33. Social attraction, being ‘cool’ and in-groups

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everyone, welcome back or welcome to the podcast. Thanks for tuning in. I hope you're all having a splendid day wherever you are in the world. Let's jump right into it. Today we're talking about something a little bit different. We're talking about social attraction in groups and what it means to be perceived as cool. I've been thinking about this a lot. Shout out to a friend of mine who I've been having some conversations with this about conversations around status, around the anxiety that comes with the acknowledgment that you're perceived by others, wanting to fit in, wanting to seem cool, and it all kind of ties together, and there's a pretty interesting narrative around these topics in psychology and in social psychology. So I thought it'd be a great episode to talk about and to talk through today. Before we get into it, though, I just want to say, if you are an existing listener of the podcast, I hope you like the new artwork I updated the cover art and have like rebranded the podcast. Still the same content obviously, but let me know what you think I did do like a little mini pole on my Instagram and by far this new kind of design one out against my shitty canvas designed thing. So yes, new stage, new season of the podcast. Additionally, huge, huge moment for the podcast coming up. We are about to celebrate one year of the Psychology of Your Twenties. That's right. I started this podcast a year ago in mid late June. I'll obviously announce it when I get to that stage, but if you listen to the Heartbreak episode, you would know why I started this podcast to begin with. And yeah, it's just crazy to look back on this year and what this kind of platform and you know, just being able to talk through these things and investigate them and think about them. How much that's kind of really benefited me and all the growth that I've been been through and that year. And thanks for supporting me throughout this. This was such a new experience for me when I first started, and now it's just such a part of my life. It's a part of my identity, and it's huge that there are people who reach out every week who say they really nice things, people who leave me, ratings and all of that stuff. So I really appreciate it. So social attraction, social status, why it doesn't matter so much in our twenties, Well, I think that these ideas of being part of the in group, being liked by others are important because it comes down to acceptance. It comes down to feeling like you have a group, feeling like you belong somewhere. That's a really important struggle and experience in our twenties, especially because this is really the decade in which you kind of start to place down your foundations. You try out different identities, you shift between different social groups, and you're really trying to find your feet and how you relate to others, the interactions you have with others, and where you feel that you belong. And what comes with that is an intense pressure around other people's perceptions of us, around other people's perception of our social status, of our likability, our accept whether we could be accepted into their group. And where does this pressure and influence kind of come from. That's something we're really going to discuss today. I'm sure we've all felt that feeling of just like not fitting in, not really jelling with people, feeling really lame, and it's a really terrible feeling. We've all been there and we've all felt it, but it's somewhat intangible, and the sense of not fitting in and this desire to be seen as cool. It kind of operates in our social domains, but to a large extent, it also comes from our private thoughts and our assessments of others, and our memberships to groups that we deem as important to our identity. All of these things, although we can see them, we can't really hold them. They're quite intangible and they really operate without much explanation. The groups we are a part of, specifically our in groups, which we're going to talk a lot about today, are incredibly influential in our twenties and for the rest of our lives. And a large part of this is to do with social and personal attraction, wanting to be accepted into a group, wanting to seem like an attractive individual, not in the physical sense, but in kind of the social sense. And another important element that I really want to discuss is relative and comparative status. So much of how we see ourselves comes from our comparison to others. And to where they stand and their kind of position in this invisible hierarchy, this invisible social hierarchy that we all kind of know exists. Essentially, we want people to like us. We want to be accepted and to be perceived as high status whatever that means based on our social memberships. So how do our brains navigate the complexity around this problem? Why does it come so naturally to some people? What is it that makes certain individuals trendsetters? And another big thing we're going to discuss is around subcos and how they operate, how norms take hold. So, like I've said numerous times, and it's a pretty known social reality you listening to this, you want to be liked. I want to be liked. We want to be seen as part of the us, or as standing out or being cool, especially in our early twenties where social status and interpersonal attraction really matter as we navigate our identity and who we are. I say this all the time on the podcast, But humans are social animals, and being rejected from a social group that we deem as important in the past, what that meant was losing access to things that were essential for our survival, like food, protection, mating partners, so to survive, our brains have kind of developed an early warning rejection alert system that triggers really sharp emotional pain and sometimes the feeling of physical pain as well. That's how deeply we don't