It's human to ape others, new study argues
July 12, 2007
By James Pressley
You know how applause works at a piano concert: one or two people start clapping, so the crowd joins in.
The noise crescendos, then fades to scattered smacks.
Humans mimic other humans, whether they are clapping or buying cellphones, writes Mark Buchanan in his beguiling behavioural study, The Social Atom.
The same force may influence bigger decisions, such as whether to have kids, he says.
European birthrates slowed so much between 1950 and 2000 that researchers concluded the trend was "amplified and exaggerated by peer pressure".
"We're not as free as our vanity would have us believe," Buchanan says.
A theoretical physicist, Buchanan suggests that sociologists should spend less time scrutinising individual behaviour and more time studying the group.
"Think of patterns, not people," he urges. - Bloomberg
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