Invisible Influence (22 page)

In actuality, the surveys were rigged. For participants in this social influence condition, we filled in “Respondent 1” to make it look like someone else had picked particular options. In the car category, for example, some participants received a survey that suggested that Respondent 1 picked the grey Mercedes, while others received a survey suggesting Respondent 1 had picked the blue BMW. Thus, each participant was exposed to what they thought was someone else's choice before making their own.

Then, we examined whether students picked the same option as Respondent 1 supposedly chose or something distinct.

Since we randomly picked what Respondent 1 chose, people were not more likely to end up with someone else who naturally had the same preferences as they did.

And unlike a black-tie dinner, or picking what to wear to the beach, there were no norms in either the independent or the social influence condition that should sway how people behaved. We could tease out just how others' choices affected people's behavior.

Imitation would suggest that people just pick whatever the other person selected. Thinking someone chose the grey Mercedes should lead people to choose the same thing.

And differentiation would suggest that people just avoid whatever someone else chose. Knowing someone else picked the grey Mercedes should lead people to avoid that car and spread their
choices among the other three options: the blue Mercedes, the grey BMW, or the blue BMW.

But the results were more complex than simply imitation or differentiation alone. Rather than just doing the same thing, or just doing anything different, people chose in ways that allowed them to be similar and different at the same time.

If the other person seemed to select the grey Mercedes, participants tended to choose the blue Mercedes. And if the other person seemed to select the blue BMW, participants tended to choose the grey one. Same brand, just a different color. Similar, but different.

Moderately similar things blend the old and the new. The novel and the familiar. But they also satisfy our need to be optimally distinct.

As the study of line lengths or the story of J. K. Rowling demonstrate, humans strive for validation. We want to be part of something. Being similar to, or doing the same thing as, others gives us confidence that we are doing something right.

But just like siblings who want to distinguish themselves from an older brother or sister, we also have a drive for differentiation. We don't want to be the same as everyone else, we want to be different, unique. We like things that allow us to separate ourselves from the crowd.

These two motives seem opposing. We want to be similar but we want to be different. We want to do the same thing as others but we also want to be special.

Moderate similarity helps resolve this tension. We wear the same brands as our friends, but we pick out different styles. We buy the same couch as our coworker, but pick a different color.

By choosing similarly to those around us, or groups we want to be a part of, we satisfy our need to fit in. But by not choosing the exact same thing, we satisfy our need to be different.

We are distinct, but optimally so.

Even the attributes people choose to differentiate themselves on are shaped by optimal distinctiveness. As the story of Snooki and the free Gucci bag or the geeks and the wristbands illustrate, brands and other aspects of choice often signal particular identities. If someone wears Nike clothes all the time, other people might assume that person is athletic, while if someone wears Gucci, people might infer that she cares about fashion.

In these situations, brand is an
identity
-
relevant attribute
. It communicates information about the social identity and preferences of the person wearing the brand.

Other attributes, however, may not be as identity relevant. Whether someone is wearing a blue or black shirt, for example, doesn't tell observers much about her. Similarly, in most situations, wearing a tank top versus a T-shirt doesn't provide much of a signal.

Consequently, people that want to signal particular identities while also feeling unique often conform on identity-relevant attributes while differentiating themselves on identity-irrelevant ones. Newly minted lawyers often buy BMWs to show that they've made it; so a lawyer that wants to signal while standing out will buy an orange one. Picking the brand that communicates the desired information but an unusual color separates them from the pack. If Fendi is making the “it” handbag this season, fashionistas may all buy Fendis, but try to pick colors that are less popular.
^V

What will be popular next year? No one can say for sure. That said, it's also not as random as one might think. Things that have features in common with what's been popular recently have a leg up on the competition. Similar enough to evoke the warm glow of familiarity, but different enough to feel novel and fresh.

So when trying to predict the Color of the Year, or fill in the popular expression “______ is the new black,” the answer might just be slate grey.

Integrating similarity and difference is particularly important when managing innovation. How should a new product like the Swiffer be described? Is it a revolutionary mop? A new cleaning tool? And how should it be designed? Should seats in driverless cars face forward because that is what people are used to, even if that is no longer required?

A new product or technology can be light-years ahead of the competition, but its success hinges on consumer perception. If the product seems too similar to what's already out there, people aren't compelled to purchase. If this year's iWidget seems just like last year's, why pay the extra money to replace the old one? If the innovation is too radical, though, other issues arise. Consumers don't know how to categorize it (what is a Swiffer, anyway?), they don't understand what it does, and they can't tell if they
really need it. Both extremes are dangerous, and carefully navigating the sweet spot in between requires effectively blending similarity and difference.

Take the introduction of the automobile. Horses had been the primary mode of transportation, but they were restrictive. Travel was slow, expensive, and even dangerous. Horse-drawn vehicles had an engine with a mind of its own, and the fatality rate in cities like Chicago were seven times what they are for cars today.

Automobiles promised a solution. They could go farther, faster, and even cut down on manure, which at the time was threatening to overrun major cities.

But getting people to adopt these early cars required a huge mind shift. Horses (and donkeys) had been the primary transportation method for thousands of years. While there were many drawbacks to this method, people were comfortable with it. They knew what to expect.

