Let’s do a thought experiment. Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang some bananas by a string from the ceiling and place a ladder underneath it. Before long, one of the monkeys will go to the ladder and try to climb towards the bananas. As soon as it touches the ladder, spray all of the monkeys with cold water.
After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result: all of the monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when any monkey tries to touch the ladder, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.
Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one.
The new monkey sees the bananas and wants to climb the ladder. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the ladder, he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the ladder and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the attack with enthusiasm — he wants to be part of the group!
Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, and then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey goes to the ladder, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the ladder or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.
After replacing all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys has ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the ladder to try for the bananas. Why not? Because as far as they know that’s the way it has always been done around here.
And that, my friends, is how social norms are created.
When I first heard this amusing, apocryphal story, it was being used to explain how company policies get created. However, the story obviously has much wider application. For example, I think about this story whenever I hear about the so-called “Puritan work ethic” in America: Americans working so hard that they don’t have the time or energy to enjoy the fruits of their labors. I also think about it when I hear Americans talking about our “high standard of living,” even though we get (for example) far less vacation time and far fewer benefits than do our European colleagues. Case in point: I once worked for an American company in which its US-based senior executives received less annual vacation time than the *entry level* factory workers and secretaries in the company’s European plants. And, most curiously, neither group seemed to question the practice.
Likewise, Americans seem to take for granted all sorts of beliefs and behaviors, often without question. Why, for example, don’t Americans turn off their car engines at long traffic lights to save gas, as drivers do in Europe? Why are American cities designed for cars, while European cities are designed for pedestrians and mass transit? Why do American department stores put women’s lingerie in a back corner or on an upper floor, while European department stores put it prominently inside the front entrance? Why do nearly all stores organize clothing with the smallest sizes on the top-most shelves (where short people cannot reach) and the largest sizes on the bottom-most shelves (where tall people must stoop)? Why do Americans consider bicycles to be children’s toys, while Europeans see them as practical transportation vehicles? Why does the American military ban homosexuals, but not convicted felons, from serving their country? Why has America failed to adopt the metric system when even Great Britain (which created America’s inches, pints and pounds) has already done so? Why do Americans calmly accept virtually unlimited gratuitous violence on television, but react with outrage and disgust at the smallest hint of nudity? Why do Americans warehouse prison inmates on a military (rather than an educational) model, when all available evidence shows that it does not produce rehabilitation? (Indeed, why do Americans cut government funding for student financial aid, but then spend even more money on prisons for people who lack educational opportunities?) Why do Americans believe nationwide healthcare coverage (so-called “socialized medicine”) is a horrible idea, while Europeans would never think of giving it up? The list goes on and on.
Surely, some of these behaviors are caused by practical considerations — the lower price of gasoline in America compared to Europe or the vast lobbying power of the American Medical Association — but to a very great extent the social norms we see today (in every culture around the globe) are merely the result of choices made by people who died hundreds (even thousands) of years ago. Obviously, some choices are insignificant (e.g., Americans drive on the right, Brits drive on the left), but some could have far-reaching consequences (e.g., crashing an expensive space probe because navigation calculations were wrongly assumed to use metric units).
The point of this essay is not (necessarily) to campaign for longer vacations, greater use of bicycles, or more nudity on television in America; it is to alert you to the fact that we are all (to some extent) monkeys in a cage. Thus, each of us has a choice: we can automatically attack our fellow cage-mates because of some archaic belief or social norm that we’ve never questioned; or, instead, we can be willing to challenge the status quo so that we, and our fellow monkeys, can all enjoy a nice bunch of bananas. Whichever you choose, just remember: your choice will help determine what tomorrow’s monkeys do in their cage.
Print this post [1]
[2]