want to be rejected and how deeply we crave acceptance. But for so many years, few psychologists in this area have really tuned into the importance of rejection for shaping our behavior. It's like the whole field kind of missed the essentially important part of human life. But that's changed over the last decade, and a growing number of researchers and institutions have really turned their eyes towards this uncomfortable fact of life, that rejection it matters to us. People have realized just how much our concern with social acceptance kind of spreads its fingers into almost everything we do everything. And I was having this conversation with a friend of mine around how you navigate that. Do we just accept that social pressure and the desire to appear like you have status or to be accepted. Do we just accept that that exists and live within that system and kind of play along with it, or do you kind of face that constant, existential treadmill of trying to fight against it but never quite being able to. But back to the research, So, as researchers have kind of dug deeper into the roots of rejection, they found some pretty surprising evidence that the pain of being excluded is not so different from the pain of physical injury, of stubbing your toe, things like that, and rejection it also has pretty serious implications for your psychological state and for the state of society in general. Social rejection. It influences your emotions, it influences your cognition and your physical health, and ostracized people if rejection happens again and again, can become very isolated and even aggressive or turn violent. I think that the idea of social rejection has really become part of an ongoing conversation around things like school shooters in the US, or lone wolves, or people who from that rejection have gone on to do terrible things. And it's really really interesting how our conversations around that have really integrated this idea and this acceptance of rejection as a bad thing into our discussions of these instances and these people. Because humans, we have a fundamental need to belong, just as we have needs for food and water. We also have needs for positive and lasting relationships. So if we're hardwired to avoid rejection, where do we seek acceptance and approval, Well, that would be from the groups that we are a part of. All of us, every single person listening to this, I'm sure that you can name at least four five groups that you're a part of. Maybe it's a sport team, it's the place that you work, it's your group of friends, it's your family, it's your neighborhood, it's the school you went to. But some groups matter more to us than others based on what we personally value you about ourselves, but also how we perceive others and how we perceive our groups in relation to society in general. It also comes down to whether we like people, yes, but whether we see our groups and the groups that maybe we're not part of as an opportunity for social mobility. So social mobility comes into this conversation a lot status. It exists, social status and a hierarchy of different social groups exists. And if we are seeking approval, it kind of makes sense that we'd want that approval to come from the people that are most admired in society and by gaining access to those groups, we experience social mobility, we move up, we improve our self esteem, and we reduce the feelings of rejection or the feelings of not really belonging. So we like those and we like groups that present an opportunity to be liked and included, and this leads to conformity and a convergence on group norms, which end up governing our behavior. Many people, all of us, we like to recognize ourselves as an individual or as unique, and whilst we do possess specific characteristics that really distinguish us from the crowd, we are all unique. The majority of us comply with some set of social and societal rules most of the time. So conformity is the act of kind of matching your beliefs, your attitudes, and behaviors to group norms politics, or to those who are like minded. Norms. The DIA these implicit, specific rules, intangible really that are shared by a group of individuals, and they guide our interactions with others. And it kind of brings up the question we've kind of already answered it, but just to reiterate, why do people conform to these norms? Why do people conform in a group will yielding to group pressure. In this way. It often happens because we want to fit in. And there are these five proposed kind of motivations behind conformity of this type. So the reasons that we can form and we converge on the group norms of groups that we deem as important because we want to be correct, We want to be socially acceptable and avoid rejection. We want to accomplish group goals that could in turn help elevate our social status or our social position and how well off we are. We also conform to establish and maintain our self concept and our social identity, and to align ourselves with similar individuals. And there is kind of this general belief that conforming is pretty important for society. It makes us more agreeable to live with, and in some ways it kind of creates a status quo or a sense of normal. And different groups different identities, They have different definitions of the norms which govern our behavior and which norms you need to follow to be seen or deemed is acceptable. So importantly, although traditional ideas of in group acceptance often speak of conformity and obedience to the norm is the most important part of being accepted, it actually appears a lot more nuance the deeper that you kind of dive into the literature and what is cool or what is socially acceptable. It no longer seems to just be based on conformity but in some ways rebellion and violation. So researchers they've tried to kind of unpack the paradoxes that are inherent in social acceptance and being perceived as one of us and as cool. And they've