How Do Memes Influence Human Behavior?
Jordan (Harvard/APA/TEDx) Bridger
Founder @ Nudge Culture | Behavioral Scientist, Coach, AI Training Expert & ADHD TRAINER
Brands Are Who We Are
Memes that represent our favorite brands are not merely groups we identify with - they become us and we become them. I know this sounds overstated. However, research shows that consumers segment their own decisions based on which brands they follow. The brand though, in reality, doesn’t matter - the brand is the screen upon which we pursue our values.
The brand represents value, identity, group identity, and a host of other social components that we must engage with to uncover the metanarrative in place. The boring sociological claim is that brands are about community group identity - while this is true, it does not get to the root of multiple factors competing for dominance. However, to find what a culture truly values and identifies with, we have to look at behaviors as territorial markers of identity.
Studies have shown that different areas of the brain are activated when exposed to a brand as opposed to a person, and decisions regarding the evaluation of brands in different product categories activate the area of the brain responsible for semantic object processing rather than areas involved with the judgment of people.
Jean Piaget, the Swiss child development psychologist, called these world maps: Schemas. A simpler way to define this term is to say that our childhoods have been one of the major contributors to how we interpret everything from a shoe brand to a political party.
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Memes don’t stand for anything. They are called empty signifiers. They are more like blank screens upon which we discover what we really believe about ourselves, objects, elements, and people on this third rock from the sun. Interpretations work more like concentric circles, rather than lines that have a direct path. Memes can also be viewed as schemas of a society.
Meaning, that when something is invented or re-created (i.e., brand consumer items) it’s simply a map of what a culture mythologies and wants to normalize through the medium of behavior and mental occupation (i.e., how people identify with the object).
Everything has an outer concentric circle guiding it. Everything.
To truly understand the role of memes in how they shape our many lives across society, we must see them as participatory voices that are speaking back to us from within the field of critical thinking. Culture dictates human behaviors and values. Memes are simply objects oriented towards the values that are either assumed to be true of the culture now or assumed to be true of the culture to come.
WHAT are the MAIN TAKEAWAYS for YOU? SHAR BELOW.
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