more competitors, less competition say researchers Garcia and Tor—how to predict the sort of resistance you may face as a communicator
[...] “Study 4″—the studies were of test takers in various conditions—”directly linked the N-Effect to social comparison, ruling out the ‘ratio-bias’ and finding that social comparison becomes less important as N increases,” write Garcia and Tor in a study titled The N-Effect: More Competitors, Less Competition.
Garcia and Tor continue:
“Finally, Study 5 found the N-Effect is mediated by social comparison“ [...]
Nota: “Ratio bias is the tendency for people to judge a low probability event as more likely when presented as a large-numbered ratio,” according to Bonner and Newell. (I had to look this one up.) Social comparison refers to the notion that we tend to evaluate ourselves in relation to others.
On intuitive grounds this seems right to me. Examples abound. Note the tendency of crowds to either disperse or concert their movements—neither are competitive outcomes.
The U.S. has a 2 party system, an outcome of its first past the post electoral mechanics. It creates conditions of intense and polar competition where the many small parties that proportional representation supports tends to produce blocs and coalitions.
Institutions are organized on this principle, e.g. criminal courts, where prosecutors and defendents argue before jurists or juries. Litigators are famously competitive and we want them to be. On the other hand, boardrooms, medical ethics boards, and legislatures are designed to support consensus and broader compromise positions.
Joseph Tainter in his Evolutionary Consequences of War argues on historical grounds that peer polities—polities of like levels of cultural, social, and material development—in hostile relation one to another will provoke themselves to higher and finally unsustainable levels of complexity until either war breaks out or the whole system collapses. The Great Powers system and the so-called balance of power game played by Britain would result in a bloc in league against Germany, then a bloc united against Russia, then a bloc organized to offset France. The end was finally war, a super-war, 1914. The Superpower system ended in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A counter example might be a school of fish. Schooling behaviors—schools of fish acting, maneuvering as one—appear cooperative. But schooling behaviors emerge from conditions of intense competition where each fish attempts to insert himself or herself into a position less exposed to predators.
What does this mean for communicators? Consider your position. Do you address a group of multiple interests? Or is there one or one position that opposes you. You can predict the sort of resistance that you will provoke on these grounds.
When the issues are confused and you need clarity, the most useful person in the world to you is the person who opposes you. Sometimes you need to create that person or provoke him or her into existence.
yours &c.
g.
