A major theme in
this article is the influence people have on others opinions and the decisions
they make. Individuals seem to be more likely to follow the crowd, thinking the
way their friends do, or following the leader or most dominant person in their group.
When I was reading, I found that I could relate what I was learning to my
experiences at Pratt. School is considered our work, and whether we are aware
of it or not, our social ties influence the decisions we make. We end up going
to close friends for support and their opinions on things that happen in our
day-to-day lives, as well as their critiques on our designs. Our friends’
opinions are valued over our classmates’ that we have no relationship with. It
seems as though society today is more interested in what is socially acceptable
rather than what we know is morally correct.
I think it’s so interesting how affected we are by others. I took a social media and marketing class this summer and we talked a lot about how all of the social networks and social applications out there take into account the fact that we’re so dependent on the opinions of others. The success of Pinterest, for example, is contingent on the fact that people look to their peers for inspiration or suggestions. While one of the features of the site is that you can install the “pin it” button on your browser and can independently bookmark something for later, most of the time, Pinterest users browse through what their friends have pinned. If you’re good friends with someone and see that they pin something neat then you’re likely to pin it as well. In this sense, you’re looking to your friends for inspiration and, by doing this, their interests and opinions are shaping yours. Sites like Facebook, Twitter and Spotify take advantage of this human instinct of peer influence and approval, as well .
ReplyDeleteIt is scary to think like all the decision we made are not only made by ourselves but also by the people around us. As a member in a society, we cannot avoid interaction between people, and we all learn to cooperate by find the common interest between two different opinions. And by talking to each other, or twittering, people continuously exchange their thoughts and convinced or convince other. Social tie may be a social circle that people can exchange their thoughts frequently.
ReplyDeleteAnd reading the article, I found it interesting that how strong social tie can influence employee's justice perception. And those perception can affect their work. I think a good workspace should be open and be able to provide connecting space between different departments, so they could exchange their ideas as well as their opinions. Good social tie can improve the quality of the work in a company.