social influence

Economists have discovered an odd phenomenon: many people who use social media (even you, maybe?) wish it didn’t exist. But that doesn’t mean they can escape.

• SOURCES:
  • Leonardo Bursztyn, professor of economics at the University of Chicago.
  • Benjamin Handel, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

• RESOURCES:
  • "When Product Markets Become Collective Traps: The Case of Social Media," by Leonardo Bursztyn, Benjamin Handel, Rafael Jimenez, and Christopher Roth (NBER Working Paper, 2023).
  • "Social Media and Xenophobia: Evidence from Russia," by Leonardo Bursztyn, Georgy Egorov, Ruben Enikolopov, and Maria Petrova (NBER Working Paper, 2019).
  • "Status Goods: Experimental Evidence from Platinum Credit Cards," by Leonardo Bursztyn, Bruno Ferman, Stefano Fiorin, Martin Kanz, and Gautam Rao (NBER Working Paper, 2017).
  • "'Acting Wife': Marriage Market Incentives and Labor Market Investments," by Leonardo Bursztyn, Thomas Fujiwara, and Amanda Pallais (American Economic Review, 2017).
  • "Measuring Crack Cocaine and Its Impact," by Roland G. Fryer Jr., Paul S. Heaton, Steven D. Levitt, and Kevin M. Murphy (Economic Inquiry, 2013).

• EXTRAS:
  • "Is Facebook Bad for Your Mental Health?" by Freakonomics, M.D. (2022).
  • "Why Is U.S. Media So Negative?" by Freakonomics Radio (2021).

This episode is brought to you by my very own COCKPUNCH Coffee!

Welcome to The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is usually my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out their routines, habits, et cetera that you can apply to your own life. 

This time around, we have a very special edition featuring Dr. Mark Plotkin. 

Mark takes over my duties as host and shares an episode of the Plants of the Gods podcast. You, my dear listeners, are hearing the audio before anyone else, even before his podcast subscribers, so this is a Tim Ferriss Show exclusive. 

So, who is Dr. Mark Plotkin? Mark (@DocMarkPlotkin) is an ethnobotanist who serves as president of the Amazon Conservation Team, which has partnered with ~80 tribes to map and improve management and protection of ~100 million acres of ancestral rainforests. He is best known to the general public as the author of the book Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice, one of the most popular books ever written about the rainforest. His most recent book is The Amazon: What Everyone Needs to Know. You can find my interview with Mark at tim.blog/markplotkin. 

This tightly-packed episode explores all things coffee—the most widely consumed mind-altering plant product in the world.

Please enjoy! 

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This episode is brought to you by my very own COCKPUNCH Coffee! This year, one way I’ve scratched my own itch is by creating COCKPUNCH Coffee—the first coffee I’ve ever produced myself, and which I now drink every morning. It’s a tie-in to a fictional world I created, but that’s another story for another time. I enlisted the help of world-class experts and tested dozens of variations over many months. As longtime listeners know, I have very high standards when it comes to coffee. After dialing in the sourcing, roasting, and more, this is the combo that finally made me say, “This is the one!”

100% of my COCKPUNCH-related proceeds to date—now $2.5M+—including those from COCKPUNCH Coffee, go to my non-profit foundation, the Saisei Foundation, which focuses on cutting-edge, scientific research and other uncrowded bets.

To learn more about the latest projects that I’m working on, check out SaiseiFoundation.org. And if you’d like some of the best coffee in the US, at least in my humble opinion, check out cockpunchcoffee.com. I think you’ll love it as much as I do. Grab a bag—or two or three—at cockpunchcoffee.com.

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Beware the Social Contagion.

Dealing with past abuse.

People who can't control their emotions, or see things the way you do.

The cold plunge. Cold Showers.

Discussing Differences between mend and women.

Dealing with a harsh break-up.

Why do we want the things we want? While we'll offer up plenty of reasons to explain our choices, my guest today says the real reason we want what we want is this: other people in our lives want those same things.

His name is Luke Burgis and he's studied philosophy, theology, and classical literature, works as a business entrepreneur, investor, and educator, and is the author of Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life. Luke and I discuss how our desires are strongly mimetic, that is, imitative, and how there are two groups of people that act as models of desire for us: celebrities and public figures who are distant from us, and friends, family, and colleagues who are close to us. Luke explains why it's actually that latter group where we experience the most rivalry and conflict, because the more similar we are, the more we end up competing for the same things, the more envy we experience, and the more we want to differentiate ourselves from the crowd, even though the areas in which to do so can be increasingly small. In fact, someone can be a model of desire, not only in influencing us to imitate them, but in motivating us to act in the opposite way. Luke shares how mimetic desire can be both a negative and destructive or a positive and productive force, and offers advice on how to harness it for the latter purpose by humbly recognizing the way other people are influencing our wants, and using that knowledge to opt out of games we don't want to play, utilize the healthy aspects of competition without allowing it to get us off track, and intentionally choose worthy, even transcendent, models of desire to emulate.

Get the show notes at aom.is/wanting.

The Asch Experiment. Measuring conformity in groups.

Moving out of California for better a better business situation?

56 y/o starting Jiu Jitsu tips.

Helping a friend through burnout.

Telling white lies on an application to join the Marines.

Should I pursue football if I already got cut from the team in college?

Look down at what you're wearing. You picked out that blue shirt, right? And those sandals — you decided on those because they're comfortable, didn't you? Well, maybe not. Researcher Jonah Berger says we tend to be pretty good at recognizing how influences like product placement and peer pressure affect other people's choices...but we're not so good at recognizing those forces in our own decisions. We talked with him in December 2016.

Look down at what you're wearing. You picked out that blue shirt, right? And those boots — you decided on those because they're warm, didn't you? Well, maybe not. Researcher Jonah Berger says, we tend to be pretty good at recognizing how influences like product placement and peer pressure affect other people's choices... but we're not so good at recognizing those forces in our own decision-making.