Subtly Influenced by Others

A classic psychology experiment involves three volunteers entering a room to take a test at desks. The test itself is relatively insignificant, involving a long series of multiple-choice questions. In the course of taking the exam, smoke begins to fill the room through vents. What do you think happens?

The test, of course, has little to do with the actual experiment. Only one person in the room is the subject of the experiment, with the other two having been given different instructions. The two participants were told that smoke would begin to fill the room and that they would simply keep taking the test as if nothing were happening. The experiment is to see what the subject will do when there could be severe danger, but no one else responds. For better or worse, in most situations, the subject of the experiment will sit there, too, because no one else is doing anything. This is an example of what Robert Cialdini terms “Social Proof” in his seminal Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Power of Group Affiliation

That our involvement with other humans can profoundly influence our behavior does not come as a surprise. Like our nearest primate relatives, the Gorilla and Pan genera, we have likely relied upon multi-human groups to survive since the earliest branching of our hereditary line from them. While we do not have direct evidence for those earliest phases, by the time of the emergence of the genus Homo, we were living in groups of up to 100 individuals with a high degree of mobility and fluid social formations. We are the product of millions of years of group affiliation being a pivotal component to our survival and evolution.

The survival aspect of group involvement also speaks to one of its greatest dangers. Because our ancestor’s very survival rested in many cases upon their involvement in the group, anything that violated group norms in thought or deed could be grounds for death. This same pattern has been replayed repeatedly as human social structures have become more complex. Go too far against the group, and it can be fatal. See the stories of Socrates, Jesus, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, John Kennedy, and others.

Unsurprisingly, though, we rarely think of ourselves as being influenced by our group affiliations. We prefer to think of ourselves as individuals and unconsciously rationalize our group influences into being purely our own decisions. Yet, even on an anatomical level, we are profoundly influenced by the actions we observe and integrate them as if they were our own. The discovery of so-called “mirror neuron” activities by Giacomo Rizzolatti and subsequent research shows that when animals with complex nervous systems, including humans, observe another acting, their own brain fires patterns of neurons as if they were doing this action. It is speculated that this capacity is a means of rapid learning for new behaviors. This seems particularly complex in humans, spreading to further regions than observed in other animals.

What we see for others we remake as our own. Often, we even think we came up with it ourselves.

Individual vs Group Identity

There is tension for all of us in our individuality and our connection to groups. The unhealthiest relationships to either an over-identification as an individual or an over-identification with a group derive from personal boundary issues. For the unhealthy individualist, their personal boundaries are stiff and brittle, leading them to avoid anything that requires them to behave in new ways. The unhealthy group identifier, in contrast, has poorly defined personal boundaries and simply allows them to get swept up in outside influence, thinking it somehow makes them superior.

A healthier approach is to turn the unconscious effects of group involvement into a conscious tool. Finding, studying, and designing social groups allows you to see what involvements work best for you. It allows you to network with other perceptive humans who are developed in different ways than you are and can come to modes of thinking you might not have been able to do on your own. It has been found in small-scale social experiments that the more diverse the group is working on a topic, the more rapid their ability to find solutions.

— Source: “When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Deal with Difficult People”, by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. From Chapter 4, “The Two Great Relationships.”