Envy Up, Scorn Down: How Status Divides Us

6. Why Do We Compare? Comparison Helps Us Fit into Our Groups

114 Chapter 6 Why Do We Compare? Comparison Helps Us Fit into Our Groups Man is by nature a social animal; and an unsocial person who is unsocial naturally. . . . is either unsatisfactory or superhuman. —Aristotle, Politics (1253a) A RISTOTLE WAS among the first to tell us that we are profoundly collective beings. We prefer to be included: “We’d love you to join us” may be one of the most compelling human appeals. As chapter 3 noted, we have good adaptive reasons to be with others: we survive and thrive better if we are social than if we are isolates. Exclusion literally pains us, so to avoid being shunned, we aim to fit in with our own ingroups .1 Comparison facilitates our belonging because it shows us where we stand both within our groups and where our groups stand relative to other groups. Comparison between groups can be especially vicious, so envy and scorn between groups can be correspondingly brutal, as examples in this chapter will show. As group members, our first loyalty lies with our own group because we need it so much. We may want to be individually distinctive, but not at the price of sacrificing membership in at least one worthwhile group that will have us, so we go along to get along.2 Our attunement with our own groups shows up in social contagion of all kinds, most immediately in emotions and perceptions.3 We imitate each other’s nonverbal behavior.4 Especially if anxious, we copy each other’s facial expressions and emotions.5 In fact, we unconsciously mimic even politicians’ facial expressions on television, which explains the electoral success of more than one warm, expressive, incompetent doofus.6 Not just our emotional contagion but our conformity to our groups is legion. We will even distort the evidence before our eyes, objective perceptual judgments, to fit in with a group.7 Comparison Helps Us Fit into Our Groups 115 Conformity also shapes life-or-death decisions and outcomes, including those that affect our health. For example, binge-eating spreads through sororities: sorority sisters compare themselves with each other to gauge just the “right” amount of bingeing that correlates with popularity.8 Networks spread health habits and health standards across three degrees of separation; the obesity of your friend’s friend’s friend correlates with your own.9 In the decades-long Framingham Heart Study, investigators asked participants to nominate someone who would know how to reach them if they moved. Their nominations, the nominations of their nominees , and so on down the line, created networks of health influences. Perhaps it is not surprising that as your best friend gains weight, you feel permission to add a few pounds yourself. But your friend’s friend’s friend, whom you may not even know? Other people in our network form the most relevant comparisons, which set standards for our health habits. Though social scientists believe that we are indeed fundamentally social beings, they are not totally sure how this network of contagion happens. Social support by family does not explain the spread of conformity because networks extend well beyond family. Indeed, friends increase a person’s odds of becoming obese by 57 percent, even more than do spouses and siblings (about 40 percent each). Merely observing your fat neighbor on his riding mower or your skinny neighbor out running does not explain social contagion, because neighbors do not necessarily make neighbors fat. Rather, “the strength of weak ties” probably operates through trusted but indirect connections, communicating ideas, information, norms, and influence across social distances.10 Remember the social triangles—linking you, me, and some shared experience—from chapter 5. Now imagine a chain of triangles. The series of weak ties extends beyond tight social groups to strings of acquaintances, creating a sense of what is normal (see figure 6.1). Network norms guide health habits such as smoking, drinking, weight-watching, food preferences, and cancer screening. Health networks probably also radiate stress, mood, self-esteem, and self-efficacy, Source: Author’s illustration. Comparative Health Peer You Peer Comparative Health Comparative Health Peer … … Figure 6.1 A Chain of Health Comparisons, Part of a Network of Norms 116 Envy Up, Scorn Down and these psychological states make health habits contagious too.11 Networks serve many functions—supporting, influencing, engaging, providing—so it is no wonder that social belonging affects our choices. Networks...