How social contagions reach critical mass, part 3, right environment

Sorry about being a day late. I was in a short trip on monday and yesterday.

Before reading this, you should read the first and the second part of how social contagions reach critical mass.

I have written about the messengers and messages and what I still have left is the environment, in which, the messengers can deliver the messages. It is quite easy to compose a sticky message and find a messenger to deliver the message compared to manipulating the environment that spreads the message. To be honest, for me the manipulating of the environment part is almost impossible and possibly to the other people too. When the environment is right, reaching the criticcritical mass happens very fast. For example, one suicide triggered the Arab Spring. The reason that happened was the underlying conditions in people´s minds.

Epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur. Engaging some kind of behavior is coming more from the certain environment than from other people. You constantly underestimate the role of the environment and other people in how you behave. The reason for this is that you overestimate your ability to make decisions through your rational part of the brain. This means that your inner states are the results of your environment more than you think. When the underlying context around you is right, the small push is enough. Most often, you can control your environment well, but when the timing and the environment is right, even the small changes are enough. For example, having first a zero tolerance for crime and then allowing exceptions like braking some windows or letting people travel in metro without paying the ticket will encourage people to do bigger crimes.

There is another way to launch an epidemic and it is through small and solid groups of people. As a partner of these groups we are subjected to social proof. According to anhtropologist Robin Dunbar the maximum amount of people in a solid and homogenous group is 150 people. Dunbar has researched humans and other primates. Dunbar came in the conclusion that the size of the frontal lobe is the conclusive feature. And this allows the magic number of 150 to be the capacity of following other people. In the bigger groups, people are grouping into smaller groups that are having different opinions about things. Spreading messages is more efficient, when the group size do not reach over 150 people. Building communities should happen this way. When the size gets too big, you should split the group in two and let it grow until 150 members is reached.

Creating a right environment

Creting the right environment is hard. In theory, it can be done by designing an environment in which many psychological tendencies move people to the same direction. There are some environments like this. For example, cults. I am not saying you should build a cult, but you can learn from them. You should definitely be aware of their possible effect on you.

In a cult, there is a restricted availability of contrary stimuli compared to its message. To create a contageous environment, you have to maximize the availability of your message and minimize the availability of contrasting messages. You can use the help of the significant few to do this. Connectors, experts and salesmen can help you to do this. In a cult, there is usually a charismatic authority figure. Most often they are men. This authority is usually a great salesman. Salesmen can convince connectors and experts to speak on their behalf. Social proof is established by these people. Cults have usually relatively small amount of followers. They are tightly-knit groups. It is hard to have unity, when there are many people. You should spread your message through groups that have a maximum amount of 150 people. Links between these groups could be connectors.

Critical mass of social contagions in short.

Lets finish this talk by adding a summary of critical mass in social contagions in the end. To achieve a critical mass for an epidemic, you need to have messengers who can spread the information really effectively, you need to also have a sticky messages for the messengers to spread and last but not least the environment needs to be completely right with the right timing and the result will be an epidemic that spreads quickly. That is all I have to say this time.

- TT

How social contagions reach critical mass part 2 Sticky messages

Before reading this text I recommend you to read part 1 of how social contagions reach critical mass. 

You may have heard this story before: A friend of a friend was abroad. He went to a hotel bar to have a drink. He met a nice girl, who wanted to talk to him. The next thing he remembers, is that he woke up in a bathtub full of ice. He started to look around and found a note next to him, which said: ”Do not move and call this number!” Next to the note he found a mobile phone and he called to the emergency room. Pretty calm voice answered and asked ”Is there a tube in your lower back attached to you? He touched it with his hand and noticed it and he said yes to the operator. The next thing he heard, was calm words: ”Do not move, just tell us in which hotel you are and we will help you, you are a victim of the kidney heist.”

Composing a sticky message is not easy. The first story is an urban legend, which is a sticky message too. Sticky messages have many similarities and this post is about composing one. Everybody has probably heard some version about this story from somebody they know. Sticky messages are understandable, remembered and they have long-lasting consequences, which can change behavior.

Sticky messages have some certain characteristics, they are

1. Simple
2. Unexpected
3. Concrete
4. Credible
5. Emotional
6. They are explained through stories

Simple messages are squeezed into the core idea. They are easily understandable. Finding the core means squeezing the message into its most critical essence. You have to find the most important idea from your message and forget everything else, which seem to be critical, but do not belong to the core idea. To form a sticky message, you have to know how much of the message you can lose without killing the core idea. Simple messages are compact and the core idea is easily understood. You should use sentences instead of paragraphs, short sentences instead of long ones, and you should use easy words instead of hard ones. The idea gets stickier, when you can reduce the amount of information.

Unexpected messages contain surprise(s) at some point. You need a surprise to get people´s attention. Surprise means breaking the pattern the audience is used to hear. The surprise makes you give more attention to the idea. The extra attention then moves unexpected ideas into your memory easier. You have to fix the broken guessing machine, which is in your brains. The goal is to make people care about something and then tell people what they want to know.