obviously focused in particular on norms, but more so on the importance of violating norms or setting oneself apart from certain dispensable norms. So one author, this really interesting author, did this in depth study on why norm violation can actually lead to acceptance and attraction. So norm violation that being going against what is traditionally accepted or expected from you, And the conventional wisdom is that violating a norm would result in rejection, which we know we want to avoid. So people normally have an incentive to be as loyal and obedient to the norm set by their groups as possible. But the things with norms, the thing with norms, sorry, is that they are contextually and situationally specific. Humans do not have one set of norms that we are universal and that we're all beholden to. They differ and the unwritten behavioral and attitudinal codes that govern our lives. They differ from situation to situation, from group to group, and like I said, they're importantly fixed to certain groups and our memberships to them. So we are aware of the different norms that exists in different contexts. So how you behave at work what's expected of you will differ wildly from how you behave when you're on a rowdy night out with your friends. But norms are the building blocks of being liked and being perceived as part of the in group and as cool. But as I've mentioned, it's a complicated process and interactions, and as researchers have pointed out recently, sometimes it is norm violation that can be most influential for social mobility and acceptance. I think cool and being cool has kind of this really strange, brittle cultural logic. It's kind of a residual code that has turned itself into an emerging code. Its performative style is based upon and derives simultaneously from, symbols of both association but also of independence and disaffiliation. So for example, the norms held by broader society versus the norms held by unique subgroups that we are a part of, they'll differ. So you can simultaneously break a norm and obey a different norm at the same time. And by breaking a more widely held norm of broader society that maybe not everyone agrees with, we can kind of signal to our unique subgroups that we're more loyal to the codes that govern our behavior and these unique and smaller scale situations. So acceptance and being perceived as cool or as part of the in group nowadays can actually mean breaking the rules, violating the norm, but only to a certain degree. So, according to one researcher, the way people and things are perceived as cool as if they're seen as autonomous. It's not just about always going against the norm and expecting people to like you. Based on the logic we were talking about above, we want to know people, we want to see people, We want to see their actions as if they would do them regardless of what other people think. Let me kind of repeat that violating a norm just to violate it for the sake of it isn't actually seen as very beneficial. But if you're doing it in an autonomous way. If you're doing it for some superordinate goal and in a way that is very unique or seems really self motivated, that's when you're more likely to gain acceptance from your unique subgroups. Furthermore, norm violation it not only indicates that you can be an independent thinker and that you're autonomous, but that you operate in the way that favors the more specific inner group norms of your groups without needing direction or instruction. So it kind of validates that you are actually a true member of the group, and in that way you begin to receive social acceptance. A really interesting kind of example of this is the idea of style and how we dress. I was talking about this with my friend Sydney. We both live in I would say, pretty cool neighborhoods in Melbourne and Sydney. Pretty big cities, pretty cool cities, And there is definitely this very i think fluid idea of like what makes you seem socially acceptable, what makes people like you? And there is a perception these days that rejecting trends and choosing kind of a niche unique look, shopping at op shops or having kind of a look or a style that's one of a kind. I guess that's that's what's cool because it shows a rejection of popular fashion and dress that can be used to signal independence but also allegiance to a more contradictory and anti establishment trend that exists within the certain subgroups that we may be a part of. Norm violation has become cool, making it such that kind of the new norm is to be anti norm. You know. It's like a bit of a contradiction, but an interesting thing to think about. Nonetheless, it becomes more about in this situation independence and uniqueness over norm loyalty, and that's when autonomy itself becomes the norm and becomes how we gain social acceptance. So, in some sense, coolness, our desire to be seen as socially and interpersonally attractive, mirrors this self actualization process. Self actualizes they're people who think for themselves. They don't conform to fit in, and they've kind of evolved beyond basic needs to higher order needs. Instead of valuing things like belonging, they've come to value higher principles like self sufficiency, like beauty that is independent of traditional conceptions of the subject, and things like justice. So Maslow. He is this well known psychologist, this author, this thinker, and he describes self actualizes as autonomous, standing apart from their culture and environment. In important ways, they might break or reject the rules of broader society that just don't make sense. They might not be as dependent on others for satisfaction, or on culture or means to an ends in general to receive extrinsic satisfactions. Rather, they're dependent for their own development and continued growth. And in this way they kind of set themselves apart and can become accepted for that very reason. Self actualization, though importantly it doesn't occur in isolation. Our