I was at the gym, frustrated by the lack of the apparently common curtesy to return the weights to their rightful place on the glorious weight stand. For some reason, at this gym, no one seemed to put the weights back in order. I started to wonder why this was (probably giving it more attention than it deserved, but anyway…). I — as well as the gym employee who has to put them all back in the right place at the end of the day — initially thought it was simply due to the fact that ‘everyone is lazy’. But this was a shallow conclusion. Everyone was clearly not lazy — they had made it to gym — but still, the simple act of returning the dumbbells to their original spot seemed so far out of reach. Such a simple task invariably unattainable. Some might compare it to making your bed, or brushing your teeth every morning. But fortunately or unfortunately, it is fundamentally incomparable. Instead, I believe the problem lies in the faults of millions of years of evolution. The science of group dynamics and psychology is long-winded and often opaque. However, it offers some of the clearest insights into our everyday trials and tribulations.
The first piece of the puzzle lies in the term ‘groupthink’. While it may be a word tossed around in this age of political polarisation and unfortunate group divisions, the roots of this phenomenon run much deeper. ‘Groupthink’ commonly defined, is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Alternatively, it can be thought of as the tendency of groups to go astray. Popularised in the early 1970s by the psychologist Irving Janis, it has deservedly entered the popular lexicon. As a result of mixed information signals, groups do not merely fail to correct the errors of their members; they amplify them. They also often fall victim to cascade effects, as group members follow the statements and actions of those who spoke or acted first. It is likely a behavioural heuristic honed over large evolutionary timescales to sustain strong relationships amongst groups and relational fitness.
The human brain may be wired from birth to synchronise with and imitate others in their environment. It is no exaggeration to say that herding is a fundamental behaviour of human groups, even when not inter-connected on a personal level (like at a gym or a country). When it comes to group decisions and information flow, the favoured term among social scientists is “cascade” — a small trickle in one direction that soon becomes a flood. Consider a fascinating study of music downloads by the sociologists Matthew Salganik, Peter Dodds, and Duncan Watts. They allowed test subjects to listen to and download one or more of 72 songs by new bands. In the control group, individuals were told nothing about what others had downloaded or liked and were left to make independent judgments. In other groups, the participants could see how many people had previously downloaded particular songs. The researchers were trying to determine how much of an effect this would have on overall downloads. What they found is that it made a huge difference. Although the worst songs (as established by the control group) never ended up at the very top, and the best songs never at the very bottom, essentially anything else could happen. If a song benefited from a burst of early downloads, it might do quite well. Without that benefit, it might be a failure. And as the researchers later found, these effects occurred even if they lied to the test subjects about which songs were the most popular.
The contribution of groupthink in the issue of an inharmonious dumbbell rack lies in the fact that once a single person appears to neglect to uphold the gym rule ‘all weights must be returned to the spot they came from’, others find it very difficult not to disregard this rule themselves. If everyone around you thinks its appropriate (and potentially even the norm) to do otherwise, they very likely will follow that lead. Over and above this, the mere sight of one set of dumbbells being in the wrong spot exponentially increases the amount of resistance between you and doing the right thing. While you could pick up those weights and rearrange them so they go back in the right place, the more people who put their weights in the wrong place, the more steps it takes to solve the muddle of the inharmonious weight rack. But this isn’t all. The cascading effect of group dynamics and network science mentioned earlier helps empirically debunk the initial view that ‘everyone is simply lazy’. The point of cascades is that small changes can bring about big changes. While most people in the gym network may be very willing to return their dumbbells to the correct spot, a single person who rejects this premise of gym behaviour, spreads a wave of disobedience throughout. So no, not everyone is lazy, but it is very possible that one is lazy (or just careless/rude/recalcitrant).
So how to solve it? Unfortunately I am not a gym management consultant, but there could be some simple ways to try and fight the good fight based on simple applications of behavioural science.
Firstly, there can be things done in public places that can disrupt the cognitive dissonance that leads to things like the conformity of the masses to ruin their city, popularised by the famous ‘Broken windows theory’. While over-policing likely isn’t the solution at my gym, insights from such group dynamics suggest that initial measures to stop the cascade may solve the problem. For example, putting stickers on the weight rack designating each space for a particular ‘Xkg’ weight may force that one wrongdoer to reconsider their actions for fear of group disapproval. It really can take just a tiny reminder to break the dissonance that leads to disorder. Alternatively, a sign, reminiscent of the ‘smile, you’re on camera’ signs, may do enough to bring about the same desired result. If these don’t work, it is always possible to enforce the rules more strictly and clearly, pushing the few who are out of line, in to line, so that the rest who would otherwise do the right thing, can do so.
Nonetheless, the behavioural and network science of group dynamics pervades many problems that on the surface may seem very simple. While my gym is not exactly an international democratic power, it still exhibits very similar group dynamics. Anyway, if any of you own a gym…take note.
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