Regarding buying food on an airplane, what about the effect of simple politeness?<p>I'm not sure I would call it "peer pressure," when I feel uncomfortable about eating food next to someone who doesn't have any. Maybe it's a cultural thing, but I would rather wait to eat until the person next to me also has food.<p>Once I was on a train, and the woman next to me offered to share some of the sandwich she brought with her. I said, "no thanks, I was about to go get some food from the dining car." I got my own sandwich and brought it back. I understood completely what was behind her offer, and I am sure we both felt more comfortable eating together, even though we didn't know each other and would never see the other person again.
This is why certain groups have such a strong interest in controlling twitter, facebook, google, etc. Most people simply go along with what they perceive as the majority opinion. This used to take the form of doing whate everyone around you does, which is why political views tended to group up so much by community.<p>But we no longer have communities, we no longer speak to actual people, especially not about anything like politics. So that instinctive conformity is now based on easily falsified information presented though the media. This is why facebook prevents certain topics from trending, and puts others that are not naturally trending into the trending queue.
It gets worse. You are x% more likely to buy food if you just <i>see</i> or <i>smell</i> it, without even a "peer" enjoying it. Isn't that horrifying? That must be called something like food-pressure.
The article is from 2014 and it is about a paper studying "social effects in consumption" in a controlled situation (i.e. while you are stuck in an airplane), and another paper about social influences of high schoolers signing up for an SAT prep class.<p>While the studies are interesting, it is hardly worthy of the click-bait title.<p>TL;DR if you sit next to someone on an airplane who buys a drink you are 30% more likely to buy a drink yourself (and presumably the study successfully controlled for people traveling together).<p>Edit: The post title was just changed from what I clicked on "People around you control your mind: The latest evidence" which was so much more entertaining!
On the airline experiment: says if the person sitting next to you purchases something, you're 30% more likely to purchase something.<p>Isn't the person next to you more likely to be your friend or family member? What portion of people travel alone? And if they're related, chances are high they have similar expectations/acceptance of in-flight purchases.<p>Edit: found this article with more details:
<a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/pedro-m-gardete-fellow-airline-passengers-influence-what-you-buy" rel="nofollow">https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/pedro-m-gardete-fellow...</a>
Apparently, if they have the same reservation #, it doubles.
as @tiglionabbit mentioned, this is priming.
The term should be famous now thanks to the books "Thinking Fast and Slow" and "Nudge". Also probably a dose of recency bias.
<a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/psyching-us-out/?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/psyching-us-...</a>
I drink once in my life. When I was 20. Why? I was interested in what being drunk felt like from a scientific perspective. Upon drinking all the liquor I could find in the house, the room began to spin and I didn't like the feeling of not being in control so I found the nearest couch and passed out.<p>I often wonder if I am programmed differently than other people. Peer pressure has never really had any effect on me. When people would try to convince me to drink, I would grab a root beer and relish in the joy of drinking something that not only tastes great (not having to acquire a taste for) but did not result in a loss of my inhibitions. (Yes, I am well aware of the argument that sugar and soda are probably far worse than occasionally drinking).<p>Growing up I often pondered the reasons why people begin drinking: Peer pressure, wanting to fit in, the need to feel cool, etc. None of these things every pushed me in the direction of needing to drink.
Makes me think airlines will soon start strategically placing "purchasers" throughout the plane in order to maximize the effect of this social pressure.
In the airplane situation, I think it's worth stepping back to consider whether peer pressure is the simplest explanation. I think it's much more likely that people are just free-riding on others' mental effort of evaluating whether buying things on an airplane is worth it.
Paul Graham wrote about this in an essay called Cities & Ambition: <a href="http://paulgraham.com/cities.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/cities.html</a>
The SAT Prep example was more interesting to me.<p>The whole article was frustratingly brief, but I guess that's what the market is calling for these days. Or is it just the influencers?
People sitting next to each other are more likely a group and going to perform the same action because of this. Two people decide to watch a movie together or two people decide to get lunch on the plane rather than before getting on.<p>They need to control for tickets bought together.
Headline says control, numbers and article conclusion say influence. My skepticism says when someone attempts to reproduce this, it may just vanish. My cynicism says the post is preparing this as an excuse for trump winning.
Now that the headline is changed from the click-bait attempt at reducing individual responsibility for actions, I'm struck by just how insidiously pervasive these attempts seem to be. One could make a slightly paranoid case that it is a left-leaning goal to convince people that the aren't in charge of themselves anyway, so just let mama gov't take over.