MILK's blog delivers emerging
perspectives on changing consumer
culture, trends and social influences:
Culture Making positions
Where do trends come from?
Much of the work we do at MILK is based on understanding changing culture and trends.
The interesting thing is that generally the preoccupation with trends focuses around: What is the trend and where’s it going? This has been fueled by books like Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point, focusing in on why something small fads become popular trends and others fade away without establishing themselves.
For us, the more interesting point to focus on is: What is the trend derived from and why? What in culture is changing to make something of interest bubble to the surface in general societal attitudes and behaviours?
One indicator we use as a point of reference is shown in the diagram above.
Just about anyone who’s studied or worked in marketing has heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, but surprisingly few have come across Shalom Schwartz.
Schwartz took Maslow’s thinking and pushed it further to determine a map that demonstrates values states, it also proposes that these values sit opposite one another in a wheel like configuration.
Taking this simple reference point and applying it against society you can start to build a real picture of what makes us tick and more importantly why!
Now if you start to measure society’s values (like the smart folks over at Cultural Dynamics do!) then you start to understand the motivations and pressures driving shifts in values.
Understand this and you understand how trends form. Start to project values shifts based on known values movement and you can start to see how and if trends will grow!
For people in the communications industry or government this is like alchemy for ideas, it’s powerful stuff.
Belief models and social influence
Social Influence
Something wild to think about over the weekend…
Look at the Diagram above. In principle it’s nothing new, just a simple graphic representation of how something sits at the core of things and then a variety of inter-relating connections bind, reflect and transmit.
Taking the dark grey subject circle at the core with it’s originator and close supporters, it works for just about anything… the fashion industry, religion, ethical motivations, music… test it.
It really represents things we know on a higher level too, things like how solar systems work and inter-relate, biology, geneology, disease etc. Our lives are really like a million of these diagrams three dimensionally overlapping and contrasting. It also helps to illustrate effects like six degrees of separation and how naturally our lives become interconnected.
So, it’s easy to see how social influences originate and get carried around groups, cultures and societies.
So there’s the method, but what’s the motivation?
Belief. Now there are a few simple steps to understanding belief systems:
1. Ideology – either individual or small group (the seeding bit if you will)
2. Belief – conviction and motivation that the ideology is definitively right
3. Moral rules – basic structure that defines and represents the belief at a core communicative level
4. Ethical practices – clear and simple motivating behaviours for core believers to follow
5. Organization – more complex infrastucture to help other believers understand and adopt the ethical practices
6. Legislation – fundamental (and often societal) acceptance in the belief’s principles, practices, and organizational behaviours.
Whilst this is a basic perspective, it is the basis for all religious, political, tribal and indeed brand based success.
Now this structure and method is all very well, but it doesn’t really explain why. Why we believe things. Why we want to believe things, why we share beliefs, to the extent that they govern our unconscious values and motivations.
Most thinking on this subject will say it’s because of the animal that we are (unless you hold a more religious belief). A weird off-shoot ape that has outgrown it’s own evolution. Seems to be the case.
But this thinking rarely goes on to explain why we have a love of dance music?! (There is a point to this)
Many child psychologists, primary school teachers and parents alike will say kids like boundaries. It gives them a sense of security. Also at all ages routine affords comfort, perhaps a sense of equilibrium gained from familiarity and perceived control of external influences.
But why? So what? It is because we are compelled to follow patterns. Both visually, aurally and behaviourally. Rocking ourselves, tapping feet, dancing, wallpaper, tiles, leaves, ripples you name it. From a pure level of infantile comfort through to correlating genetic sequencing.
We are mathematical. Whether you see it as binary or Phi everything is based in coding. We are if you like, programmed to follow patterns, they form our characteristic differences as individuals and allow us to interact as groups.
Now back to dance music. Quoting Hot Chip’s song – Over and Over: “The joy of repetition really is in you”.
With music, dancing and especially seen in things like dance music, our core coding is responding to actions and reactions to the patterns of the sound waves we hear. Patterns which stimulate neurologic impulses, releasing chemicals and flooding our emotions to trigger behavioural movements in sync with the aural patterns. And these individuals actions do not go unnoticed. Observers see and feel the benefit of following these patterns from others emotional stimulation (joy) and they are compelled to join in. Naturally there are barriers to following this compulsion, but these are cultural constraining barriers (human self-consciousness if you will), not our natural instinct.
Now transpose this thinking into belief systems; rules, order, structure, practices… patterns?!
We look for patterns to guide us in everything and are drawn toward them. From those forming ideologies based on assuming connections by cause and effect, to theorizing that there are missing links in a chain that should be filled to make sense. We make our discoveries, realizations and often mistakes by following our compulsion to follow patterns.
So, if you make this acceptance that we are in our very existential essence programmed to interact with and follow patterns, then it is easy to understand why beliefs work so very well for us as a species. Why we follow them, why we are compelled to share and adopt their behaviours and rational values. Why they influence us emotionally and reward our feelings and give us a sense of being. As it is in that sense of ‘being’ that we are human.