You’re lost in this world and so am I.
Everyone is. As long as we don’t know the answer to life and all the secrets of the universe, we won’t ever stop being lost. As a species, we want to know everything. We can act like we’re not lost and we can pretend like we know exactly what we’re doing and where we’re going, but that’s just it: we’re faking it. Everyone wants to be different, unique, and unlike anyone else person. Here’s the lowdown: we just want approval. You can be different, unique, and unlike everyone else in a negative way. Take a look at Hitler. He was all of those things, yet now he’s an embarrassment and a poster-child for cruelty. We want to be different in ways that will validate ourselves and help us be accepted by others; we hate being ostracized, so in order to fit in, we have all developed habits that put us in line with the wants of society, but in doing so, we’ve become easily influenced.
Influence is not a new thing. When we talk about peer pressure, fads, trends, and movements, we’re talking about influence. Then there’s persuasion, which sometimes crosses rocky territory. I studied theories of persuasion in college and at the beginning of the course, our professor opened with a disclaimer: the theories we were studying could, in fact, be used to influence others. This is important to note because of ethical issues. Some of the techniques we studied could be used to manipulate. The thing is, the theories, when applied to real life, would be immensely effective because as a species, we’re more alike than different. We all bow to the pressures in predictable and similar ways. Our housing might be different and the amount of RAM we have installed might vary, but we run the same OS. Many theories of persuasion are public knowledge and have been incorporated into training handbooks for sales and marketing. In this way we can affect how people think about certain things, translating into observable behaviors.
See this post on Social Media Influence, which I ran into as I was writing this post. It’s titled “How to Win Friends and Influence Your Audience: 10 Theories to Know for Greater Persuasion“. It pretty much sums up my point above: it’s public knowledge and these theories work. If you’re interested, I urge you to read the article and take it all in.
Experienced salespeople and those who have social prowess have studied these techniques.
Heck, we’ve all used persuasion in our lives to get what we want. In that sense, we’re selfish. It just goes to show that we’re all easily influenced, seek approval, and go to great lengths in order to get our way. Still, we try to tell ourselves and others that we’re different; that we are special, and that we have the power to resist society and it’s persuasive nature. That’s why we see slews of articles from places like EliteDaily and ThoughtCatalog, urging us to shed our need for approval. It’s harder than it sounds. We can be rebellious and go against the grain, but that’s often a pretense. Unless you’re ready to hermit or drastically alter your lifestyle, you are still subscribing to society. Even Donald Sterling knew this and if you listened to the audio recordings, you’d know he was right. He is a victim of society and his social circle, just like we all are. Does this mean that individuality is dead? No. We’re all complexly different in a multitude of ways – that can never be taken away from us unless we let it.
We’re all vulnerable to outside influences and oftentimes, we’re not even aware that it’s happening. For instance, Instagram is great for sharing pictures of food, and soon after, I find people craving the things they just saw. It’s almost like big billboard advertising – this is social advertising doing it’s thing. We always fall for the latest trend and the band-wagoners never stop because we will always keep following. The paradoxical thing is, when you decide you want to break away from followership, you really just join a subgroup. It’s reminiscent of hippies, who rebelled against authority, but became another group in the greater context. In psychology, it’s the principle of standing out while fitting in.
The solution is to stop playing the game. It’s hard to and that’s because of our nature. We are influenced because we are empathetic creatures and we want to connect. There will be those who use this to their advantage, but as long as we’re smart about it, go ahead and follow.
After all, being a follower is essential to being a good leader. Being easily influenced is in our blood, but you know what? We’re not stupid.
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