identity is not concocted and created in a bubble, but is influenced every day by what we kind of see in our environment and what is reflected by our in groups and the subgroups that were a part of Especially in this kind of day and age, I feel like I don't need to expand upon the additional influence of social media and globalization and capitalism. Just essentially, I think the main logic to follower here is that in this day and age, there is no such thing as being entirely unique. There is no way to separate yourself from trends and the influences of others because they're in Yeah, I guess the influences others. But also there's no way to really separate yourself from the inherent need to be liked or perceived in a certain way. This has more to do just with general social well being. Everyone needs community, everyone needs in some ways to be liked, or they wouldn't be able to operate in modern day society. I guess a natural progression from that discussion of norm violation and of the power of autonomy and authenticity is a discussion on the existence of subgroups and the pressures that they kind of exert upon us. Before we talked a lot about norm violation and in groups, and I think that does warrant a bit more of a deep dive in groups in particular, because obviously there are norms that govern broader society, but those aren't really the ones that matter because we don't really interact with we could never possibly interact with every member of society. And I guess it goes without saying that different groups have different expectations. That's the basis of culture, and that's the basis of you know, different different countries and different groups that we see in the world. So an in group or a subgroup in psychology, and in a large part in the field of sociology as well, is a smaller group that exists within a larger group or in this case, society. So in groups are groups which we belong to, which have their own identities, their own interests, attributes, and behavioral norms, and in this way possess their own kind of like insular culture of sorts. For example, an in group it could be something like your footy team. You don't have to be a footy player, but like just the team that you support, there are a set of attributes that you think kind of distinguish you from others that creates an in group. It could be something like the church you go to. In this instance, religion has a big part to do it to do with it, or it could be something like your neighborhood. Throughout all these examples, we're seeing that there's something that kind of ties people together and in groups. They can also be based on something incredibly minuscule, even sometimes arbitrary, but which nonetheless forms an important part of your identity, like the music you listen to that can just be enough for you and someone else to establish an in group between the two of you. There's something that unites you, which you feel distinguishes you compared to the status quo or everyone else. So subcultures are an important caveat here and kind of like a natural progression from that. So subgroups that types of in groups that are more diffuse. They don't have any formal leadership, formal membership, or explicit kind of organizational structure the way that a church group or a forty team might have these other features. So leadership, formal membership, explicit organizational structure, these are the features which often typify the existence of an in group, but rather subgroups they have or subcultures have kind of loose and informal participation, mainly because the boundaries of who and what embodies a subculture they're contest it and they're fluid, so membership is not exclusive. Subculturalists can identify as with just one part of the subculture and simultaneously interact with people in another culture and broader social networks. And consequently, I think the boundaries between mainstream culture and subcultures are often indistinguishable, as the two kind of cultural domains, they can share ideas and coexist in the lives of individuals. They can be seen as existing within, whereas in groups kind of a scene as existing outside of. And here's why we might actually count subcultures as an in group. And it kind of does have to do with this broader idea of social attraction that we're talking about. Subcultures. They don't only share an identity, they also share values, practices, and cultural objects that, if we are a part of this subgroup, really matter to us. And they often signify status symbols. So for example, like a particular subculture might be like clean living or like yeah, clean living, veganism, that kind of thing, and they purchase objects of importance to them, like you know, cruelty free products or expensive vegan skincare or yoga pants. Those things might not be as it might not be important to the average person. You know, if someone came up to me in the street and was like, oh my gosh, here's this fantastic brand of cruelty free sunscreen or whatever, I probably would not know what the fuck they were talking about. But it could be a status symbol for that clean living culture or subculture that they operated. So as subcultures emerge, distinct meanings form to kind of define the specific scenes, unique practices and cultural objects like the sunscreen. And the other thing that kind of forms is the practices, the principles, and the objects that distinguish the subculture from the mainstream culture. And it's this chasm. It's this gap that is kind of the biggest one to jump to jump over if you want to move into a group, if you want to be socially accepted. But luckily for us, the meanings around what is cool or what defines the specific subculture, they continuously grow and change because subcultures don't have any form of leadership or formal membership, so there is freedom to kind of debate existing meanings and create new ones. And additionally, the way that subcultures and in