Is your choice really your decision?
Is your choice really your decision?
Reference materials and recommended books: Who is manipulating your choices by Sheena Ai Enjia
First, please look at the following photos for five seconds, then look away, and describe what you saw based on your impressions. After completing this action, please look down.
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](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw8Lz90GvcVWpfWok09zyeJekbhE727zHA9mEIrAABDxJh0FTOEto qjTuDIzPYnjX5PeX2oUltm-K0ELuHYtoWhyphenhyphenOTtLcGkMRUttOPIbd2ybNyG6d6Os7eTe7pUPCDh8MEcZuSMyQwh8Q/s1600/dddddd.jpg)
What did you see? What did you describe?
This shows that you think in terms of individualism or collectivism. If the scene you describe is dominated by the big fish in the middle, you are more individualistic. If the scene you describe is relatively comprehensive, including water plants, frogs, bubbles and other environmental details, you are more collectivist. Generally speaking, Westerners are more individualistic, while Easterners are more collectivist. (I even told myself how many aquatic plants there were).
So I believe you are more likely to be collectivist (especially if you grew up in an educational environment in Taiwan or China). When collectivists think and make choices, they are usually affected by society, the environment, the current situation, and relatives and friends. This means that when you make a decision, you consider yourself autonomous. Please don’t be so sure about independent, thought-through decisions, because I believe your decision is made based on the overall situation. Before you make your decision, there is a high possibility that you have thought about what my XXX (family, friends, colleagues, social class) will think of me if I do this?
Do you think you are unique? Do you have your own unique perspective on things? Are you better at problem solving than most people? This is a psychological fallacy just like most people think that his driving skills are better than most people.
The fact is: 1. We are much more similar to each other than we think. 2. We all think the same about ourselves or want to believe. 3. Everyone feels that he or she is unique.
Yes, there is actual data in Taiwan to support such a discussion. You can refer to the charts and explanations shown in the article “About Mermaid Lines and Content Marketing...”:
“We can see that the online shopping community in Taiwan is easily influenced by current events, news, and issues, and exhibits the characteristics of a bandwagon effect. When the Internet community goes online, whether they go to different types of websites such as news, content, BBS, PTT, Facebook, Blog, etc., they find that most people are discussing a certain issue, and their behavior can easily follow the behavior of most people or be influenced by it.”
To give a simple example, when everyone was buying iPhones, you also bought an iPhone. However, because your inner idea of your own uniqueness is inconsistent with your actual behavior, you will tell yourself that most other people buy iPhones to follow the trend, but I do. It’s because of the elegant and unique design beauty of the iPhone, because Steve Jobs’s beliefs are consistent with mine, and because my work needs it… I am different from the general public who blindly pursue popularity… In fact, you and I are not as different as you think. We all bought an iPhone after all.
Each of us wants to express ourselves and think that my choice is different. We hope that we are not the majority but a small group of people with ideas.
We all seek a balance between collectivism and individualism. Maybe you will get a small tattoo to show your difference, but you will never get tattoos all over your body to show your difference, because that is too extreme and will make you feel embarrassed. Comparing with numbers makes it clearer. You don’t want to belong to 80% of people. You think you belong to the 20% of unique groups, but you will also avoid becoming the extremely unique 2%.
In fact, everyone thinks so, and everyone’s decision after thinking will not be too different. This means that when you want to plan the marketing strategy of your goods or services, you must also know that you want consumers to feel that it belongs to the 20% of a unique group, rather than the 80% of the general public and the extreme 2% of weirdos… This is a very difficult thing, and it is also one of the reasons why the marketing success rate is so low.
Author of this article: Lin Wenjie
References: Research Center for Social and Economic Behavior, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences: Research on “overconfidence” and its cross-cultural differences A series of cross-cultural studies show that when faced with common sense and probability judgment issues, members of collectivistic cultures (such as Chinese) are more overconfident than members of individualistic cultures (such as Americans).
Reference books: Who is manipulating your choices by Sheena Ai Enjia
Book excerpt: Directly copying the tracks played from popular music blogs or knowledgeable friends, or completely imitating the look in movies or magazines, is tantamount to announcing to the world that you have no opinion. However, as our favorite actor chooses the same brand of toothpaste, we can easily attribute the reason to “that toothpaste has a strong tartar prevention function.”
Further reading
- How to detonate a pop? Manipulate choice?
- Understand how to change consumer behavior/habits in three seconds?
- I want to “have sex” with you.