Automobiles were completely new. They required different fuel to run, different skills to drive, and different know-how to fix.

These changes required some getting used to. The first time people saw a carriage roll down the street without a horse in front, they were shocked. Rural Americans viewed this “Devil's Wagon” as symbolizing the decadence of the city, and introduced restrictive laws to block its intrusion.
¹⁹
Horses, skittish to begin with, were spooked by these loud, rambling horseless carriages and prone to run away, taking their passengers careening with them.

In 1899, a clever inventor proposed a solution to make people, and horses, more comfortable. Named the Horsey Horseless, it involved taking a life-size replica of a horse head, down to the shoulders, and attaching it to the front of a carriage.

The buggy had the appearance of a horse-drawn vehicle, and thus horses, and their human riders, would be less likely to be scared when it passed by. The fake head also could be used as a gas tank.

It's easy to laugh at a fake horse head glued to the front of a car. It seems silly, almost comical. But while it might seem ridiculous today, it's hard to imagine how scary cars were when they were first introduced. Why not add something recognizable on the front to make the novelty less threatening?

More generally, successfully introducing radical innovations often involves cloaking technology in a skin of familiarity.
²⁰
When TiVo introduced what we think of today as a digital video recorder, they had a similar challenge to the automobile. The technology was innovative and had the potential to create a completely new market. But success required getting consumers to shift their behavior. From passively watching television to actively directing what they wanted to watch and when.

So, to help the transition, and make it easier for consumers to
understand the service, TiVo designed their device to look like a VCR. A black, rectangular device that sat below the TV or above the cable box, just like a regular VCR or DVD player would.

Pry open a DVR and a VCR (if you can find one), though, and the guts are completely different. A VCR is like an old film camera. Film, in this case long plastic tape, winds through the device and content gets recorded on it (or played from it).

TiVo is nothing like that. As the name implies, digital video recorders are actually a computer. There's no film that needs to wind through anything.

As a result, there was no need for the device to look anything like a VCR. It could have been shaped like a standard desktop computer, colored bright blue, or made into a pyramid.

But by using a familiar form, TiVo made people more comfortable adopting this radical innovation. By hiding the technology in something that looked visually familiar, TiVo used similarity to make difference feel more palatable.
^VI

Many digital actions today visually evoke their analog ancestors. We click on the icon of a floppy disk to save documents and drag digital files to be thrown away in what looks like a waste bin. Visual similarity also shows up offline. High-end cars use fake wood grain on the dashboard and veggie burgers often have grill marks. All make the different seem more similar.
²¹

The opposite also holds. Design can be used to make incremental innovations feel more novel. When Apple introduced the iMac in 1998, it featured only minor technological improvements. But from a visual standpoint it was radically different. Rather than the same old black or grey box, the iMac was shaped like a gum drop and came in colors like tangerine and strawberry. The device was hugely successful, and design, rather than technology, created the needed sense of difference that encouraged people to purchase.

Technology is never evaluated alone. Design and technology combine to shape consumer perceptions, and the combination is more effective when it makes innovations seem optimally distinct.

Even without us realizing it, other people are constantly influencing what we think, buy, and do. But does social influence go even further? Could it influence how hard we're driven to achieve? Whether we're motivated to work harder or give up and quit?

I
. Picking the right colors to produce involves a bit of game theory. Most companies would prefer to be on trend rather than off it, but each company's decision about what to produce not only responds to the trend, it helps shape it. What they produce affects what consumers buy and thus what becomes popular. There's also safety in numbers: if many companies across industries rally around the same colors in a given year, those colors are more likely to be popular, and sales will be high. So Pantone's color forecast provides a valuable coordinating mechanism. By following the same source, companies try to insure themselves against picking the wrong color, going with lime green when everyone else goes orange.

It's also unclear whether Pantone's predictions merely reflect what is going on already or influence what becomes popular. Pantone may be an early detection system for a wave that is about to come in, but it may also be enough of a stimulus to start a wave in the first place.

II
. In some cases, though, the popularity of the hurricane's name actually increases after the hurricane hits. If few people tend to think of the name, even the negative attention to that name might increase its popularity by making the name more at the top-of-mind. Prior research my colleagues and I have done on negative publicity shows exactly that. Getting a negative review can actually increase the sales of a book if that book was not well-known prior to the review.

III
. The warm glow of familiarity is most effective when we don't expect it. If we know why something feels familiar (“I just ate there last week”), that familiarity doesn't boost liking as much as if that familiarity in unexpected. This is part of the reason why similar things become popular. They feel familiar, but people can't immediately tell why.

IV
. This distinction comes up anytime two people are observed acting similarly. Is their similarity due to social influence (i.e., people changed their behavior based on what others were doing), or was it similarity that led the people to interact in the first place. The latter can often be described as homophily, or the tendency of people to interact and become friends with similar others. A great deal of research has shown that people are more likely to associate with similar others. This makes the cause of correlated behavior hard to identify. If two friends both like death metal, is it because of social influence (one liked it, which led the other to like it) or was their shared liking of death metal one of the reasons they became friends in the first place? One benefit of well-designed experiments is that they allow these two explanations to be teased apart.