Etiquette, Self-Control Are Contagious

Studies showed there is a direct effect of our friends' behavior on our own behavior, and the findings apply not only to the people we choose to hang out with, but those we are forced to hang out with, such as co-workers.

People you spend time with affect your behavior, for good or bad, research finds...

If you spend time with people who exhibit self-control -- resisting the death-by-chocolate cake after a restaurant meal, for instance -- you can expect your own self-control to be pretty good, too, according to new research. But the opposite seems true, too: Spending time with people with less-than-ideal self-control will influence you negatively, the researchers found.

"Before, we knew people tended to hang out with other people who were like themselves," said Michelle vanDellen, a visiting assistant professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, who led the research, which was published online in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

"But in these studies, we actually show there is a direct effect of our friends' behavior on our own behavior," vanDellen said. The findings apply, she said, "not only to the people we [choose to] hang out with, but those we are forced to hang out with," such as co-workers on the job.

The conclusions came from five studies conducted by vanDellen and her co-author, Rick Hoyle of Duke University.

The best study, she said, and the most fun, involved 71 participants and two plates of food -- one stacked with carrot sticks, the other with freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. The participants either watched someone exhibit self-control by eating the carrots and leaving the cookies, or vice versa. Later, the participants took self-control tests (not involving cookies and carrots). Those who had watched a person eat cookies did less well than those who had watched someone eat carrots.

In another study, the researchers found that 36 participants randomly assigned to think of a friend with good self-control persisted longer on a handgrip test used to measure self-control than did the participants assigned to think about a friend with bad self-control.

What about online behavior? Why are people so rude online? According to research from professors at Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh, browsing Facebook lowers our self control. The effect is most pronounced with people whose Facebook networks were made up of close friends, the researchers say. Most of us present an enhanced image of ourselves on Facebook. This positive image—and the encouragement we get, in the form of "likes"—boosts our self-esteem. And when we have an inflated sense of self, we tend to exhibit poor self-control. "Think of it as a licensing effect: You feel good about yourself so you feel a sense of entitlement," says Keith Wilcox, assistant professor of marketing at Columbia Business School and co-author of the study. "And you want to protect that enhanced view, which might be why people are lashing out so strongly at others who don't share their opinions." These types of behavior—poor self control, inflated sense of self—"are often displayed by people impaired by alcohol," he adds. From WSJ.com

Another study involved assigning 42 people to list the names of friends with good and bad self-control. As the participants took a test designed to measure self-control, a name was flashed very briefly on a computer screen. Those who saw the name of a friend with good self-control did better on the test than those who saw the name of a friend with poor self-control.

The researchers also assigned 112 people to write about a friend with good self-control, a friend with bad self-control or an outgoing friend. Those who wrote about a friend with good self-control did best on a test of self-control, those who wrote about a friend with bad self-control did worst and those who wrote about an outgoing friend scored in between the others.

In the fifth study, 117 people were randomly assigned to write about friends with good or bad self-control. Those who wrote about a friend with good self-control did better on word identification tests related to self-control, the researchers found.

"I think the message is really two-fold," vanDellen said of the research. "The first is, one way you can improve your behavior is by finding social networkers that support you." It makes sense, she said, to seek out people you know have self-control if you want to boost your own.

The other message, she said, is accountability. The research suggests that others aren't just watching your behavior when you show a lack of self-control but might actually be influenced by it. If a woman's husband is trying to lose weight, for instance, the last thing she should do is act like a lazy person who doesn't exercise in front of him, she said.

The research findings make sense, said Connie Diekman, director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis. "Surrounding yourself with motivated, healthy people improves your odds of staying in control," she said.

Diekman said that's certainly the case with healthy eating. "When it comes to making healthy choices, we know that it is easier to skip dessert, limit portions or purchase the right foods if others we are with support these behaviors," she said.

From a 2010 article in “Going Places,” and a 2012 article in WSJ.com 


Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Being Watched Affects Our Manners

Eye See How You're Behaving!

Photos of staring human eyes are enough to significantly change people’s manners and behavior. Studies have shown that people tend to be on their best behavior when they are being watched, even if the only eyes staring at them are on paper.
In a University of Newcastle lounge where paying for coffee was optional, researchers placed a picture of either flowers or a pair of eyes next to the suggested price list. Visitors donated almost three times more money when the eyes were posted.

