外刊阅读精选：人们的盲从习惯

　　本篇阅读材料人们的盲从习惯选自《时代》。如果大家觉得比较简单，就当作泛读材料了解了解，认识几个新单词或新表达方式也不错。如果大家觉得这些材料理解上有难度，不妨当做挑战自己的拔高训练，希望大家都有进步^^

　　Soon well be able to follow more than our friends latest escapades on our favorite social networking site. Facebook has announced new look-at-me-looking-at-you feature that will allow you to see what others are watching, hear what theyre listening to and check out what theyre reading, in real time, making consumer behavior more visible than ever before. And if you think that knowing what your friends are consuming will have no impact on you, think again.

　　We might be hesitant to admit the degree to which others influence us, but we most certainly are all influenced. We need only look at the number of lists and recommendations that are the first thing you encounter on any e-commerce site, which make us think that a team of experts has spent the past month parsing through every book, movie, song and testing every coffee maker, handbag and diaper pail, when in fact the only function of all these recommendations and lists is to get you to buy more. And even though most of us are aware that some of those online product reviews are fakes written by friends or company employees or marketers, we purposely overlook this. We want to trust these messages, even when we may be deeply skeptical.

　　To gain further insight into the degree to how suggestible we are, I managed to convince a local restaurant to conduct a small experiment on my behalf. Over the years, Ive had many conversations with waiters regarding how people order, and almost invariably, at least one diner withholds their menu selection until theyve heard what everyone else at the table will be eating. Whats more, waiters are quite adept at altering orders to accommodate diners who change their minds after hearing what someone else is having.

　　This is a restaurant scenario Im sure youre well familiar with. However, what I really wanted to see was to what extent one tables dissatisfaction would influence anothers. So we set up a table in the middle of the restaurant, and four actors were hired to pretend to be friends sharing the conviviality of a meal. They all ordered the soup, since it was the only starter on the menu, thus allowing an element of control. After breaking some bread and taking his first mouthful, one of the actors called for the waiter and proceeded to deliver a three-minute rant about the scalding temperature of the soup. As the soup continued to be served to the other tables, the complaints began rolling in. By the end of the dinner, 26% of the guests had made similar complaints. Each bowl had come from the same pot, so either they had extremely sensitive tongues or they had all been influenced by the initial complaint.

　　In another experiment conducted in 2008 by researchers at Leeds University, 200 people were asked to walk randomly around a large hall. A few moments into the experiment, five volunteers were instructed to move in a clockwise direction. They were told to do so without making any announcements or drawing attention to themselves. Within seven minutes, everyone was walking in the same direction. One of the conclusions drawn by the scientists was, like animals, humans tend to flock. And during times of insecurity, our need to seek refuge in the larger group is that much greater.

　　Which leads me back to Facebooks latest look-at-me-looking-at-you initiative, which might prove to become the most powerful marketing mechanism of the 21st century by enabling Facebook to systematically pick out which members exert the most influence on others. Imagine movie studios, magazine publishers and fashion outlets having access to this information and creating mass demand by using small, highly influential groups. In the end, whos influencing who?