So much of the social sciences applies to marketing and events–motivation, how people behave in groups, learning styles…

Here’s an interesting study I ran across in the Boston Globe, though the abstract below is from PsycNET. People are motivated by feeling like they are part of something larger.  Even for tasks that are not team-based, like solving math problems. They showed that the sense of belonging is easily created: by reading about a social group, by sharing a birthday, by being assigned to an arbitrary group, or by having something unrelated in common.

Even more important, the extra boost of motivation continued for several days after the initial exposure to the social cues.

Four experiments examined the effect on achievement motivation of mere belonging, a minimal social connection to another person or group in a performance domain. Mere belonging was expected to increase motivation by creating socially shared goals around a performance task. Participants were led to believe that an endeavor provided opportunities for positive social interactions (Experiment 1), that they shared a birthday with a student majoring in an academic field (Experiment 2), that they belonged to a minimal group arbitrarily identified with a performance domain (Experiment 3), or that they had task-irrelevant preferences similar to a peer who pursued a series of goals (Experiment 4). Relative to control conditions that held constant other sources of motivation, each social-link manipulation raised motivation, including persistence on domain-relevant tasks (Experiments 1–3) and the accessibility of relevant goals (Experiment 4). The results suggest that even minimal cues of social connectedness affect important aspects of self. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)

You could argue that an unconscious but compelling reason people come to events is to get this stimulating social “high”.  And, as event organizers, we can work these basic social interactions into the learning environment.

 

Mere belonging: The power of social connections.
Walton, Gregory M.; Cohen, Geoffrey L.; Cwir, David; Spencer, Steven J.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Oct 24, 2011, No Pagination Specified. doi: 10.1037/a0025731