Does the Threshold of Adoption Even Exist??
I think we all agree with the fact that our friends and whoever we spend the most time around have a substantial impact on us. Phrases like “You are who you hang around” or “You should hang out with those who fit your future not your past” all reiterate this fact. What’s interesting about this specific article, however, is that it unveils how a single deviance from a group norm can cause an immediate change of behavior from those in the group. This phenomenon is termed vicarious dissonance.
When I initially read the beginnings of the article and its title, I thought the topic of the article was obvious and common knowledge. However, what really stuck out to me was the fact that one lax, or changed view can cause others to relax their views and behavior in response. In the article, they specifically used the example of college students/graduates who had seemingly strong views when it came to the environment and having eco-friendly habits. These students attended an interview with an actor who posed as a fellow college student or a professional in “smart clothing”. The actor either made a negative remark or remained quiet when the hypocrisy of the interviewee was revealed during the session. In summary, the students tended to relax their views when someone who shared their views did not show signs of disapproval and defended the views when someone who did not share their views showed signs of disapproval.
After hearing about the results of this experiment, I couldn’t help but relate. There are many times in my life where I relaxed on my habits because I did not see others committing as seriously to the habits as I was. For example, I am a faithful sunscreen wearer. I wear it every day whenever I’m outside, regardless of the sun being completely covered by clouds or not. However, in high school, this importance wasn’t stressed and the habit wasn’t portrayed by those around me at all. The effects of not wearing sunscreen are also not instantaneous, so many peers around me tended to neglect the habit. This in turn made me loosen up on my sunscreen applying ritual and even made me believe for a while that sunscreen doesn’t protect as much as it claims it does. This may seem plain or elementary, but it happens so often. It’s interesting how the lack of knowledge that someone also holds/practices a similar belief, could cause you to question or even loosen up on your relatively strong belief.
The relationship between the proclamation of one’s belief and group behavior is similar to our class discussion on clusters and the adoption of behavior. In class, we mainly focused on the thresholds of adoption and how relatively dense clusters prevent the spread of behavior. This article seems to question the idea of thresholds. Maybe it doesn’t take as much influence if any, for someone to adopt a different behavior? Within the example of the article, it only took one person, who did not even have any knowledge of the individual beforehand, to cause a shift in behavior. The context of the adoption of behavior, in this case, is shifted into an environment outside one’s group or a group with extremely weak edges. This article also relates to the idea of payoffs and adoption. In this example, the interviewee may have been thinking in terms of payoff which affected his behavior. What harm would happen if he did defend (perhaps maybe too patriotically) his views with someone who did not hold such strong views? Or how would he fare off in the interview by highlighting this seemingly desirable belief he has?
This article definitely made me expand my idea of adoption of behaviors and what other factors play a role in the adoption, or difficulty of adoption, of behaviors.