A quick detour from my little deconstructing-the-idea-of-brand-authenticity series, to a somewhat related subject. I read something rather fascinating the other day. It’s got nothing to do with how brand authenticity is constructed, but rather how intimately people associate the idea of something that’s fake with immoral behaviour. And how much our thoughts, feelings and actions are determined by our environment. (Which is in itself is supporting the case against the concept of simple, straightforward authentic identity, but anyway.)
In “The Counterfeit Self: The Deceptive Costs of Faking It”, (Psychological Science 21(5) 712–720), Gino et al. tell us this: if you give someone a pair of sunglasses and tell them they’re fake Chloe, they will both cheat more in tests, and start judging other people’s behaviour as more deceptive, than if you tell them they’re wearing authentic brand ones. (Of course, they’re all the same, real Chloe glasses.) This is true even if you just randomly assign glasses to people, so it’s got nothing to do with the possibly shady personality of the counterfeit enthusiast.
The determining factor in this, they say, is that people’s own sense of authenticity in the sense of opposed-to-self-alienation is diminished by the (supposed) wearing of fake items. The “Fake Chloe” crowd agree more with statements such as “Right now, I don’t know how I really feel inside”, “Right now, I feel out of touch with the ‘real me’” and “Right now, I feel alienated from myself” than the “Real Chloe”-wearers. (Thankfully, I have no idea how it feels like to be “alienated from myself”. Is this because I’m so wonderfully authentic – well I don’t wear any counterfeit accessories, so I’m making it rather easy for myself – , or because I’ve always lived so completely detached from the Real Me that I wouldn’t know when it was missing? Like a dog with docked tail, happily wagging and wiggling away.)
This idea not something totally new, it rhymes very well with for example this: even the non-religious become more helpful after reading a story from the Bible. But it would be interesting to see if the same phenomenon occurred with brands people think are morally authentic vs inauthentic – would you cheat less after drinking Innocent juice? Or even just craft authentic – surrounded by the furniture made by small Danish ateliers now run by a third generation member of a family of skilled craftsmen etc etc you so desire from the pages of Monocle magazine, would you be a better person than in your current Ikea Hell (for it is Hell, let’s be honest)? Should you splash out, for the sake of Humanity in general?
And in that case, would this truthfulness/anti-self alienation effect actually be a reason for making brands that people deem to be authentic? Utopian in a quite roundabout way, but still. Anyway: don’t you just love people. Such weird creatures.
The strange case of the behaviour changing sunglasses: – http://bit.ly/cqprkG
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
RT @YlvaLindberg: The strange case of the behaviour changing sunglasses: – http://bit.ly/cqprkG
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
What do sunglasses say about you?
http://ylvalindberg.com/the-strange-case-of-the-behaviour-changing-sunglasses/
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ylva Lindberg, Oscar Corder. Oscar Corder said: What do sunglasses say about you? http://ylvalindberg.com/the-strange-case-of-the-behaviour-changing-sunglasses/ [...]
Additional comments powered by BackType