Physiology of association

Have you ever wondered what all these good-looking models are doing standing around in the automobile ads? Why do corporate contributors spend millions to win sponsorship for the Olympics? Why do Presidential candidates assemble stable nonpolitical figures who either actively participate in or merely lend their name to a campaign?

Well, I trust you are smart and know the answer to all of those questions. But if you don't know or want to understand the physiology of all of these and many more then continue reading.

Let's begin with the precarious fate of the imperial messenger of old Persia. Any such messenger assigned the role of the military courier had special cause to hope mightly for Persian success. With the news of victory in his pouch, he would be treated as a hero upon his arrival at the palace. The food and drink of his choice would be provided gladly and lavishly. Should his messenger tells of his military disaster, though, the reception would be quite different: He was summarily slain.

As Shakespeare wrote in Antony and Cleopatra,

The nature of bad news infect the teller

There is a natural human tendency to dislike a person who brings us unpleasant information, even when that person didn't cause the bad news.

The principle of association is a general one, governing both negative and positive connections. An innocent association with either bad things or good things will influence how people feel about us.

Remember how our parents always used to warn us against playing with bad kids down the street? Remember how they said that it didn't matter if we did nothing ourselves because, in the eyes of the neighborhood, we should be known by the company we kept? People do assume that we have the same personality traits as our friends.

As for positive associations, compliance professionals incessantly try to connect themself or their products or service with the things we like. Did you ever wonder why good-looking models are hired for all those automobile ads?

What the advertiser hopes they are doing is lending the models' positive traits—beauty and desirability—to the cars. The advertiser is betting that we will respond to the product in the same ways we respond to the attractive models merely associated with them and we do. ?In one study, men who saw a new-car ad that included a seductive young woman model rated the car as faster, more appealing, more expensive-looking, and better designed than men who viewed the same ad without the model. Yet when asked later, the men refused to believe that the presence of the young woman had influenced their judgments.

Because the association principle works so well—and so unconsciously—manufacturers regularly rush to connect their products with the current cultural rage.

Sales of the Nissan Rogue SUV saw a comparable and otherwise inexplicable jump after the 2016 Start War film Rogue One appeared.

During the days of the first American moon shot, everything from breakfast drinks to deodorant was sold with allusions to the U.S. space program. In Olympiad years, we are told precisely which is the “official” hair spray and facial tissue of our Olympic teams.24 During the 1970s, when the magic cultural concept appeared to be “naturalness,” the “natural” bandwagon was crowded to capacity. Sometimes the connections to naturalness didn’t even make sense: “Change your hair color naturally,” urged one popular TV commercial. The linking of celebrities to products is another way advertisers cash in on the association principle. Professional athletes are paid to connect themselves to things that can be directly relevant to their roles (sports shoes, tennis rackets, golf balls) or wholly irrelevant (soft drinks, popcorn poppers, pantyhose). The important thing for the advertiser is to establish the connection; it doesn’t have to be a logical one, just a positive one.

Politicians have caught on to the ability of a celebrity linkage to sway voters. Presidential candidates assemble stables of well-known nonpolitical figures who either actively participate in the campaign or merely lend their names to it.

A lot of strange behavior can be explained by the fact that people understand the association principle well enough to strive to link themselves to positive events and separate themselves from negative events—even when they have not caused the events.

Some of the strangest of such behavior takes place in the great arena of sports. We want our affiliated sports teams to win to prove our own superiority. But to whom are we trying to prove it? Ourselves, certainly; but to everyone else, too. According to the association principle, if we can surround ourselves with the success that we are connected with in even a superficial way (for example, place of residence), our public prestige will rise.

This tendency to try to bask in reflected glory by publicly proclaiming widely our connections to successful others has its mirror image in our attempt to avoid being darkened by the shadow of others’ defeat. We purposefully manipulate the visibility of our connections with winners and losers in order to make ourselves look good to anyone who could view these connections. By showcasing the positive associations and burying the negative ones, we are trying to get observers to think more highly of us and to like us more. Have you noticed, for example, how often after a home-team victory fans crowd into the range of a TV camera, thrust their index fingers high, and shout, “We’re number one! We’re number one!” Note that the call is not “They’re number one” or even “Our team is number one.” The pronoun is “we,” designed to imply the closest possible identity with the team.

To make ourselves look good, we try to bask in the reflected glory of the successes we are even remotely associated with, and a provocative implication emerges: We will be most likely to use this approach when we feel that we don’t look so good. Whenever our public image is damaged, we will experience an increased desire to restore that image by trumpeting our ties to successful others. At the same time, we will most scrupulously avoid publicizing our ties to failing others.

The desire to bask in reflected glory exists to a degree in all of us. Deep inside is a sense of low personal worth that directs people to seek prestige not from the generation or promotion of their own attainments, but from the generation or promotion of their associations with others of attainment.

Another example we are very familiar with is how Academic Institutes take pride in the students who are very successful in their field by conventional measures. Everyone who went to the same Academic Institutes would be telling everyone about their connection with the person, thinking they would get some prestige out of it even though they had no role whatsoever in the person's success. They would be right, too, because that's how it works. You don't have to be a star to get the glory. Sometimes you only have to be associated with the star somehow. How interesting. Isn't it?

References:

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Charlie Munger: 24 Standard Causes of Human Misjudgment