A group of scientists at Newcastle University, headed by Melissa Bateson and Daniel Nettle of the Center for Behavior and Evolution, conducted a field experiment demonstrating that merely hanging up posters of staring human eyes is enough to significantly change people’s behavior. Over the course of 32 days, the scientists spent many hours recording customer’s “littering behavior” in their university’s main cafeteria, counting the number of people that cleaned up after themselves after they had finished their meals. In their study, the researchers determined the effect of the eyes on individual behavior by controlling for several conditions (e.g. posters with a corresponding verbal text, without any text, male versus female faces, posters of something unrelated like flowers, etc). The posters were hung at eye-level and every day the location of each poster was randomly determined. The researchers found that during periods when the posters of eyes, instead of flowers, overlooked the diners, twice as many people cleaned up after themselves

In fact, this research builds on a long tradition of psychologists being interested in explaining and stimulating human cooperation in matters of the collective. In technical terms, we often speak of a “social dilemma,” that is, a situation where personal interests are at odds with that of the collective. (For example, it would be easier for me to throw my trash on the ground, but if everyone thought that way, we would all be stuck with a huge pile of waste.) Robyn Dawes and colleagues showed in the 70’s that the presence of other people in the room tends to have a positive effect on people’s decision-making when faced with a social dilemma. Yet, it wasn’t until a few years ago that Terence Burnham and Brian Hare published an article in Human Nature that showed people make more cooperative choices in economic computer games when they are “watched” on the screen by a robot with human-like eyes. Somewhat baffled, a number of researchers subsequently conducted a set of experiments that confirmed these initial findings.

Ernest-Jones, Bateson and Nettle sought to better understand the effect of staring-eyes on behavior. Part of the added value of the scientist’s current research is that the results were generated outside of the laboratory. This is important because it allowed the researchers to document naturally occurring behavior, providing greater confidence that the results obtained are not merely an artefact of experimentation. Equally important, it also served to illustrate that the effect of staring-eyes carries across a range of social behaviors.

“Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.”  Thomas Jefferson

While the researchers have convincingly illustrated that displaying a mere image of human eyes is sufficient to actually alter real-life social behavior, the real question is how. Humans (and other animals) have a dedicated neural architecture for detecting facial features, including the presence of eyes. This built-in system, also known as “gaze detection,” served as an important evolutionary tool in ancestral environments (e.g. for detecting lurking enemies). Furthermore, the ability to function in social situations hinges on our ability to exploit social information provided by the expressions of the faces and eyes of others. What’s interesting is that this system largely involves brain areas that are not under voluntary control. Experiments have shown that people are unable to inhibit responses to gaze even when instructed to. This makes sense, because there is great evolutionary value in being able to quickly assess whether any predators are on the prowl; neural activation of the gaze detection system is fast and automatic. Yet this also means that it’s possible to “trick” the system and this is exactly what the new experiment has shown: objects that merely resemble human eyes are sufficient to trigger human gaze detection and subsequently alter social behavior.

These research findings are not just food for theory. Supermarkets could use cameras in the form of “blinking eyes” as a means to reduce theft, and quiet, unsafe areas might benefit from displaying pictures of human eyes. And perhaps images of angry looking eyes will also help schools win their battle against those rascals who stick used gum underneath school property.

Even public restroom hand washing etiquette changes when one is being watched!

In an aim to find the most effective message to encourage handwashing in public toilets, a research team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine installed a LED screen at the doorway of a gas-station toilet on a British highway. It flashed a series of messages employing a variety of tactics familiar to anyone with a mother, such as:

"Is the person next to you washing with soap?"

1. Educating: "Water doesn't kill germs, soap does."
2. Nagging: "Don't be a dope -- wash with soap!"
3. The Gross-out: "Soap it off or eat it later" 
4. The Hairy eyeball: "Is the person next to you washing with soap?"

Wireless sensors installed in the doorway and the soap dispensers secretly monitored a whopping 200,000 toilet-goers. The team found that 64 percent of female visitors reached for the soap, yet only 32 percent of the men did. (Compare that to surveys that report that ninety-five percent of people say they wash their hands after using a public toilet.)

What message got the most mileage? Although "Soap it off or eat it later" worked terrifically for men (presumably zeroing in on their complicated relationship to filth), "Is the person next to you washing with soap?" was the only message that increased the wash rate across both genders.

Yep, public shame. When someone's looking, you can bet you'd lather up for appearance's sake.

"It's difficult to know what kind of message is most effective at changing this everyday behaviour, so it's important to experimentally test what works best in a real setting," says Robert Aunger, the study lead. "That way you can save money and make sure your programme will be effective prior to rolling out any public health campaign at great expense." 

Sources ~ Smithsonian Magazine, Laura Allen for Popular Science and Sander van der Linden for Scientific American