Introverts and the Joneses
Do we all care about pulling equal to or ahead of others socially or about following others’ trends?
At my junior high school, a huge topic of lunchtime gossip was how many Fair Isle sweaters Maryann or Melanie or Kathy G. owned. “Thirteen?” one girl would screech, and another would correct her: “No, I think it’s only eleven.” Either because of my family heritage or the star under which I was born, I lacked the competitive acquisition gene. I heard these loudly whispered discussions, but they passed over me the way the daily weather did. I certainly didn’t nag my mother to let me build up my own heathery pastel sweater collection.
Researchers say that introverts are less prone to striving to keep up with the Joneses. One study in the UK, for instance, found that low-income introverts spent less on high-status, socially competitive items than did their extroverted counterparts. Other studies showed introverts as less likely to conform with what others thought. That makes sense, since introverts tend to go around paying more attention to what’s going on in our own heads than to jumping on to other people’s bandwagons. Introverts usually care more about our own quirky pursuits than how others we don’t necessarily even much like size us up.
Yet there’s a whole school of marketing advice based on the assumption that everyone cares about matching up with what others are thinking and doing. When I was active as a marketing consultant, I conducted a survey of several hundred self-identified introverts to find out how they felt about various marketing practices utilizing the so-called principle of social proof. Social proof techniques aim to be persuasive by citing sales popularity or public ratings, quoting satisfied customers and so on. My survey included space for comments, and the fierceness of some of the commentary startled me.
For example, when asked how they’d react to a newsletter that invited them to join their 255,000 existing subscribers, less than 10 percent of my introverted respondents found the large number of subscribers even mildly persuasive. One respondent wrote, “Right, everyone else is signing up, so what? Don’t tell me I should do what’s popular.” Another quipped, “Hah! Become another sheep!” Someone else commented, “Why should I care what hole others have fallen into?”
In response to an expert touting connections to well-known business leaders, one respondent scoffed, “Likes to be on stage with big shots. Good for them.” Another wrote, “A lot of sizzle, no steak.” Still another answered, “Namedropping is not a way to earn my trust.” At the end of the survey, someone wrote, “I hate ‘Look how glamorous and popular I am’ marketing.”
On the whole, the introverted respondents in my survey expressed a practical attitude towards the Joneses. When I asked how they’d feel about a mailing from their utility company comparing their electricity usage with their neighbors’ (a mailing I once actually received), more than half said this would prompt them to take a serious look at their own energy use. In the comments, several explained they’d do so not because of peer pressure or a competitive spirit but because they cared about the environment. What if there were ecofriendly – and money-saving – measures others were taking that they could too?
Likewise, when asked whether they’d go take a look when a website posted a list of “Our Most Popular Products,” more than half said they’d definitely or probably click to see it. Again, people noted that they’d go see out of curiosity, not because they wanted to keep up with trends. A typical comment there was “I like to see what other people are buying, but I’m not likely to buy them just because they’re popular.”
In an era when 57 percent of young people long for a career as an online “influencer,” by developing a personal image that makes them important in the eyes of admirers, perhaps we introverts have our feet more firmly on the ground. We’re less likely to scramble to get the attention of others or to do as others do. As someone commented in my introvert survey, “It seems most people want to be like the masses. I guess I’m not one of them.”