This video is part 2 to our series on Jonah Berger's book "invisible influence: the hidden forces that shape behavior". In the first video we discussed how many people feel that they are in charge of their own decisions, but how that can be wrong in many situations and how we're actually influenced by our environment. In this video we discuss the evolutionary background to why we are influenced and how our environment influences us more specifically.

We will discuss two of the most common influences which have to do with safety and reproduction. Basically our nature makes us seek out a safe environment by looking for things that seem familiar. That means we look for things that are familiar and we try to seem familiar to others by mimicking their behaviour. Once we are in a safe environment our nature switches to reproduction. Then we want to show how we are different from our peers to attract potential mates and reduce competition. To do this we "differentiate" ourself from others.

These two behaviours leads us to search for an optimal point between familiarity and differentiation which Jonah Berger Calls "Optimal Distinctiveness".

If you have any questions please let us know about them in the comment and as always, let us know if there's any topic that you'd like us make a video about.

with love

Your MinuteVideos team