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in his new book invisible influence the hidden forces that shape Behavior Wharton marketing Professor Jonah Burger
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takes us inside the conscious and unconscious ways that social influences shape our decisions Jonah thanks for
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being here well thanks for having me now what was the um what was the inspiration
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for focusing on social influence as the topic of your next book you know there's
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a funny story that I I mentioned briefly in the book but uh a number of years ago
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my dad was buying a new car uh and he's in he lives in DC uh he's a lawyer there
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um and he bought a BMW uh and then he was complaining that all DC lawyers buy BMWs I said well Dad you bought BMW also
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he said oh but mine's a blue one everyone else drives a gray one um and I think what's really funny about that is
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social influence happens in the world right we see everybody else doing the same thing oh look at all those DC
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lawyers they all Drive the same car but when it comes to our own behavior sometimes we feel like our own behavior
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is somehow privileged or different I a rugged individualist I'm independent no
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one else has any effect on on what I do and actually we're kind of wrong um and
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so what I would be interesting to talk about in this book is all the science about how others shape our Behavior
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often without us knowing it and what we can do about it and how we can use it to
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live happier and healthier lives great and now your previous book contagious focused on why things go viral and I
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wondered do you feel like there's an interplay between social influence and verality I could kind of see why how
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there would be oh certainly I mean they're both related to how people shape other people's behavior or decisions um
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the first book contagious was more about how do we influence others right if if I'm a business owner or I have an idea I
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want to spread within my organization contagious was about well we know Word of Mouth matters how do I get people to
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talk about and share my stuff invisible influence is a little bit actually almost the converse or the opposite it's
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well how are other people affecting my behavior sure we can use that to influence others but we can also use it
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to make ourselves better off to help us make better decisions or be healthier when we're having trouble doing that now
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I thought it interesting in the book that I mean the book's really not about
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how to go above the influence because you kind of make the point that resistance is a bit futile when it comes
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to social influence is that whether we know it or not it's happening yeah and
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and that's I think the most interesting part you know we see it all the time uh
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if you ask people to social inflence this oh of course you know my neighbor bought this thing because someone else
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bought it um you know my wife did this thing because someone else was doing it but we don't we don't necessarily see it
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in ourselves and I think that idea of resistance is futile is important I think what we have to be careful though
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is influence isn't always a bad thing imagine if we couldn't use others as a
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source of information if every time we wanted to figure out where to go out to dinner or what movie to watch we had to
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sample it ourselves be exhausting we'd have to read all the you know information and look at all the options
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and Sample a little bit here and there others are really helpful cue others often help us make better decisions but
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not always uh and so as invisible inflence talks about you know when to others help us make better decisions
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when do they make worse decisions when to others motivate us when do they demotivate Us and how can we use this to
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be better off and now that brings me to my actually my next question so if we if
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we know that social influence is going to play a role and I think even before like the book we know it it plays a
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little bit but your book really shows how much of a role it really does play if we know this how can we harness that
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and use it to help us make better decisions yeah so uh great example so uh one uh one thing I talk a little about
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is motivation um others often affect whether we uh give up whether we try harder how can we use that to be better
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off one thing I felt in my my own life uh you know you want to exercise you want to be healthier how can you use
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others to help you do that and simple tricks like working out with other people um really having someone else to
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compare yourself to there's lots of research on something called social facilitation merely biking with someone
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else for example makes your bike faster running with someone else makes you run faster swimming with someone else makes
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you swim faster others can help us do things that we might not do otherwise and so we can set up situations where we
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actually encourage ourselves to be healthier encourage ourselves to make better choices by shaping our
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environment through others now the book really plays into sort of the psychonom made of it either motivates us or
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demotivates US social influence makes us want to do something similar or it makes
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us want to do something different what is I mean what are the factors that go into determining like how whether social
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influence for example want us will want make us want to buy the same car as our neighbor versus buy a different one or
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make us want to work harder versus give up yeah so that's I have to give you a
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long answer for all of it but I think some simple things are you know first uh others often provide information so when
