Activity - Conformity: “Riding The Herd Mentality”
According to the podcast titled Riding the Herd Mentality, it indicated that although we seek to view ourselves as independent entities, what people around us are doing have a strong impact on what we decide to do. In the study tested what would change people’s behaviors to reduce home energy consumption through applying four different signs with different sayings and measuring the most effective one, it pointed out that the only effective message in reducing neighborhoods’ energy consumption is the one that tells about what other people around you are doing, which has been underestimated by most people, including those participants, because what they self-rated as the least influencing factor for their changes are actually the most influential one.
In addition, shaming can be one principle of Conformity and Influence that plays both roles of education and punishment for the society to put on people without any costs in order to promote acceptable behaviors and punish people who do undesirable things. Speaking of how it was applied in the podcast, the example issue of restricted watering in Midlands conveyed that people compare their own behaviors with those around them and shaming makes people more conform to what others do. For example, when people checked their status of water consumption to be either brown (represents using less amount of water) and green (means using a lot of water): if someone found everyone else is brown except s/he is green, then s/he may likely think that s/he needs to change to use less water; if people knew others are green and only s/he is in brown state, then s/he might choose to use more water because that’s what other people are doing. Therefore, it is somehow like a Contagion, which the amount of water a person believes he can use seems less relevant to his personality or how environmental friendly he is, but has more to do with his knowledge of how much the people around him are using because almost all of us want to ensure that we are not alone and we are along with the group we are in.
Coming to a societal problem that I noticed in daily life, which is the garbage classification in a dormitory setting: even though there are slogan posters in conspicuous places such as on the notice board and the door of the garbage room, saying things like “Did you really sort it out?” “Crops enjoy the organic fertilizer, but not the one with plastics”, some people still do not follow the exact rules of how to properly classify the garbage.
So for this issue, we can change the sayings on the tips and posters to be for example “Your neighbors are taking daily efforts to properly sort out the garbage and please follow” in order to influence people’s behaviors to better solve this problem. Here, we utilize the idea of Conformity, which is a change in behavior because of the impact of others. Indeed, our inner desire to be with the group and not the one who stands alone drives us to perform according to what other people around us are doing.
