Under the Influence – How People Are Influenced By Others

You’ve just finished watching a late night movie in the city. You step outside the theater — it’s a dark clear night with a mild breeze. The breeze feels good against your skin but is also slightly cold. You’re dressed in jeans and a short sleeve shirt.

You glance down at your watch, it’s passed midnight. The only people outside now are those who were in the theater watching the same movie as you. You walk up to a cross walk and wait for it to tell you to cross. There are no cars in sight.

As you are standing there patiently waiting, a young couple walks right passed you and crosses the street while the sign reads “do not cross.” After standing there for another minute, you begin to feel stupid; there are still no cars.

You look both ways and check the area for anyone who might be watching, when you’re satisfied you grab your significant others hand and say to them “Come on, let’s just cross.”

Your significant other, under normal circumstances would never agree to such an illegal act of jaywalking, but given the current scenario and the fact another couple had already crossed without repercussions, she takes your hand and crosses the street with you, clearly violating the law.

When you reach the other side, you notice that others crossed with you as well, and eventually at this late hour, no one is obeying the “do not walk” sign.

The question is how much can a person be indirectly influenced by the actions of other people.

Peer pressure is a form of direct influence that requires direct persuasion from another person or group of people but that is not what we want to examine today. We are already aware that peer pressure influences the actions of others but what about influences that aren’t so direct?

You’re just finished eating Thanksgiving dinner at your in-laws home which is a 4 hour drive from where you and your wife live. You say your good byes and get back on the road so you can get home and prepare for work the next day.

You pull onto the freeway where the speed limit is clearly marked at 65mph. It’s late and your family is exhausted and tired from the family vacation. You look over at your wife, she’s sound asleep. It’s now 7pm and in your head you are calculating the time that you will be back home and how long it will take for you to unload everything before you can crash comfortably in your bed for the night. You come up with an estimate of 1130pm, but you’re tired now. You decide in that moment to set your cruise to 70mph, 5mph over the speed limit.

“This is great,” you think to yourself, “I’ll be able to get home an extra 20 minutes earlier.” About 30 minutes later, a car passes you in the left lane.

“They must be going about 75mph,” you remember thinking to yourself. You think nothing else of it. About 10 minutes later, another car passes you at the same speed. And shortly after that, another one. And then another one.

The wheels in your head start turning.

As the next car passes you, you press the + sign on your cruise control, adjusting your speed until you are matching the speed of the car that just passed you.

Your speedometer reads 77mph now, which is 12mph over the speed limit.

“This is great,” you think to yourself, “I’ll get home plenty early now.”

After about 15 minutes, a group of cars race passed you, all of them obviously following the car in front of them.

You still have about 3 hours of your trip left and you think to yourself, “Well, I’m already going 12mph over the speed limits, a little more can’t hurt.”

Again, you adjust your cruise control to match the pace of the car in front of you. Your speedometer now reads 88mph, 23mph over the speed limit. In some states this can be considered reckless driving and can come with severe penalties.

Now at this point in the story, you may be thinking that I’m going to have him get pulled over and get in trouble, but that’s not what this article is about. This article is not about suffering the consequences of your choices, but rather, why you make certain choices in the first place.

What would cause this man to drive 23mph over the speed limit at the risk of being pulled over and possibly spending time in jail?

Was it just because he was tired? Was it because he wanted to save some time on his trip? Or was it because others were speeding as well and it was easy to justify the increase in speed based on that fact alone, with the added benefit of getting home early so he could sleep?

You see, when someone does something and you see it, it’s almost as if they are giving you subliminal permission to do it too. The more people who take the queue and start doing it, the more people will join in on that action, even if it’s illegal.

You may not think speeding or jaywalking are serious offenses but this indirect social influence has no limitations.

In the early 1960s, suicide on the islands of Micronesia were almost unknown. By the end of the 1980s the suicide rate rose steeply to 160 of 100,000, compared to United States it was 22 per 100,000, over 7 times more likely.

How did this come to be when suicide was virtually unheard of?

It all started in the South Pacific islands of Micronesia where a seventeen year old boy named Sima got into an argument with his father. His father ended up kicking Sima out of his house, Sima had felt unwanted and that he let his father down.  He hung himself and was found hours later dead.

The idea of suicide fed on itself and spread. Virtually all suicides on the island during this time-frame were variations of Sima’s story. Sima essentially sent the idea across the islands and it spoke to people facing similar problems as him.

As the number of suicides grew, the idea spread virally across the island, becoming a ritual ingrained into the local culture.

When others heard of his story and read the suicide note it gave people a way out of the hardships they were facing that were unthinkable before.

This type of behavior is actually fairly common.

Consider the Columbine school shooting.

Before Columbine, school shootings of this degree were rare and unheard of, but after this shooting, many other schools faced threats of this nature and even attempts at other schools were made to replicate the Columbine massacre.

When you really think about it, a single individual can influence and change the entire world. If historical figures like Jesus Christ and the spread of Christianity, or Hitler and the rise of Germany, and many many others don’t prove to you that it only takes one individual to shape the world, then there’s not a whole lot I can say to you.

Remember the first people carrying around cell phones? Or owning computers? Or using the Internet?

How many people today who thought these contraptions were ridiculous are using them as an essential component of everyday life?

So what’s my point?

I don’t really have one, I wrote this because I was asked if hanging around other people that don’t have the same values as you or have values or attributes that you do not like, can be a bad influence.

The answer is yes.

The question that should have been asked though is:

“Can you avoid the influence that individual has by avoiding them?”

The answer to that is probably not. Even if you avoid that person, if they were influential in nature, they would be influencing others and eventually you would be exposed to it.

If someone thinks it’s okay to have an affair and causes others to have affairs, can you avoid affairs by avoiding the person that started it and every person that was influenced by it?

No, you still know all about the topic and it wouldn’t matter if you met the person whose values allowed them to do it in the first place or not.

How many people don’t know about Christianity and Jesus Christ at this point? Not many right? Is everyone a Christian then? Obviously not!

You’re either going to be influenced by something because it makes sense to you or it doesn’t, and it’s that simple. If you’re afraid of others having a bad influence on you, then what you’re really saying is you’re afraid of your ability to resist something you might partake in.