The Meme Machine

THE ALTRUISM TRICK 171
yes, memetics does undermine this view. We can describe any behaviour in
numerous different ways for different purposes, but underneath them all lies the
competition between the replicators. Memes provide the driving force behind
what we do, and the tools with which we do it. Just as the design of our bodies
can be understood only in terms of natural selection, so the design of our minds
can be understood only in terms of memetic selection.
Debts, obligations and bartering
Can the theory of memetic altruism be tested? One approach would be to test
the basic assumptions on which it rests. The main assumption is that people
preferentially copy the people they like. I have assumed this because there are
substantial hints in the literature that this is so. In his widely cited book on the
psychology of persuasion, the American psychologist, Robert Cialdini (1994)
renews the evidence that people are more easily influenced by, and more likely
to agree to a request or buy a product from people they like. Tupperware parties
work because the hostess invites friends who like her and are therefore more
likely to buy products they do not want. Successful car dealers charm their
intended purchasers by complimenting them, appearing to be similar to them,
giving away small concessions or appearing to take their part against the boss,
all of which increases the clients’ liking for the dealers and hence the ease with
which the victims can be separated from their money. The major factors that
increase liking include physical attractiveness, similarity, cooperativeness, and
the belief that the other person likes you. One record-breaking salesman even
used to send out thirteen thousand cards a month to his clients saying ‘I like you’
– and presumably he was not wasting his money.
What is not so clear is whether liking leads directly to imitation. This has not
been much studied by social psychologists, perhaps because the importance of
imitation per se has not been emphasised. If it does, the other consequences
should follow; that people buy products from, are persuaded to change their
minds by, and more often agree with people they like. In other words, the social
psychological findings described above may be a consequence of a deeper
underlying tendency to want to copy people we like. The experiments that need
to be done, therefore, should look more closely at the imitation of actions carried
out by likeable and unlikeable people. For example, we might ask people to
watch liked and disliked models carrying out a task in different ways, and then