We-Mode

You Are Not Just an Individual

More from Chris and Uta Frith's new book What Makes Us Social?

Is affiliation and merging together always best for individuals? As much as we benefit from being part of a group, we also have to pay a cost. Armies work on this principle and plan on the basis that individual soldiers will die. In everyday life too, we can experience the cost of alignment. When crossing a road, pedestrians are about twice as likely to start crossing if their neighbor has started to cross. This effect occurs even though this impulsive crossing comes at the cost of increased risk of injury (Faria, Krause, and Krause, 2010). Our drive to affiliate is so strong that the benefits must outweigh the costs. . . .

We-mode is more than the phenomenal experience of each of the individuals concerned. We use the term to indicate that it allows a type of joint representation, a We-representation, that is well below phenomenal awareness. It is important for the success of joint action, as formulated and studied in the lab of Natalie Sebanz and Günther Knoblich (e.g., Sebanz, Bekkering, and Knoblich, 2006). Through We-representations, group behavior is not simply the sum of individual behaviors . . .

We-mode throws light on a rather amazing fact: people represent the common space and the objects in the space, overriding their own individual point of view. This comes in handy for groups that are equally affected by their environment. As James (1904) pointed out long ago, if one person blows out a candle, then the room is dark for everyone. . . .

When two people are performing an action together, an advantage occurs from taking into account each other's viewpoint. But it seems that we do this even if we are not working together. We do not ignore what another person sees, even when this is disadvantageous—slowing us down, an indication of a truly automatic process.