groups are kind of distinguished yet again, is that there aren't any kind of barriers to people who are members of subcultures being equally loyal to society and other people in society in general. So it's kind of generally accepted that there are interactions between people who aren't really members of the group, and those are just as important as the interactions we have with those who are members of the group. In these situations, the main form of influence and power is common bonds and attachment to other group members and a sense of a strong common identity. So in this way, this way, it's kind of a different deer around social acceptance within these subcultures. In some ways, it's easier to seek social acceptance and to be seen as cool or as an in group member within these kind of settings, But in the other way it does another way. It does take a lot of effort, and it takes a lot of dedication I guess, to a specific way of living. And another important element that I think really links in that norm violation concept we were talking about in that perception of being cool relative to context is the sense of resistance within subcultures to kind of the dominant dominant cultural values. And there's also normally a sense of marginalization that typically unites members. They feel that they sit outside of what mainstream culture and cultural values expects from us. Hence, their identity and existence is somewhat predicated on norm violation and going against what is typical. So if we wrap this all, we link this all back together, there's this idea that to be seen as cool and to be seen as part of the in group and to be seen as socially attractive and attractive and socially acceptable, you need to conform, and you need to be able to identify what's cool and just follow along with it. But what this recent research is saying is that that really depends, because there are actually certain groups in which your membership is based on your ability to go against what is the norm and your ability to act as an autonomous individual, And what makes someone cool or sets people apart within subcultures is often incredibly specific. So I had this thought at a concert the other day. I was at Carriage Works. If you're a Sydney listener, you'll know where that is. But this concert it was like not something I take I would like normally go to. It was super grunge, kind of goth. And I walked in wearing the clothes that I would normally wear, and I just so out of place. I think, you know, if I was walking down the streets of Newtown, or if I was at my old UNI, what I was wearing, the kind of perception, I don't know, like the kind of image I was giving off would be seen as pretty typical elsewhere, but in this situation, it was really obvious that I was not a member of this particular subculture. I was not a frequent participant in goth underground music, that kind of music scene, and I felt incredibly uncool. But if members of this group were to step into one of my cultural identities or one of the groups I belong to, I'm sure they would have felt the same. And the way that that was kind of indicated to me. The reason I felt uncool was because of these status symbols, because of what people were wearing, and there was a sense of convergence here, but there was also a norm of independence and a normal authenticity that we've been talking about a lot. But under lying all that there is trends. There are trends that to be cool we have to both follow and we have to both violate. So how do trends and ideas of in group prototypicality emerge in these environments? How do we know what to follow and what not to follow? You know, why is it that you know you might be in a specific situation You notice that everyone looks the same. Surely there's not a big group chat that thousands of people are using to like coordinate their outfits and to coordinate what's cool. So how do trends in this kind of globalized environment, how do they emerge? So the origin and the emergence of social conventions of trends, whatever you want to call them, it's kind of been a bit of a problem child for cognitive scientists and social psychologists in the past and prominent ideas. They've often assumed that institutionalized mechanisms like a centralized authority, figure leadership or incentives for collective agreement around norms. These are what are required for shared conventions to become prevalent. Obviously, we know that's not true. Trends emerge without someone telling us what to do, without a collective conversation. When we think about subcultures, which often have a real sense of commonality and a sense of common trends and common conventions, they don't have centralized authority, they don't have leadership, and they don't have kind of solid membership either. So these newer social ideas have kind of come to play, and they've suggested that there are networks of like locally interacting individuals that kind of spontaneously and unintentionally self organized and self and coordinate to produce a more global coordination and trend and convergence towards typical conventions and typical signals of status and in group nous rather than formal institutions. So but this kind of sort of self organization has been really difficult to demonstrate, especially on a meaningful scale. And that's where all these kind of discussions around how do we know what's cool, how do we know what it means to be part of the in group if we don't actually know how the conventions that govern and the norms that govern our in groups and our groups come to be. But there was this really interesting study that kind of cracked the code or cracked open Pandora's box in some ways. So it was a university study in the Netherlands, I think, and they put these students that were part of like a first year psychology course, they placed them in chat rooms for the entire year, and people were placed randomly in different chat rooms, and over time, these trends