When "When In Rome" Meant Survival
Say you’re walking down a busy street looking for a great place to eat. You spot a restaurant that has barely anyone in it. Then across the street you see another restaurant with people pouring out of it. You could say that if you want to eat right away, you’re just going to go to the one with no one it it, but, what will your experience be like? Here’s another example: Lets say you’re driving down a highway and with no discernible change in traffic patterns up ahead, you see one break light, then two, then three. With no one in front of you, you’ve probably already hit the brakes. Last one but we’ll let Robert Cialdini who wrote the book Influence weigh in here:
When “When In Rome” Meant Survival
“Conformist’s transmission of culture is one way of ensuring that you do what works locally- you inherit a disposition to copy your neighbors. A homo erectus woman from the Serengeti who migrated west and joined a band that lived in the edge of the mountain forest would do well to copy her new neighbors in searching for fruit rather than insisting on digging for some kind of tuber not found in her home” – Matt Ridley The Origins of Virtue
This is what we call conformity, consensus, or social proof and we go in depth on it in the Leadership Awareness Course but, to conform literally meant survival. In researching Killer Whales, when some whales link up with another group of whales, they now adopt that new group’s way of doing things to ensure survival. This is a powerful understanding for us as leaders. We can see a lot of this in the fads that are popular in our current times, the sporting events we partake in, social media, or the companies who we stand in line for the new product of.
The Pitfalls of Conformity
While doing things to survive is an integral piece to the human equation, we must also think of the ways it can cause issue. There are several but we’ll cover two:
Pluralistic Ignorance
In all of these instances everyone just figures someone else has already taken care of it but no one does. In emergency situations people who are CPR certified are trained to look at bystanders and point someone out and say “you, call 911” because when you say “someone call 911!”, no one actually does because they think, “someone else is going to right”?
Group Think
This one is a bit more common knowledge but knowing that a lot of our opinions, decisions or ways of thinking are molded by other’s opinions is very important. So much so that if you’re in charge of a group of people, it is quite important that if you are in need of the group’s opinion on something, you would do well to ask each person individually and privately what their thoughts are. You would then need to ensure that the people you’ve spoken with do not go out and mingle with the people you haven’t because they can easily sway the group.
How does this help in leadership?
Conclusion
Understand that this is the way we evolved as a species. It literally meant survival at one point so we would do good to respect this valuable way of thinking we’ve all adopt even without even noticing. Look at your group. What do they collectively conform to? Or better yet, what do they collectively NOT conform to? This should provide you great insight on how you can mold what you want the group to be.
