Robert Frank
Appearances
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
Oh, I think there's some support for that idea for sure. Your parents do influence you as well, but the people who are most like you that you spend most of your time with, that's the strongest influence on your own behavior. And by the time you're out of the house and in school, that's eight hours a day, seven to eight hours a day, you're not with your parents.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
The hours after school, mostly you're not with them either. You have a dinner hour with them, short time at breakfast. Most of the time as a kid, you're not with your parents. So it's not at all surprising that the quantitatively biggest impact on behavior would be from others besides parents.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
And in so many other domains where peer behavior is known to have a huge effect, we should do more of that. So solar panels would be good if more people adopted them. And in fact, we do encourage people to take that initial step by subsidizing the adoption of solar panels. And that's something that's highly contagious. We've got studies that show how...
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
how dramatically the number of installations in a neighborhood rises when there's been one random new installation that other people see.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
Yes, it works on every level that has ever been studied. And if somebody doesn't believe that, let's see some evidence to the contrary. I've not seen any evidence at all that peer behavior of any type that we can measure has no effect on other people in the group. That evidence either is well hidden or it doesn't exist.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
I have not conducted any systematic study of the strength of peer influence in the U.S. as opposed to other places, but My strong expectation would be that this is a deeply rooted component of human nature. It would be astonishing to me if the process were fundamentally different in other places, but I have to say I don't have any evidence to back that up.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
I think when people feel pressure to change, they often resist. So it's often counterproductive to to pressure people in that overt way. But the whole point of of thinking systematically about the importance of peer pressure is to get people to change their behavior right now. People behave as if their own behavior has no influence on anybody else.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
I think it's because it's such an organic process because it operates so much out of awareness. We greatly underestimate the effect our own behavior has on others. And again, sometimes our own behavior is a good example for others, and we'd like to see more of that other times, as in smoking and excessive drinking and other asocial behaviors. It has a negative influence.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
We'd like to see less of it in those cases. And it's perfectly within our grasp to encourage more of the behaviors that have beneficial spillovers and discourage the ones that have negative ones.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
Yeah, it's very difficult to find a domain where there wouldn't be ready evidence of that. One of the ones that's related to the solar panel example would be the adoption of hybrid cars. The interesting case study to my eye is the comparison of the
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
honda civic hybrid and the toyota prius hybrid they were introduced at about the same time the prius was different from the other toyota cars of the same size it had a completely distinctive shape if you were driving one of those everybody knew at a glance you were driving a hybrid the honda civic hybrid looked exactly like the honda civic non-hybrid the one with the gasoline engine
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
And what happened in the wake of the introduction of those two cars was that sales of the Prius took off like a rocket ship. They spread like wildfire. People saw that other people were driving hybrids. Some people call it virtue signaling, but it was a behavior that the community generally approved of. We like conservation. We like steps that reduce people's carbon footprints.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
And people were eager to climb on board that train. They would have climbed on board the Honda Civic train if they'd known about it, but they couldn't tell by looking at it that there even was such a train.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
So you're out early on a Saturday evening. You're looking for a place to eat. There are two restaurants. You're in an unfamiliar city. There are two restaurants. You walk by. There are several diners seated talking animatedly in one of them. The other one's empty. Which one do you go to? You don't think of yourselves as being pushed around by peer pressure.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
You choose the one that's already populated. That might not be the better choice. Maybe the first people who arrived on the scene were tourists, too. They didn't know where to go. And just at random, they went to the the one they chose and it's actually a much worse restaurant than the other one. So I don't think we're aware of the process. We're not, we don't feel manipulated by it.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
It's the right decision, I think, to go to the one where people are seated because the odds are that they are locals and that they do know the difference, which one is the better restaurant. But, but the, the fact that we would be monitoring whether we're being influenced and, and, and taking cognitive steps to interfere with the process. That's a very rare phenomenon, I'm sure.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
Yeah, it's not only interesting, it's an enormously valuable and almost completely unexploited opportunity. And again, the smoking policy case is the role model. We've achieved enormous good for society as a whole by... taking steps that have reduced the smoking rate so dramatically. We need to cut back carbon emissions.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
We need to do all sorts of things that are not in individuals interests necessarily to do on their own, but are collectively very much in our interest to do. And if we can prime the pumps that will make those those actions more likely to happen, we can just reap enormous benefits by doing that. That's the real policy goldmine that's sitting here.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
One of the early studies showed statistically that there was actually a fairly strong link that if others in your social network became obese, you were much more likely to become obese yourself.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
Oh, it's been studied now intensively. So, for example, smoking is a nice illustration. We didn't really regulate smoking until we had studies coming out of Japan showing that exposure to secondhand smoke caused illness in others. We're reluctant to regulate generally. That's probably a good thing on balance.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
But the excuse we give for regulating is that what you do is going to cause harm to others that's hard for them to avoid. And so the fact that people didn't have any practical way to avoid illnesses caused by secondhand smoke, that was the license that regulators thought they needed to start taxing cigarettes heavily and
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
passing regulations that you couldn't smoke in restaurants and bars and public buildings and the like. In fact, the damage from secondhand smoke is, I won't say it's trivial, but it's trivial in comparison with the most important damage we cause as smokers, which is to make other people more likely to smoke. The studies on that are very clear.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
So if the smoking rate, you're worried your daughter's going to smoke. If the smoking rate amongst her friends goes from, let's say, 20% up to 30%, that doesn't sound like a big increase. That increase by itself will make her 25% more likely to either become or remain a smoker. So it's a huge effect. It's an enormous amount of harm somebody causes when they
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
indirectly cause somebody else to become a smoker. And so that's a far better reason for discouraging people from smoking than the risk they pose to others by exposing them to secondhand smoke.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
That was certainly true in my case. I started smoking at age 14. I'm thankful that I smoked for only two years, but my parents didn't want me to smoke, but both of them smoked. So it was a weak soup they served by way of advice to me. If you think I shouldn't smoke, why do you smoke?