started to emerge and how people talk to each other, the jokes they made, and there was also like a convergence within these little groups that were defined by these chat rooms on how people took notes, on where people ate lunch on what people did and all of these things, all of these indicators of the specific chat rooms they differed, they differed, And when all of these groups and one of the chat rooms were kind of combined, people still kind of stuck to the groups that were created by those initial kind of conversations. And what the researchers noticed within that was a trend setter or a leader within these smaller local groups who kind of started doing something from a place of authenticity and autonomy, which we've talked about, and then everyone kind of followed suit. We would call them a trend setter, But why was this person more influential than the other ones than the other people? So I think we know from just our basic knowledge of social interactions and of society in general social media as well, that not everyone can kind of be a trend setter or start a social movement towards a particular convention or norm or action. So we typically believe it's tied to charisma, natural intelligence, attractiveness, things like that, but on a deeper level, it has to do with in group prototypicality. So in group typicality that is the key that seems to unlock this whole kind of secret closet and strange world that was really weird Narnia reference. But you know what I mean of social attraction and being perceived as cool soup prototypicality. Basically, what it means is that you are You are kind of the median, the most sensual and normal figure of all those around you. You kind of represent the amalgamation of the attributes, the characteristics, the likes, the behaviors, the attitudes of all those who might be within kind of your atmosphere and within your social atmosphere, and people recognize that you're the person who has the most kind of relatability to every other member of the group. And what comes with that is a sense of trust, a sense of trust from other members that you'll do the right thing by them, that they should follow you. And with that comes charisma and attraction and the emergence of a trend set of a trend setter. So ingroup prototypicality, being the most familiar and typical member of a group is what gives you the power, one individual of the power to set a convention that is then carry on by others. But navigating that is so not simple. Some people just fall into that role naturally and find group membership and acceptance and leadership, whereas others are kind of really forced to examine group dynamics and trends and figure out where they sit. The good thing is all humans and all groups, they kind of leave a track or a pattern of behavior that can be followed and emulated if you really want to be part of the in group, if you try hard enough to be cool. But the other thing that we've learned is that always converging on the norms, on the conventions, on the trends that define the groups that you think are important, isn't probably going to get you to a point where you feel accepted. It. It kind of comes more naturally to those who are authentic and who act independently. These are the trend setters. These are the people who aren't seeking social acceptance. These are the people who gain social acceptance from violating norms, not just obeying them. You know, we can talk about the research behind this, but I think it has come from a more anecdotal place and a more kind of yeah, anecdotal perspective. When you try too hard to be seen as someone who everyone should like and to be socially accepted. Often it has the inverse effect. No one likes you. They can tell that you're being fake, they can tell that you're not authentic. They can tell that you don't naturally know how to follow the norms of the group. Trying hard is uncool. So I guess the lesson from all this conversation is the way to kind of gain social acceptance is to be independent, autonomous, and your authentic self. That way, you end up kind of drifting and finding the groups who you actually have more in common with naturally, but people are more attracted to you because they see you as somewhat of a leader and an independent thinker, and as someone who is self actualized. As Maslow said, that is what makes you the most powerful in social interactions, is not actually needing social acceptance. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I do realize it was a lot more theoretical based and kind of like weird ramblings from me than our typical episodes are. But I really enjoyed looking into this. I think it's something I've been thinking about a lot, having moved recently. It's not really recently anymore, having moved at the start of the year. It's like, how do you figure out how to fit in in a social situation and circumstances that you don't really know very well? And why is it that we're constantly seeking to be liked and socially accepted and seeking symbols or indicators of status. So I guess that's where this episode kind of came from. It's just me unpacking how that kind of area, an element of the social world world really works, and what things we should consider, what kind of topics and conversations and subjects come up. So, if you're thinking of feeling a similar way, I hope you enjoyed this. I hope as weird as it was, as convoluted as it was, you kind of took something away from it. And thank you for listening. If you've made it as far as I always say, if you have made it this far and you feel cool to do so, please consider leaving the podcast a review on either Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really helps us grow. And when I say us, it's just me, so it really Yeah, it makes me really happy to see that people are enjoying this, people are enjoying me being my authentic self, even if it's not cool. But yeah, thank you again for listening and tune in next time.