Mrs.DEVI VENUGOPAL
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST – 33
INDONESIA
Readers hope you all employed the temptation bundling and habit stacking strategy to make the new habits irresistible. In this month article, we are going to use the power of the seductive pull of social norms to our benefit. Humans are social animals, we want to fit in, bond with others and get their approval. Can you remember when you tried new habits, it’s for the approval of a friend, or a colleague. For example, I never used to drink tea or coffee, but when I started work, I began drinking tea/coffee twice a day to have the gossip or small talks with colleagues. Soon it became a habit of its own, it took quite a few years to change.
We humans are herd animals and such inclinations are crucial for our survival, that’s why our ancestors used to live in tribes and there is a saying that “The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.” This shows that we don’t choose our early habits, we imitate them. We just follow the script handed over to us by our family, friends, school or society.
Our cultures determine when we should get married, how many kids we must have, which holidays we celebrate and how much to spend on them. There are many invisible rules that guide our behavior, and they rule us even if it not intended to. Often, we follow the habits of our culture without thinking, questioning and sometimes even without remembering. It is not a burden, everyone wants to belong. Behaviors are attractive when they help us to fit us in. We tend to imitate the habits of the following three groups:
- The close
- The many
- The powerful.
We will see in depth of each group.
- Imitating the close.
Proximity has a powerful impact on our behavior, not only the social environment but also the social environment. We pick up habits from people around us.We copy the ways our parents handle arguments, the way friends flirt with others, how colleagues get the results. When your friend smokes, you will give it a try too. If your spouse double checks the door, you will eventually pick up the habit too. We will start doing it without realizing it too.
As a rule, the closer we are to someone, the more likely we are to imitate some of their habits. One groundbreaking study tracked twelve thousand people for thirty-two years and found that “a person’s chances of becoming obese increased by 57% if he or she had a friend who became obese.” It works the other way, too. Another study revealed that if one person in a relationship is losing weight the other person would also slim down about one third of the time. Our friends and family provide a sort of invisible peer pressure that pulls us in their direction.
Of course, peer pressure is bad, I have seen examples in my daughter’s High School that many of the girls struggle with eating disorder and the whole group skip their food during lunch, it is contagious. The first step I gave my daughter is to sit with a group who eats their lunch, in order to prevent any kind of eating disorder. The easiest way to build a new habit is to join the group or culture where your desired habit is the normal behavior. New habits seems achievable when you see others doing it everyday. If you are surrounded by fit people, most likely you will consider to workout regularly.
So surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have yourself. You’ll rise together. You can take this a notch further by joining a culture where your desired behavior is a normal behavior such as yoga practices, meditation group, chanting groups. For example, I love reading books, so in order to motivate myself, I would start a book club or join a book club. Nothing sustains the motivation better than belonging to the tribe. It transforms a personal quest into a shared one. Previously, your identity was singular, you are a reader, athlete, singer, but when you join a club, growth and change are no longer a personal pursuit. We are readers, musicians, or athletes. The shared identity begins to reinforce your personal identity. It is very crucial to remain a part of the group after achieving a goal in order to maintain it.
- Imitating the Many
Whenever we are unsure of how to act, we look around at others behavior to guide our behavior. We are constantly scanning our environment and wondering, “What is everyone else doing?” We check the reviews in booking, Amazon, Yelp, Trip advisor because we want to imitate the “best” buying, eating, and travel habits. It’s usually a smart strategy, the numbers give the proof. But there is also downside to it. The normal power of the tribe often overpowers the desired behavior of the individual, for example one experiment proved that a chimpanzee learns an effective way to crack nuts open as a member of one group and then switched to a group of a less effective strategy, it will avoid using the superior strategy 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 be rather wrong with the group than be right alone. Human mind knows how to get along, it is our natural mode. You can override it, and stop thinking what others think, but it demands 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.
- Imitating the Powerful
We are drawn to behaviors that earn us respect, approval admiration and status. We want to be the one in the gym who does the pullups, or the musician who plays the hardest instrument, or the parent of the most accomplished child so we stand apart from the crowd. Once we fit in we look for ways to stand apart. We like to copy the behaviors of successful people because we admire success.
You make your daily habits from your role models lives, copy the recipe of your favorite baker. 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 their behaviors are attractive. When our mothers or mother-in-law visits our houses, we clean our houses. We are continually wondering “What will others think of me?” and altering out behavior based on the answer. When our friends or relatives visit our homes, we get into the deep cleaning to get that praise, approval, and respect.
In this article we learnt how to get ourselves surrounded by the good influences based on the desired behavior you want, make use of the seductive pull of the close ones, majority and powerful ones.