Concrete message is examinable through your senses. For example, you can show photos or some other live media to make people sense the idea. Concrete ideas are easier to remember. Concreteness creates a shared understanding. Abstraction moves you into other way. Concrete language is used to help beginners to understand some complex ideas. It is a lot easier to use complex and abstract language and professional jargon instead of keeping things concrete. The problem is, without concreteness of the message it may be too hard to be understood.

Credible messages need details. Yoy need to define details, which can symbolize and support the core idea. Sometimes you can use statistics to enhance the credibility of the idea, but they need to be related to the idea you want to share. You can also use authority or antiauthority to get more credibility to your idea. For example, some success stories are good, when you want to show our solutions to problems are working.

Emotional messages work better than trying to give a reason for something. Most people believe in telling many reasons to do something, but most often message fails. By trying to make people care, you inspire people to act. You should do this by associating people with feelings they already have. Trying to associate the message with identity may help you get your message through. By doing this, you associate the message into people´s self-interest. People most often ask ”What´s in it for me?”.

Story-telling is a best way to make people take action. Stories provide mental simulation and inspiration to people who are listening. Mental simulation works, because you cannot imagine events without evoking modules of the brain, in which the same physical activities are evoked. These mental simulations help you manage your emotions. Stories provide content that is missing from abstract ideas. They are almost always concrete, emotional and they have unexpected elements. When you can tell a good story with only the core of the idea, you get almost every component of the sticky message. This way you can get your message through in a best way and it sticks longer in the mind of your audience.

You should use a checklist of these 6 things before sending the message. You don´t have to have all the components, but some of them are needed. If you can get your core idea through with the other components, your message should be sticky. Just try it and see what happens.

-TT

How social contagions reach critical mass, part 1 The law of the significant few

Critical mass in social contagions is the point where they start spreading exponentially. The speed is so fast that spreading takes care of itself. These contagions can happen either suddenly or slowly. An example of a sudden case was a change in using aeroplanes after 9/11. Instead of using a plane, many people used their own cars. Their probability of having lethal accidents became much higher. And after 9/11, there was much more deaths in transportation compared to the time before 9/11. An example of slow contagion can be any product that has been sold for many years before a big success. And then suddenly its popularity accelerates exponentially. Social contagions have three main components: people who spread it, stickiness of the message and the environment it spread. This text is mainly about the people behind social contagions.

The law of the significant few

Throughout the history, there has been people who have had enormous effects on others. These people are crucial for spreading social contagions and creating social proof. Sometimes they are people who are not known to have so much connections with other people and sometimes they are well known all over the world or in their own field of expertise. All these people have great social skills. They are efficient accelerators of epidemics. Being at the right place at the right time also matters. But it is not enough without great social skills. Getting assistance from these people help you to accelerate and widen the amount of listeners of your message. You can widely divide these people into three different groups: connectors, experts, and salesmen. Most effective of these people are some kind of combinations of these groups.

Connectors

If you don´t know many people, you cannot be a connector. These are the people who know everyone. Connectors are the type of people who are natural in getting to know new people. When you talk to them, you can be surprised how many people they know. I am sure you know at least one person who is like a connector. Ask his help for spreading your message. Connectors create so called weak links between people. They tell you that ”you should contact this person to talk about getting a new job”, or ”you can ask this person about a car he is selling.” Connectors are not important only because they know many other people. It is also highly likely that they know some people who can help you. They know the most important influencers and introduce them to other people. These people probably know more experts and salesmen, the other groups of people that are effective in spreading social contagions.

Experts or mavens

Malcolm Gladwell calls these people Mavens in his book Tipping Point. A maven means a ”one who accumulates knowledge” in Yiddish. Experts are not the people who have a similar effect on others than connectors. Experts are sources of information and connectors are more like the messengers. Experts have natural tendencies to gather new information. They figure out the best options for whatever you are trying to seek and want to deliver them to you. They have a natural desire to help other people solve their problems. They know the tiniest details about the things that rest of the people have no idea. Experts are both like teachers and students. They can also be seen as databanks.

Salesmen

Connectors and experts are not persuaders. They cannot change people´s minds. You need different type of people to get people change their opinions. These people are charismatic, they have lots of energy and you can feel their enthusianism before you even talk to them. Salesmen are capable of bringing rational and uniform arguments when they talk to you. These people are not only good in giving verbal arguments to you. They express their feelings and emotions well by changing their physical appearance. They do all of this by timing their facial and bodily expressions with your natural rhytm of communication. Most successful politicians are examples of salesmen. They have an ability to persuade you without even always having a personal contact.

Have a reasonable doubts about the advantage of having contact with these people

Be aware of the effects these people can have on you. All the effects are not good. This applies especially to experts and salesmen. People who you think are experts can be just fools in disguise. Many people follow their messages and life and think they are real authorities. They lead people to wrong directions. They may have lots of detailed information to share, but have no understanding about which pieces of their information are relevant. It is hard to find real cause-effect relationships from complex information and events. Even real experts are wrong sometimes. If you are not capable of knowing if these experts are real deals, you shouldn´t listen to them. Salesmen are very persuasive and they have power to change people´s opinions into wrong direction. You should always be especially mindful while you listen to them.

Next week I will introduce you to sticky messages.

-TT