An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields
Inspired by the spirit of gratitude that is amplified each Thanksgiving day, Brian Doyle set out to extend the power of gratitude beyond one holiday in his unique social experiment: “365 Days of Thank You.” Learn how two words can change your world and world view.
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The bitter election may be over, but its tensions are still alive.
Following President-elect Donald Trump’s surprising victory on Election Day, partisan divisions continue to survive amidst heated arguments and even vandalism. In one notable incident, a United Airlines staff had to step in to separate some particularly argumentative passengers.
“If anyone has a problem… and needs to vent or rant or rave, there’s another flight tomorrow. It’s not going to be on this one,” the pilot announced after two passengers engaged in a heated exchange. According to fellow travelers, one passenger praised Trump for his support of firearms, while the other expressed fear given her ethnicity.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. Since the election, there have been numerous incidents of pro-Trump vandalism, and anti-Trump protests have sprung up in major U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Oakland, and New York City. Amidst these conflicts, many on both sides of the aisle have called for unity and reconciliation.
Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto observed, “it’s natural to see eruptions of these feelings here and there over time, but the real question is the degree to which it’s going to be sustained. And there, leaders take a very important role.”
President Obama, President-elect Trump, and former Secretary Clinton seem to agree. On Election night, Trump urged “for us to become together as one united people,” while Obama has called for “a sense of unity; a sense of inclusion…and a respect for each other.”
Even, the United Airlines pilot joined this chorus, telling passengers: “As people, we have the common decency to respect each other’s decisions, and to get along on this three hour and 13 minute flight.”
Division and hate can also be encouraged through social media. For more information on this phenomena read our posts here and here.
I like to think I do my research before I buy something, but I proved to myself on a rainy Sunday night when doing some online shopping that I do not. I was searching for yoga mats, and when faced with hundreds of different thicknesses, colours and materials I fell into the trap of sorting by price. Ever wondered who actually uses the ‘price high-low’ option? It was me, stupidly assuming that all of the cheap ones would be no good, so to save time I should go from the top. It was only when I was about to pay £100 for effectively a piece of pretty coloured foam that I realised I had read about this assumption. Cialdini had my back. It only takes a few cheap pieces of clothing to fall to pieces for us to learn the rule that expensive = good. This is ‘the common law of business balance’, that if you pay a small amount, you will not get a lot in return. Most of the time this rule is fine, it works, it saves us time, we get reinforced to use it again, and this yoga mat may well have been wonderful. The problem comes when the people selling us these items hijack this. Economics has a word for items which are in high demand simply because of the high prices asked, they are called ‘Veblen goods’ (Dolfsma, 2000). These ‘high quality items’ then become a status symbol (Leibenstein, 1950), as people know how much you have paid for that item, it is a means of displaying wealth a bit more subtly than literally throwing money around. 
Advertisers are aware of this and have had to defend the low price of their productsThere’s another reason suggested for why we will willingly pay higher prices for a known brand over a identical item from an unknown one – consistency (Cialdini, 1987). We like to know what we’re getting, if we’ve bought something from that brand before and it was good, when buying another item we may but from there again. Another factor is commitment. If I have been walking round the gym with ‘Adidas’ written up my leggings (I have) when I go to buy a yoga mat I may look there first as I have made a visible commitment to their brand in the past. So I did end up saving myself money, but only because I spent my evening writing a blog post instead. Next time I’m tempted to do online shopping, I’ll do my research first. Dolfsma, W. (2000). Life and times of the Veblen Effect. History of Economic Ideas, 61-82.Leibenstein, H. (1950). Bandwagon, snob, and Veblen effects in the theory of consumers’ demand. The quarterly journal of economics, 183-207.Cialdini, R. B. (1987). Influence (Vol. 3). A. Michel.