Let’s say you run a day-care center and you’re tired of parents being late to pick up their kids. What do you do? How about instituting a fine? That seems like it’s logical and could be effective. If parents had to pay extra, one would assume that they would be more likely to be on time. But one would be wrong.
In January, 2000, Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini published a study titled, “A Fine is a Price.” In this study, they followed six day-care centers in Israel. They found that, on average, there were seven or eight late pickups per week across the ten centers they were monitoring. At six of these centers, they instituted a fine for late pickups and the effect was immediate and striking. The incidences of lateness steadily increased over a four week period. Eventually, the average number of late pickups peaked around twenty – almost triple the original rate. What happened? And what has this to do with social media?
Mixed Norms
Gneezy and Rustichini attributed this to something they called an “incomplete contract.” The rules that were in place were sufficiently ambiguous that customers had to figure for themselves what was appropriate behavior. In those circumstances, we tend to fall back on social norms. Social norms are a set of unwritten rules that determine what is and is not acceptable behavior in social situations. However, in the case of the day-care experiment, instituting a fine shattered the ambiguity and replaced it with an economic norm. The parents no longer feared social repercussions. They determined that the convenience of showing up whenever they wanted was worth the price.
Oil and water courtesy of andredoreto on Flickr
This is an example of “mixed norms.” When we combine social behaviors with an economic situation or vice versa, we get unpredictable (and sometimes volatile) situations. Consider, for example, finishing a holiday dinner at your parents’ house. You compliment the cook(s) on a terrific meal and pull out your checkbook asking, “How much do I owe you?” Most people would be offended and might even throw a utensil in your direction. Dating also carries such risks.
Social media also carries such risks.
Social Media and Norms
Make no mistake. Social norms are in play in all social media channels. The main reason for this is that when it comes to social networks, the users are also the owners. This is not the case in most other media with which companies are used to dealing (e.g. television, radio, newspapers, even Google). And so their tendency is to dive into social media with their economic norm behaviors. The result is that people will automatically tune them out and unfollow/unfriend them. In a sense, the companies have placed a virtual fee on their social media presence. This fundamentally changes the relationship from a social one to an economic one. Game over, influence squandered.
And here’s the really bad news…
Mixing Norms is Irreversible
Back to Gneezy and Rustichini. After five months, the day-care centers rescinded the fining policy. However, the behaviors didn’t change. It turns out that once you change the relationship from social to economic, you cannot go back. It’s altered permanently and there’s nothing you can do about it.
This should give pause to companies currently or planning to be involved in social media. You had better get it right the first time, because you won’t get a second chance. So how does a company insure it’s following social norms? Well, there’s a four letter word that spells social media success; gift. Make sure the vast majority of the content you’re creating and sharing can be considered as a gift to your audience and you should be fine.
You may have heard this already, but this social networking thing is starting to get popular. It’s fundamentally altering the way we conduct our daily lives and that has lots of people coming unhinged. Daily shrieks on my Facebook wall warn of a new plan from the modern day 
In my opinion, this is the laziest, most gratuitous slap anyone can take at social networking. Almost invariably, they cite Tweets about what someone had for lunch or wall updates about their pet did this morning. Since social networking begins with us talking about ourselves, it’s really easy (too easy) to make quips about it being narcissistic. But it’s also demonstrably false.
This line in Keen’s story made burst out loud with incredulity. This is absolutely demonstrably false. There have been countless experiments that illustrate the fact that much of our irrational behaviors are specifically geared toward social acceptance and group dynamics. Fear of public speaking is an example. We developed a fear of standing out from a crowd as a survival mechanism because there’s safety in numbers. Cognitive researchers have shown that our decision process is highly dependent on and easily swayed by others’ opinions. This helps promote harmony in small groups so that consensus can be reached on important decisions.
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