Contagious Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger
Author:Jonah Berger [Berger, Jonah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
THE POWER OF OBSERVABILITY
Koreen Johannessen started at the University of Arizona as a clinical social worker. Originally, she was hired by the mental health group to help students deal with problems like depression and drug abuse. But after years of treating students, Johannessen realized that she was working on the wrong end of the problem. Sure, she could try to fix the ongoing issues that afflicted students, but it would be much better to prevent them before they started. So Johannessen moved over to the campus health group and took over health education, eventually becoming the director of health promotion and preventive services.
As at most universities in the United States, one of the biggest issues at Arizona was alcohol abuse. More than three-quarters of American college students under the legal drinking age report drinking alcohol. But the bigger concern was the quantity that students consume. Forty-four percent of students binge-drink, and more than 1,800 U.S. college students die every year from alcohol-related injuries. Another 600,000 are injured while under the influence of alcohol. It’s a huge issue.
Johannessen addressed the problem head-on. She papered the campus with flyers detailing the negative consequences of bingeing. She placed ads in the school paper with information about how alcohol affects cognitive functioning and performance in school. She even set up a coffin at the student center with statistics about the number of alcohol-related deaths. But none of these initiatives seemed to put much of a dent in the problem. Simply educating students about the risks of alcohol didn’t seem to be enough.
So Johannessen tried asking the students how they felt about drinking.
Surprisingly, she found that most students said they were not comfortable with the drinking habits of their peers. Sure, they might enjoy a casual drink once in a while, just like most adults. But they weren’t into the heavy binge drinking they saw among other students. They spoke distastefully about the times they nursed a hungover roommate or held someone’s hair while she threw up in the toilet. So while their peers seemed fine with the drinking culture, they weren’t.
Johannessen was pleased. The fact that most students were against binge drinking seemed to bode well for eliminating the drinking problem—until she thought about it closely.
If most students were uncomfortable with the drinking culture, then why was it happening in the first place? Why were students drinking so much if they don’t actually like it?
Because behavior is public and thoughts are private.
Put yourself in a college student’s situation. When you look around, you’d see a lot of drinking. You’d see tailgates at the football games, keg parties at the frat house, and open bars at the sorority formal. You’d witness your peers drinking and seeming happy about it, so you’d assume that you are the outlier and that everyone else likes drinking more than you do. So you’d have another drink.
But what students don’t realize is that everyone is having similar thoughts. Their peers are having the same experience. They see others drinking, so they drink, too.
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