How These Variables Predict a Cultural Change

Artifact 7: This chart demonstrates how attractiveness results in greater success. This experiment focused on tracking facial images and how well the participant could identify those faces with a distractor. The experiment concluded that attractive faces were tracked and recalled more easily than unattractive ones. People pay more attention to attractive people, showing why companies need influencers.

Artifact 8: Social media allows people who barely know each other to be a part of their group through followers, private stories, direct messages, and so on. This has arguably strengthened influencer culture. Following connects people to these influencers with enormous followings. The more relatable the influencer, the more people will associate with them. The more association, the more likely they will conform to influencers’ messages. Thus, collectivism and conformity are responses to the new culture social media and influencers created.

Artifact 9: On social media, likes and shares allow others within the in-group to see what an individual supports and does not support. A like is important because it shows people willingly agreeing to an idea. It brings those who liked the post into an in-group because they share the same value of liking it, ultimately fostering conformity. Thus, influencers with large followings must recognize their power and use it responsibly. 

Artifact 10: This graph explains how conformity works within social media. As you can mainly see in Graph A, participants showed greater support for posts in which they felt the commenters were similar to them, or in other words, closer to their in-group. They supported the post regardless of whether they faced negative or positive comments in regard to the post offline. Comments, however, did not affect a participant’s attitude when they did not feel similar to the commenters.