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we're uncertain about what to do we often look to others and that leads us often to the same thing um yet at the
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same time we want to see ourselves as different particularly in American culture we like to see ourselves as
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special snowflakes no one else is exactly like my Dad buying you know the blue BMW rather than the gray one um and
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so maybe we pick the same car because we know it's a good car because there's a
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about it but we pick a different color because colors allow us to feel different so we're similar and different
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at the same time we're we're optimally distinct or or in terms of motivation
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for example you know others can motivate us except when they're too much better
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than we are right if we compare ourselves to someone who's much better much faster than we are some it causes
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us to give up um you know we say well there's no way I'm going to reach that
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standard or that score that level of performance and so they're so much better than than I am that I'm I'm not
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going to try anymore and so it's really about understanding the subtle differences of social comparisons um and
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understand the situations people are in that that helps us figure out which way it goes now you have a couple really
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interesting sort of examples like this in this book so one of the one my favorite one I have to say was about why
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does it make it why does social influence make it harder for us to parallel park but easier to tie our
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shoes and the reason is I hate it when people watch me parallel park I'm horrible at it if someone's watching I'm
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a master if no one is yeah so actually can I tell you a story and I started to get there so there's this wonderful old
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study uh on motivation and and so This research was interested in just the question you were interested in he
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looked at a bunch of re said well sometimes others seem to be motivating lead us to work harder do better
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sometimes they lead us to get demotivated to do worse why is that um you know what are situations that lead
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to one versus the other and so he wanted to figure out a way to test that so he designed this amazing experiment with um
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running actually looking at how uh running was affected by other other individuals watching you run but he
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didn't do it with people he did it with cockroaches so he built this like cockroach Stadium where these little
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cockroaches would run cockroach races you know run from one stadium side to the other um but then he could
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manipulate whether there other cockroaches watching them by the way this is sort of ridiculous you about
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cockroaches watching other cockroaches but he was interested in well how does the mere presence of others affect what
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we do uh and he had them run one of two mazes one that was either Straight Ahead
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you're just really easy or one where you had to run straight and then make a left
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turn really difficult more sort of requirement out do I go right do I go left what do I do and what he found is
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when the task was easy when it was well-learned running straight something cockroaches know how to do well having
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others around helped them do better they ran faster with others than they than they did by themselves but when it was a
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difficult task when they had to sort of figure out do I go left or do I go right
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then it was more complicated and then the mere presence of others actually made them do worse and so that's exactly
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as you mentioned sort of parallel parking versus other aspects if we know how to do things well if they're easy
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things we've already done a bunch uh then having other round makes us do them
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better uh you know if you're great at shooting pool for example shooting pool
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with someone else will actually make you better at shooting pool than than by yourself but if you're not so good at
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shooting pool if it's something that you're not used to doing if it's
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difficult for you then having others around can make you do worse and so parallel parking for example most of us
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maybe some of us are go to parallel parking but most of us tend to be a little bit nervous to begin with we're
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not excellent parallel Parkers merely having someone else in the car can make it more difficult for us makes us more
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nervous more anxious and while that anxiety can help us do better when it's easy for us to do those tasks they can
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lead us to do worse when it's a difficult or complicated task and now you also to get back to car buying a
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little bit you talk a little bit about in the book how in fact people who are more well off they might be more likely
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to try to buy a different car than their neighbors whereas those of us that maybe
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more in the middle class class lower class that we might actually that social influence might actually cause us to buy
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the same car yeah so we tend to think in American culture that it's the uniqueness is the right answer people
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who are unique and different are good and people who are conformists are bad it's like being a conformist is a
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negative thing but it's not really a a right or a wrong answer it's more of a
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cultural value think about East Asian cultural contexts for example where fitting in being a good member of the
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group is is the right answer you know it's not the squeaky re gets the grease
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it's the nail that stands out gets gets hammered down uh even true an American
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cultural context in workingclass context people like being part of a group people
