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If I didn't BS my papers at the last minute, they could be so much better...

Sean Bernhoft

Dr. Lee Salinas

Personality and Social Behaviors

3 November 2006

Normative and Informative Social Influences are a Threat to Science and Reason

As a materialist and a soft determinist, I am of the persuasion that all aspects of both men and women are essentially a function of the physical world. Genes – replicators that dictate our height, skin color, eye color, mental predispositions, and virtually all traits besides those that rely directly on environmental factors – are chosen for us by Darwinian natural selection. Basically, everything about the human species is determined by the environment. Every choice anyone ever makes relies on the gray brain matter that makes that choice; every choice anyone ever makes is the causal result of a purely physical factor. That being true, it is no surprise that the way people behave relies heavily on example. Normative influences, which is essentially the need to “fit in” to social in groups, and Informational social influences, which is the tendency to behave like those who we believe have authority, shape much of the behavior of the human animal. Humans – through natural selection – have the genetic predisposition to seek the familial comfort of in-groups, and to give credence to authoritarian figures. These can be explained simply enough: as Richard Dawkins, naturalist and author of The Selfish Gene, put it, young children who test the hypothesis “do not swim in the crocodile infested water” do not contribute often to the gene pool, while the former can be explained through the reproductive benefit of kin reciprocity. While these traits have their uses (I concede that the human would be an entirely different animal without them), I would like to show that, through the use of personal and second hand examples of informational and normative social pressures, a different evolved capacity is more important to the survival of the human species in the modern age: Reason.

Normative social influence, as explained above, is the tendency for people to conform to the norms of their social groups. For instance, and American would tend to do American things: they wear American clothes, they eat American food, they adopt an American religion, and everyone knows that it is “American” to hate the French. This is all well and fine for benign things, like wearing certain clothes or eating certain foods, but these sorts of in-group traits provide the differences required to create xenophobia and out-group hostility. I have seen examples of this in my own life. To explain, when I was growing up, the group that I fell into was a family group. To become a Bernhoft, I had to do the things that other Bernhofts Did. I adopted the religion of my family, I spoke like my family, and I defined myself in the terms of my family. I grew up in white-bread conservative south Orange County, and to this I have an irrational aversion that I have to battle with of hardened urban folk. I say that it is irrational, because the only reasons I have for this aversion are the normative traits that define me in the social group that I was born into. When taken to its extreme, the benign aversion I feel could manifest itself as fear or even hatred of outsiders. Of course, I certainly do not hold hatred any sort of hatred for groups that are different than I am. This is because I hold reason and scientific inquiry in high esteem, and am unwilling to make jump to assumptions with insufficient evidence. In this way, it is possible to battle the tendency to assume “specialness” of the group that one happens be born in to(which leads to balkanization and hostility), and the very human tendency to stereotype.

The difference between normative influences and informational ones is subtle, but there is a difference. Informational influences are influences on human behavior by people who are assumed to know the right way to do things, in other words, it is an appeal to authority. For an example of this, I needn’t look further than the experience of dining at a fancy restaurant as a young child. Since, to the untrained eye, the etiquette of dining is at best confusing at worst absurd, the only good way to determine which fork is meant for salad is to learn by example. To solve this dining dilemma, rather than look to my sister or my cousin, I would look to the person of authority, namely, my parents. While I could rail on about not only the absurdity but the implications of “etiquette” (it really is nothing more than a haughty attempt by the privileged to separate themselves from the have-nots), the problem with informational social influences and appeal to authority is much more dire. The fact is, that people do not deserve to be emulated simply because they have an air of authority. Authority and respect ought to be earned, and the consequences of following suit just because you think someone has a authority can be grim. The common defense for war criminals of Nazi Germany is: “I was just following orders.” Ideally, every action taken should be the result deliberation and the weighing of evidence.

To conclude, normative and informational social influences had their time and place, but it is not hear and it isn’t now. As rational beings, we have a responsibility to marginalize these influences on ourselves, and to make decisions based on evidence. Otherwise, we will be easily controlled (for good or evil), and we will remain mired with hatred and divisiveness.