27 Jun, 2013
BBC News – Viewpoint: Did our brains evolve to foolishly follow celebrities?
Fame is a powerful cultural magnet. As a hyper-social species, we acquire the bulk of our knowledge, ideas and skills by copying from others, rather than through individual trial-and-error. However, we pay far more attention to the habits and behaviours demonstrated by famous people than those demonstrated by ordinary members of our community.
It follows that things are much more likely to catch on if they are associated with someone who is well known for one reason or another – even if the association is erroneous, as in the case of those Twain and Einstein misquotations. This raises the question of whether what is said is as important as who said it.
Another example of the way in which celebrities act as cultural magnets is that we frequently copy traits that have little, if anything, to do with what made them successful in the first place – like the clothes they wear, their hairstyles, or how they talk.
Read the rest: BBC News – Viewpoint: Did our brains evolve to foolishly follow celebrities?.
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