The power of ONE! - Your Behaviour is Important! (Social Psychology)

Does it really matter how I behave? If all other people around me act egoistically, why should my own actions really matter? A very interesting study with the title The Power of One, the Relative Influence of Helpful and Selfish Models, that was published in 2015 in the journal Social Influence, tells us that it actually matters much more than we think how we act ourselves. Because in this study, in the first experiment, they staged a situation in which a confederate, while talking on the phone, dropped a lot of books. And in one condition, the participants were normal citizens in a parking house, walking to the entrance of the mall, observed in one condition that there was a very helpful person who said, oh, let me help you. And then the other person helped this woman who dropped her books to collect all the books. So this was observed in one condition. In another condition, it could be observed that a very selfish person did not care at all that this woman dropped her books. This person was just walking over. So imagine you are the participants, you see these two scenarios. Do you think that this has any impact on your behavior in the following situation? And this was actually what the scientists wanted to find out. Because in the following situation, the participants, who of course did not know that they were observed, were walking on. And some meters later, another person dropped $1. And the big question was, depending on what they had observed seconds before, either a selfish model or a helpful model, how would they act in this situation with the dollar? Would they say, hey, sorry, you dropped the dollar and give the dollar to the person? Or would they say nothing and just walk on or even take the money for themselves? And the scientists rated the behavior of the participants depending on these criteria. They got a one if they grabbed the money from the ground and told, hey, you lost some money. This was graded with a one. A two was given when the participants did not grab the money themselves, but said, hey, sorry, you just lost $1. A three was given if they did not do anything and if they just walked on and a four. So the worst grade was given when the participant saw that the money was dropped, but took the money for himself. It really turned out, depending on what they had observed before, either a selfish model just walking on while a woman was dropping her books or a helpful model who helped to collect the books for the woman, their behavior was strongly influenced. If they had observed a helpful model, they much more often helped another person who just dropped $1. If they had observed a very selfish model, they acted selfish as well because they more often took the money for themselves. Now you might say, well, one study does not really mean very much. Therefore, the scientists conducted the second experiment in which they invited participants to the laboratory and told them, well, we just want you to work on some tasks on the computer and if you have finished, you will find you can take one sweet from this plate. And there were a lot of individually wrapped pieces of bite-sized candy. And in one condition, the confederate of the experimenter who was also in the room and who finished his tasks on the computer a little bit earlier said, there are too many to choose from. I can't pick just one. And then, and now I quote from the study, and in five separate motions proceeded to take five pieces of candy. So obviously, he acted very selfish because their experimenter before had said, well, please take just one candy, but he took five. In a second condition, the confederate did not act selfish because in this condition, he said, which one do I take? And then he grabbed only one candy. So in this condition, he really sticks to the rules and did not act selfish. And the question was, depending on the behavior, the participants had just observed either this very selfish behavior or the correct and not selfish behavior, how would they behave? And it turned out when they had observed the confederate take just one candy, they also took most of the time just one candy because only about 17.6% of the participants took more than one candy in this condition. Whereas in the condition in which they had observed the confederate take five candies, 42.4%, so more than twice as much of the participants took more than just one candy. Interestingly, this percentage was not higher than in a control condition in which no model, so no confederate was present in the room because in this condition, about 44% also took more than one candy. So the right behavior, the correct behavior of taking just one candy in this condition was highly contagious. When the participants had observed that another person was behaving the right way, you could say, they were behaving correct as well. And this is something we should always keep in mind in our everyday life when it comes to how we treat our litter. Do we throw our litter in the street? Or if it comes to how much we consume, do we consume like there will be nobody else on this earth again? Or if we think about climate change, if we personally act as a positive model, this really has much more influence than we think. It really is the power of one. One person really has much more influence than we sometimes think. I hope you enjoyed this episode and if you want, we will see you next time.