The secret of taste: why we like what you like

Over time, tastes change - it's a fact

If in 10 years they asked me what my life will be when I grow up, I would describe something like this: I sit behind the wheel of a Corvette or any other car muscle car class. At home I have a huge collection of machines to play pinball. I sip unusual drink (eg, Baileys Irish Cream), I read novels by Robert Ludlum and listen to the full band Van Halen, sitting in an armchair in fashionable sunglasses.

Today, I'm at an age when I can realize any of those childhood fantasies, but they no longer cause any interest (except for pinball in a moment of weakness).

Ten-year I could not foresee what will the passage of time, and could not even imagine what will happen with my tastes such large-scale and radical change.

Reasons for change

1. We do not expect that pererastom some things

You probably got tired of a favorite dish if you eat it too often and a lot. But you hardly ever wondered what your current tastes change in the future. For this reason, a thriving business on excision

tattoos.

2. focus effect

This cognitive bias occurs when people focus too much on any one aspect of the phenomenon, and the rest simply do not notice. When I was 10 years old, mostly for me it was in the car, so it was cool and quick. But for me, I had no value need to pay monthly credit protection against lateral damage trunk, which fit stroller, and a desire to avoid undue attention to his person during the middle of the crisis age.

For many people now - a tipping point, when they were just the ones who will be the end of life.

Timothy Wilson (Timothy Wilson), psychologist

3. Novelty

We want novelty. Frahi Ronald (Ronald Frasch), designer clothes shop owner, said: "The first thing that buyers ask when they come to the store:" What's new? ". They do not want to know what it was, they want to know what will happen. How strong this impulse? We sell 60% of what is going to sell in the first four weeks since the advent of the things on the shelf. "

4. Tendency to habitual

Steve Jobs said: "People do not know what they want until you show it to them." But not the fact that they want. We like new, if it is at least a bit like the old, the familiar. We like what we are accustomed.

Tastes are changing imperceptibly

It is difficult to predict how much will change our tastes. We forget how quickly our lives have become accustomed, even the most serious changes.

When you first gulped beer or whiskey, you are not slapped his knee and said, "Why do I have never tried this?". Most probably, it was a surprise like, "Seriously, people like it?". Any alcoholic beverage - a shock to the body: the taste is clearly nothing is pleasant, and the desire to try is not there. New music or work of art can cause the same effect.

Today, virtually impossible to imagine that a couple of decades ago, one of the most recognizable buildings in the world, Sydney Opera House, was at the center of the scandal. Danish architect Jørn Utzon (Jørn Utzon) practically expelled from the country, his name is not called at the opening ceremony, all were outraged by the ugliness of the constructed building. Moreover, it was not like a classical opera house, it does not seem like a normal building. It was alien architecture.

The truth is that most people, when they are in an unfamiliar situation and do not know what to do and how to regard unusual, on the machine begin to experience antipathy.

The only thing we can say for sure about his taste - is that it will change.

How do other people influence our tastes

Tastes - a movement between the new and the familiar, hunger and satiety. This internal clock with the course we get tired of a certain food, music and color. But part of the movement can start and due imperceptible influence other people.

Human behavior is inconsistent. All we are moving in two major and, at first glance, a strictly opposite directions. On the one hand, we want to be like other people. On the other - we want to stand out, do not be like everyone. Therefore, we usually strive for a middle ground between the two evolutionary strategies - social imitation and individual training.

1. social imitation

Imitation, or, as scientists call this phenomenon, social learning - is an adaptive evolutionary strategy that helps us not only to survive but to thrive.

If we compare the human animal, it becomes clear that no one else knows how to learn from the knowledge and pass them to the next generation as a man. The result of this social learning - the culture, and this is what makes a person unique.

As the anthropologist Henrik Joseph (Joseph Henrich), people earn their living in the Arctic, harvested crops in the tropics, smashed pastures in the desert. Not because they were adapted to it, but because they were able to learn.

In his book "Not genes among" anthropologists Robert Boyd (Robert Boyd) and Peter Richerson (Peter Richerson) As an example bitter plant which has healing properties. Our senses define it as bitter, and thus potentially dangerous, inedible. According to the instincts, we do not have a single reason to want to eat it. But someone still eats and notices unusual useful effect. Another sees what is happening and also try. The authors write: "We are taking the medication, despite the bitter taste, not because they have developed our senses and we We take this plant as negorkoe, but because among the population has spread the idea of ​​its therapeutic values. "

When there are too many options or choices are not obvious, it is best to follow a tried and tested way - so less chance of missing something good.

