Now, you've got a pretty good idea of this experiment that I asked a number of
people to do.
I brought a couple hundred people into the laboratory, and I asked them to do
a simple study where they made choices in a number of different domains.
They wrote down their preferences in an Excel spreadsheet one domain by another.
They wrote down their subject number, their year in school, and then,
which car brand they preferred, which music artist they preferred, and
which bike light they prefer.
But interestingly there was one small difference for some of the subjects.
Some of the subjects sat down, and
they entered their information in the computer, and other subjects sat down, and
it looked like someone else had already entered some information on the computer.
A prior subject had left their prior responses on the screen.
It said that person had a certain identity, and
it made a number of different choices.
And we picked that identity in particular because we knew that some of the people
would want to avoid looking like that group.
We did this study at Stanford University, and it turns out a lot of Stanford
undergraduates don't wanna look like graduate students.
Graduate students are seen as sort of geeky,
sort of dorky, they go to undergrad parties, and
so undergrad students don't wanna look like those graduate students around them.
So, we wondered what would happen when we told those undergraduates the grad
students had made particular choices, would they pick the same that the graduate
students chose, or would they decide to choose something different instead.
What we found was quite interesting.
For things like bike lights, people tended to do the same thing as others.
But for things like music, people tended to avoid what that group had chosen.
So, what's the important difference?
Well, certain products are more functional,
whereas others are more symbolic.
Certain things like the bike light we use, the backpack we carry or
what type of pen we use is mainly for its functional benefit.
We do those things for
the functional benefits they provide but other things are more symbolic.
Things like music, cars, and
clothes are domains people tend to make inferences about others.
They're much more symbolic for communicating of identity.
And so, what does that mean?
Well, in these more functional means people do the same thing as anyone.
The fact that someone else said they liked to given back light or
liked to given pad of paper, suggests it's pretty good, and we should do the same.
It provides that information we talked about previously.
But in these more symbolic domains, we're gonna care a lot about who is doing it.
Not just the fact that others like it, but who those others are.
If they're like us, or
they're part of a group we want to look like, we're happy to do it.
If the cool kids are doing it, we're gonna do the same thing.
If organizations that are high status are doing it,
our organization might do the same thing.
But if other organizations.
We don't want to be associated with her doing it.
Or other people, we don't want to look like her doing it.
We're gonna avoid doing it.
It's not just the functional value of that product or service.
It's what it communicates out about us to do the same thing.
