This aversion to loss sounds remarkably similar to insecure attachment – when individuals cannot bear to be separated from loved ones. Individuals who were rated anxious in their personal relationship attachment style showed a much stronger endowment effect in that they demand a higher price for personal possessions.40 They weren’t just clingy to people but also clingy to objects! Moreover, if they were primed to think about past relationships that made them feel anxious and insecure, the endowment effect was further increased. Clearly emotions linked with our past social relationships are registered in our brain and can spill over into reasoning systems when it comes to how we value possessions.
The Extended Self
Despite thirty years of research on the endowment effect, only recently have researchers started to look at the phenomenon in populations other than North American students. This is an important limitation as other cultures have different attitudes towards object ownership. For example, in comparison to Westerners, Nigerians are reported to value gifts from others more and exhibit less of an endowment effect for personally acquired possessions.41 A recent study of the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Northern Tanzania also found no evidence of endowment for possessions.42 This difference is believed to reflect the cultural difference between Western societies where the self is thought about mainly as one of independence compared to non-Western societies, especially those in East Asia where the self is thought of in terms of its relationship to others or interdependence. For example, there is a self-characterization task43 called the ‘Twenty Statements Test’ where participants have to write twenty statements in response to the question at the top of the page, ‘Who Am I?’ It is a fairly simple measure of their self-concept reflecting various attributes such as physical ones, such as ‘I am tall’, or social roles, as in ‘I am a father’, or personal characteristics, such as ‘I am impulsive’. After completing the twenty statements, these are categorized as being internal (traits and intrinsic qualities) versus external (social roles in relationship to others). In comparison to individuals from interdependent societies, Westerners typically make more internal statements compared to external references.
How do these differing self-concepts manifest when it comes to ownership? One suggestion, following from Belk’s ‘extended self’ idea, is that the endowment effect is at least partly a function of the tendency to value the self. But not every personal attribute is fixed. Psychologist William Maddux and his colleagues44 first established that the endowment effect was not as strong in East Asians compared to Western students attending Northwestern University. However, in a clever twist Maddux asked the students to either write about themselves or their relationships with other people. This task can shift the self-perspective from being focused on one’s self to one’s relationship with others. When East Asians focused on themselves, they endowed things they owned with greater value, whereas Westerners instructed to write about others showed the opposite – a reduced endowment effect.
Not only do we overvalue our own possessions but we also covet that to which others seem to pay attention. It turns out that when we watch other people looking and smiling at objects we automatically prefer them to objects that have not been looked at.45 These sorts of studies show that, when we come to value things, make choices and exhibit preferences, we can easily be manipulated simply by considering context and our role among others. Being a member of a group generates our self-concept in ways that seem to defy the notion that societies are a collection of individual selves. Rather, our self is a reflection of our extension not only to our possessions, but also to everyone around us.
6
How the Tribe Made Me
Did you know that one of the most terrifying experiences people can imagine is speaking in front of other people? When this fear becomes so extreme that it begins to affect how people live their lives, it is known as social anxiety disorder. According to the American Psychiatric Association, it is the number one most common anxiety problem and the third most common mental disorder in the United States. More than one in ten of us have social anxiety disorder, which is surprisingly high given that we are such a sociable species.1 Why is this?
The mind that generates our sense of self is a product of a brain that has evolved to become social. But in being social, the self is radically altered by the presence of others and our need to fit in with them. This is such an imperative, that being in a group can be one of the most life-affirming experiences but also one of the greatest anxiety-inducing challenges.
One theory is that other people trigger our emotions reflexively.2 As soon as we are in a crowd we become aroused. The limbic system that controls our behaviour responds automatically to the presence of others. Arguably, this is the basic function of emotions – to motivate social behaviour to either join or avoid others. When people simply look at us we become aroused by the focus of their attention. In one of our studies3 we showed that direct attention from staring eyes triggered increased pupil dilation, which is controlled by the limbic system. This system controls how we interact with others – whether we fight them, flee from them or fornicate with them.
Sometimes, arousal can improve performance. We run faster, cycle faster and basically up our game when others are about. However, this energy can also impair performance when we are not that skilled in the first place. When others look at us, our mouths dry up, our voices tremble and our hands shake – all signs of limbic arousal. These are the butterflies that we get in our stomach, which explains why opening-night nerves are a common experience for actors who are not yet comfortable in their roles. It’s only when we become expert that we can rise to the occasion.4
However, not all group behaviour leads to increased performance. In a tug of war, teammates expend about half as much energy as when they pull as individuals in a phenomenon known as ‘social loafing’.5 As soon as we blend into the crowd we no longer feel the need to put in as much effort if it is not recognized. It is only if the group appreciates our efforts that we try harder. This need for recognition also explains why groups can become more polarized on issues that would normally generate only moderate views.6 In an effort to gain group approval, individuals adopt increasingly extreme positions that they feel represent the group, which in turn drags the group further towards that position. If you couple that dynamic force with ‘groupthink’,7 the tendency to suspend critical thinking when we are one of many decision-makers so as to try and galvanize the gathering, then it is easy to see how we behave so differently in groups than we would as individuals. It explains why the rise of political extremism requires not only the determination of the few but also the complacency of the many. When we are in large groups, whatever self we believe we have is swamped by others. The illusion is to assume you are more autonomous than you really are.