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
Exactly.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
We adapt very quickly to just about anything. There are studies showing that most people say they'd rather be killed in an auto accident than to survive and be a paraplegic. It is devastating to suffer an injury like that, to be sure. But what is surprising to most people is that when
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
paraplesics are studied about a year after their accident, they display a very similar mix of moods and emotions to what they'd experienced before their accidents. They're not happy about having been injured, to be sure, but it's not...
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
as big an effect psychologically as people would anticipate we adapt very quickly to all sorts of circumstances so if if the place smells bad we adapt quickly to it yeah that's what we do but peer pressure implies pressure i mean like not only am i modeling this behavior i'm pressuring you to change yours No, in my understanding of the term, it doesn't mean that.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
I've been thinking about this sort of influence for a long time. I think one of the most interesting early examples that got me thinking about it was from an Alan Funt film. He was the old candid camera impresario. He would put people in odd situations in film films. how they'd react. So he posted an ad for a really good sounding job. It paid well.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
It didn't have very difficult to fulfill requirements involved travel and meeting interesting people. So, of course, a lot of people wanted to sign up for interviews for this job. He booked appointments. And in the film, we see a guy arrive for his interview. He's shown into a waiting room. There are four other people already sitting in there waiting. He sits down with the other four.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
The film zooms in on the later arrivals face, and it is an expression goes from one of complete impassivity to a look of grave concern, alarm. How would I describe it? The camera pans back and we see that the reason he's alarmed is that the other four have at no apparent signal stood up. They're taking off all their clothing. And finally, we see him tip.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
Psychologically, he shrugs, he gets up and he takes off all his own clothing. And the scene ends. We see all five of them standing there naked, waiting for action. What comes next? And I think the impulse is to think, what an idiot. He was so easily swayed by the example of these peers. Look, he wanted this job. He didn't know what the drill was. He was the last to arrive amongst the five of them.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
If anybody knew what the... the drill was going to be about. It was they. They thought it was worth going through the next steps. Is it so obvious that he was making a foolish decision to mimic what they were doing? I certainly wouldn't be prepared to argue for that position.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
yeah i i think that's a good point yeah i thought to put it that way but it was the fact that they thought it was worth doing that was so compelling to him so what are some other examples especially ones that maybe were not aware of of peer pressure at work
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
One of the demonstrations that surprised me most, the question was, does the amount of weight you gain depend upon the amount of weight gained by others around you? One of the early studies showed statistically that there was actually a fairly strong link that if others in your social network became obese, you were much more likely to become obese yourself.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
But the most convincing demonstration of that to my eye came from a military study. And what they showed was that if somebody were stationed to a new post in which the obesity rate in the new county was 1% higher than the county they'd just left, then All the adult members in that military family were 5% more likely to become obese in the new location. It was just an eye opener to see that study.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
To me, I had no idea that... obesity would be contagious in that way.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
And there have been studies of drinking among students. Students are paired randomly with roommates at one college. They have evidence on whether the roommates with whom they were paired were drinking significant amounts of alcohol in high school. The students who were paired with such roommates had dramatically lower grade point averages in their second year in school.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
The influence of living with substantially heavy drinking roommate was quite profound in terms of measurable outcomes for those students.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
I advise my students, look carefully at the people who work at the company you're thinking of joining because you're going to become more like those people. If you think, oh, this job pays well, I'll pay off my student loans in a hurry and then move somewhere else.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
You know, in the process of being there five years, you're going to become a lot more like those colleagues of yours if you if you would. Think they're admirable people. They're the kind of people you'd like to become more like than well and good. But oftentimes people take those jobs knowing that they're going to be amongst people they don't admire.
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The Startling Impact of Peer Pressure & Why Shyness Can Be a Plus
And I think they overlook the effect that is likely to happen, which is they'll become more like them.