Fads, Fashion, and Fifth-Graders
When I was in fifth grade, I decided to conduct a social experiment; I wanted to see how long it would take for a trend to catch on. My elementary school years saw many trends that seemed to be popular just because they were popular– their value came from the number of people wearing them rather than any particular characteristics. (Think Silly Bandz, bottlecap necklaces, slap bracelets, mustache-themed anything, bacon-flavored everything.) Even as a ten-year-old, I could recognize that these fads were silly (pardon the Silly Bandz pun). For some additional context, I went to a school with a strict uniform, but these trends permeated the hallways and classrooms nonetheless.
To test my hypothesis that fifth graders would wear just about anything if other people were doing it, I had to create something which
- Was not already something anyone was wearing (so I knew the influence came exclusively from me)
- Was easily creatable and recreatable for fifth graders
- Was absurd enough that the only reason people would do it was because other people were
What I came up with was so simple yet unique: a shoelace headband. I grabbed a spare shoelace and a thin plastic headband (a staple accessory for girls in 2011), tied a bow, and went to school. At first, I got weird looks and questions from teachers about why I was out of uniform. The next day, I wore the headband again and brought two more with me. I went up to two of my friends who I thought had the most social influence in our grade and who also had very different friends from each other. I gave each of them a headband and asked if they would wear it for the day. They obliged, and the next day I walked into school noticing that five or so people had created their own shoelace headbands. For the next week, every day more and more people would come to school wearing these headbands and soon we stopped getting questions about breaking the uniform– even the teachers could see that the trend was taking over the fifth grade. The administration announced that these headbands were acceptable so long as they were in one of our school colors. For about a week, I watched as every one of my classmates wore a shoelace tied on their head just because they saw other people doing it. One day I forgot to wear my headband to school, and within a few hours, most other people took theirs off. By the next day, there was not a shoelace headband to be seen.
This experiment clearly demonstrated the power of social influence within my fifth-grade network. The spread of the shoe tie headband phenomenon could be related to a contagious disease, measuring the r naught value to determine how “contagious” (in this case popular) the trend was.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trend-spotter-the-man-behind-silly-bandz-2010-12
Further reading:
Bikhchandani, S., Hirshleifer, D., & Welch, I. (1992). A theory of fads, fashion, custom, and cultural change as informational cascades. Journal of Political Economy, 100(5), 992-1026.
Levine, John M., and Michael A. Hogg. Encyclopedia of group processes and intergroup relations. Vol. 1. Sage, 2010.