member of one group and
then switches to a new group that uses a less effective strategy, it will avoid
using the superior nut cracking method just to blend in with the rest of the
chimps.
Humans are similar. There is tremendous internal pressure to comply
with the norms of the group. The reward of being accepted is often greater
than the reward of winning an argument, looking smart, or finding truth.
Most days, we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than be right by ourselves.
The human mind knows how to get along with others. It wants to get
along with others. This is our natural mode. You can override it—you can
choose to ignore the group or to stop caring what other people think—but it
takes work. Running against the grain of your culture requires extra effort.
When changing your habits means challenging the tribe, change is
unattractive. When changing your habits means fitting in with the tribe,
change is very attractive.
3. Imitating the Powerful
Humans everywhere pursue power, prestige, and status. We want pins and
medallions on our jackets. We want President or Partner in our titles. We
want to be acknowledged, recognized, and praised. This tendency can seem
vain, but overall, it’s a smart move. Historically, a person with greater
power and status has access to more resources, worries less about survival,
and proves to be a more attractive mate.
We are drawn to behaviors that earn us respect, approval, admiration, and
status. We want to be the one in the gym who can do muscle-ups or the
musician who can play the hardest chord progressions or the parent with the
most accomplished children because these things separate us from the
crowd. Once we fit in, we start looking for ways to stand out.
This is one reason we care so much about the habits of highly effective
people. We try to copy the behavior of successful people because we desire
success ourselves. Many of our daily habits are imitations of people we
admire. You replicate the marketing strategies of the most successful firms
in your industry. You make a recipe from your favorite baker. You borrow
the storytelling strategies of your favorite writer. You mimic the
communication style of your boss. We imitate people we envy.
High-status people enjoy the approval, respect, and praise of others. And
that means if a behavior can get us approval, respect, and praise, we find it
attractive.
We are also motivated to avoid behaviors that would lower our status. We
trim our hedges and mow our lawn because we don’t want to be the slob of
the neighborhood. When our mother comes to visit, we clean up the house
because we don’t want to be judged. We are continually wondering “What
will others think of me?” and altering our behavior based on the answer.
The Polgar sisters—the chess prodigies mentioned at the beginning of
this chapter—are evidence of the powerful and lasting impact social
influences can have on our behavior. The sisters practiced chess for many
hours each day and continued this remarkable effort for decades. But these
habits and behaviors maintained their attractiveness, in part, because they
were valued by their culture. From the praise of their parents to the
achievement of different status markers like becoming a grandmaster, they
had many reasons to continue their effort.
Chapter Summary
The culture we live in determines which behaviors are attractive
to us.
We tend to adopt habits that are praised and approved of by our
culture because we have a strong desire to fit in and belong to the
tribe.
We tend to imitate the habits of three social groups: the close
(family and friends), the many (the tribe), and the powerful (those
with status and prestige).
One of the most effective things you can do to build better habits
is to join a culture where (1) your desired behavior is the normal
behavior and (2) you already have something in common with the
group.
The normal behavior of the tribe often overpowers the desired
behavior of the individual. Most days, we’d rather be wrong with
the crowd than be right by ourselves.
If a behavior can get us approval, respect, and praise, we find it
attractive.
10
How to Find and Fix the Causes of Your Bad
Habits
I
N
LATE 2012
, I was sitting in an old apartment just a few blocks from Istanbul’s
most famous street, Istiklal Caddesi. I was in the middle of a four-day trip
to Turkey and my guide, Mike, was relaxing in a worn-out armchair a few
feet away.
Mike wasn’t really a guide. He was just a guy from Maine who had been
living in Turkey for five years, but he offered to show me around while I
was visiting the country and I took him up on it. On this particular night, I
had been invited to dinner with him and a handful of his Turkish friends.
There were seven of us, and I was the only one who hadn’t, at some
point, smoked at least one pack of cigarettes per day. I asked one of the
Turks how he got started. “Friends,” he said. “It always starts with your
friends. One friend smokes, then you try it.”
What was truly fascinating was that half of the people in the room had
managed to quit smoking. Mike had been smoke-free for a few years at that
point, and he swore up and down that he broke the habit because of a book
called Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking.
“It frees you from the mental burden of smoking,” he said. “It tells you:
‘Stop lying to yourself. You know you don’t actually want to smoke. You
know you don’t really enjoy this.’ It helps you feel like you’re not the
victim anymore. You start to realize that you don’t need to smoke.”
I had never tried a cigarette, but I took a look at the book afterward out of
curiosity. The author employs an interesting strategy to help smokers
eliminate their cravings. He systematically reframes each cue associated
with smoking and gives it a new meaning.
He says things like:
You think you are quitting something, but you’re not quitting
anything because cigarettes do nothing for you.
You think smoking is something you need to do to be social, but
it’s not. You can be social without smoking at all.
You think smoking is about relieving stress, but it’s not. Smoking
does not relieve your nerves, it destroys them.
Over and over, he repeats these phrases and others like them. “Get it
clearly into your mind,” he says. “You are losing nothing and you are
making marvelous positive gains not only in health, energy and money but
also in confidence, self-respect, freedom and, most important of all, in the
length and quality of your future life.”
By the time you get to the end of the book, smoking seems like the most
ridiculous thing in the world to do. And if you no longer expect smoking to
bring you any benefits, you have no reason to smoke. It is an inversion of
the 2nd Law of Behavior Change: make it unattractive.
Now, I know this idea might sound overly simplistic. Just change your mind
and you can quit smoking. But stick with me for a minute.
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