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like being connected to others that are like them why would it be bad if you had
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the same car as your neighbor it shows that you like the same things that you have a lot in common whereas in other
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parts of American culture we say well oh you know standing out is the right thing
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to do why would I want the same thing as everyone else I want to show that I'm
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different and so what's interesting is uniqueness isn't right answer or wrong
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answer it's just a way of Behaving based on our social environment now I was
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curious about now as the internet has become part of our daily life Liv all the time as social media has become more
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of our daily lives I feel like it's easier and easier to know what your friends are doing it's easier for
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companies to know what even what your friends are doing how does that play into social influence and maybe the
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degree to Which social influence is playing a role in our decisions yeah what's so interesting about the internet
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it's made information spread faster it's easier as you nicely said to see what
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others are doing but that has two kind of differing effects first it makes it easier to copy others right so uh we
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hear a new band uh our friends are listening we're going to listen to it makes things catch on much faster than
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they would have before which seems great if you're that band it seems fantastic
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I've caught on but it also makes it easier for people to switch to something
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else or avoid something because too many people are doing it as I talk about in the book you know we don't just want to
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be similar we also want to be different and so sometimes when too many people like a particular band we say well I
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don't like it anymore I like their old stuff before they became became mainstream and so what it's really done
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is it's led to faster cycles of of fads and fashion things catch on more quickly
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but they also die out just as Qui quickly and so one thing I talk a lot about for companies and organizations is
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well how do we manage this right as a as a brand for example I want to catch the
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upswing I want my product to be everyone to be buying it but how do we avoid the
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downswing when people say well it's too popular I don't want it anymore or if
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those people are doing it maybe I don't want it and so how can we capture the
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good aspects of that and and avoid the bad now is it really though I mean it seems like it would be so fleeting for
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companies to catch the upswing like it seems by the time you know there is an upswing it's already on the downswing
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yeah a little bit I mean uh what what also allowed and possible now is there's
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so much Rich behavioral data that we can get more of a sense of who's buying
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something what else they've bought and and what they're like and so you know
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Amazon for example has a good sense of what type of books we like and can say well these type of people used to be
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buying this now a different type of of folks are buying it and so I agree with you it's not it's not perfect data but
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uh it's certainly better than it's been before now did you C while you were
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writing this book or researching this book did you catch yourself at all in terms of like were you surprised to
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realize how social influence played into your decisions yeah I am the worst person to uh shop with or make decisions
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with I have a huge problem making decisions in part of it because I'm always thinking well what are other
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people doing right and I'm saying well if they're doing it's the reason I'm
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doing it because other people are doing it or do I really like it uh myself and what's interesting is there's no answer
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to that question um others often affect us without our our realizing it but by being aware of it sometimes hopefully we
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can make better decisions than than we would have otherwise now as you were saying like we have this Vision I mean
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particularly I think in an American culture of this you know the rugged individualist I mean we place a very
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high value on non-conformists I mean non-conformists are the best they're you
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know path Breakers they're you know they're above the influence but what
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does this book say about like I mean does a non-conformist really exist and if it does I mean this book sort of
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speaks to like how hard it must be to really be a non-conformist yeah so there's um uh there's a great cartoon
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South Park uh you're probably aware of it uh that has a show uh where um one of
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the characters says to another oh you know you can't be a non-conformist uh if
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you don't drink coffee uh and what I think is so true about that is even non-conformists are conforming it's very
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rare that you find someone that's not influenced by by anyone else even avoiding what others are doing you're
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still being influenced you're just saying well I don't want to be like them
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you know uh Goths for example you know you look at kids that dress in all black well they're all actually pretty similar
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to one another and we like to see ourselves as different we like to think oh you know the unique person the
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non-conformist they win out they lead companies really those people conform just as much as everybody else it's just
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they don't seem like they're conforming because they may not be doing what the
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mainstream is doing but they tend to still do what what other people like them do great Jonah thanks so much for
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being here oh thanks so much for having me [Music]