People imitate and adapt culture. To learn from others - a more effective solution than to experience all by yourself. Method own trial and error, more time consuming and can be costly. This is also true for people who have read reviews on TripAdvisor or Netflix, and for primitive gatherers, who were trying to find out what products are toxic and where to find water.

2. individual training

But if social learning - it is so effective, then there is another question: why someone has a desire at all to try to do something new and unconventional? Or, conversely, why there are people who did not want to accept the innovations?

Boyd and Richerson suggest that in any group there is a balance between the social and individual learning.

When it becomes too much of people included in social learning, lost the ability to innovate.

For example, people know how to fish, because to learn this method. But what will they do when the fish will die? When the participants of social learning too little, people will not stay more time for anything but to learn from experience. And when in turn will own to invent the bow and arrow, they may forget how to actually cook food.

Perhaps this explains why people are torn between the desire to belong to a group and at the same time to save individuality. They want to know what their tastes are not unique, but at the same time feel anxious when they talk and look exactly the same as the others. Remember that uncomfortable feeling that occurs when you come to work, and there is a colleague in exactly the same outfit.

Taste as a sign of belonging to a group

If we all were conformists, there would not be the very notion of taste. We try to choose a group of suitable size, or if the group is too large, then the corresponding subgroup. Not just be a Democrat and Social Democrat. Not easy to love a group of The Beatles, and John to be a fan.

When constantly differ from the majority becomes too tiresome, you can always parodied some version of the mainstream. That was the basic idea of ​​standards-crust, under which actively tracking trends for young people became something daunshifterov of fashion: shoes in the most ordinary sneakers New Balance and unremarkable jeans.

We try to show its uniqueness only in certain areas. Agree, you're unlikely to change the usual brand of toothpaste or toilet paper, just to be different from others.

When everyone was listening to music on vinyl records, they were simply material only possible way at that time to listen to music. But when blame the technology was almost on the verge of extinction, the plate became a way to signal its uniqueness. The same applies to the fashion revival to listen to music on cassettes.

Often our tastes show that we want to be like the people who we love and who have such tastes. Conversely, tastes helps us different from other groups with other flavors. At this point, the idea of ​​social learning becomes difficult sometimes to stop doing something, it is enough to know that it is done by people with whom we do not want to associate themselves.

Distribution of tastes through the Internet

In a 2006 experiment, a group of people suggested to download free songs from the same site, but only after they listen to them and appreciate. When the participants were able to see that previous users have chosen, they went the same way. So popular songs became more popular and less popular - even less popular. Music charts, as well as tastes, do not exist in a vacuum.

The "best" songs will never be quite so bad as the "bad" songs never appear unusually good.

Watts Duncan (Duncan Watts), scientist

The path to the top of the music charts unpredictable. For example, a viral clip Farrell Williams (Pharrell Williams) made the song a hit Happy one year after release. Another example - a viral sensation Gangnam Style, which is essentially under the pressure of society got on the radio.

People always want to be around other people and learn from them. Cities have long been the engines of social opportunities, workshops, art, music and fashion. Megacities are set in motion changes in tastes, because they were given the opportunity to influence others. Therefore there is nothing surprising in the fact that at all times the creative people were drawn to the big cities.

Internet, in fact, a kind of an imaginary city where people do not just consume, but also to live. Even if it often seems that the Internet is only a little duplicated or expanding an existing city. Living and working in online, people somehow copy each other - both consciously and accidentally.

But how and from whom we learn that it is necessary to adopt? The old ways of recognition of what should we like, from radio programs and ending with restaurant guides, were ousted weight individuals.

In a world of infinite possibilities, our choice is often an accumulation of choices of others.

When social influence spread too wide, people are beginning to think like the majority. at decision they allow for less information and more and more convinced that their knowledge - the truth. After all, as most people think, and the majority can not be wrong.

Public imitation was simple and fast, but less stable. Fashion trends become more mainstream, and we know that they will. However, difficult to say where.