Loyalty Truths - Hachikō and his Symbolism of Loyalty
In the mid-1920s, at the Shibuya Train Station in Japan, a dog named Hachikō waited for his master, a man who would never return. Hachikō was an Akita, which is usually a dominant and independent breed that is not exactly known for their patients. But Hachikō was an exception. Even for a dog, his loyalty knew no bounds.
Originally born on a farm, Hachikō was adopted by Hidesaburō Ueno, an agricultural scientist. Hachikō was later Taken a Tokyo when his master accepted a professorship at the Tokyo Imperial University, which is where Hidesaburō Ueno would later die of a cerebral hemorrhage. In fact, Hidesaburō Ueno died on May 21, 1925, while giving a lecture.
Every day before his death, Professor Ueno would pet Hachikō goodbye and leave him at the train station because he couldn't take his pet to work. In the past, he tried leaving the stubborn dog at the house, but Hachikō would always venture to the station to watch him get on. And when Ueno returned at the end of his shit, Hachikō would be there at the station to greet him. But after Ueno’s death, Hachikō just kept waiting and waiting and waiting.
Hachikō went to the train station every evening, watching the trains roll in, anxious to see his master get off. Hachikō ended up waiting for 9 years, 9 months, and 15 days for his master to return, until Hachikō himself died of natural causes. Eventually, Hachikō had a statue built to his honor, twice, since the first statue was destroyed in World War II. Hachikō had grown into a national symbol of undying loyalty, the dog that never gave up on his master.
We can't have an episode about loyalty without quoting the American philosopher, Joshua Royce, “the heart of all virtues, the central duty amongst all duties, the willing impractical and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a cause.”
Loyalty, the heart of all virtues, is our subject today.
Myth One: Loyalty is a virtue.
Loyalty and animal loyalty are similar. For instance, researchers have put cats and dogs in functional MRIs, and they have had owners call out their names, and they have spikes of oxytocin and other love hormones. They have the trust level similar to humans; they have the same feelings of loyalty that a human does.
There are also levels of loyalty. For example, I would not trust some of my friends to stop a lion from attacking me. That's not about loyalty; that's about their abilities. Loyalty is just really how much you trust somebody else. I'm going to take this one to Psychology Today. They said loyalty is a survival mechanism that dates back to our caveman days in the harsh environment of early man. Giving and receiving support from the members of your family tribe or clan meant the difference between life and death. Whenever we get into psychology, we want to go back and look at the early man. And we want to see that loyalty was just so ingrained in our survival. That's why it's such a building block, a heart of all virtues and we don't even pay attention to it. We barely think of loyalty unless we're watching a movie or cartoon about it.
At its core, loyalty equals individual survival. Will somebody else help you survive? So, when we talk about businesses, do you have any Loyalty cards or reward cards for individual businesses? These companies are really just trying to hijack this core system to sell us things. Overall, loyalty programs are a way for businesses to entice people not to buy somewhere else. There was a whole influx of books on this about 10 years ago, teaching businesses how to reward employees and get loyalty without paying them more. And the same goes for Politics and being loyal to your candidate. They're pushing your emotion button, appealing to our sense of loyalty and that hard baked-in part of our mind where we know we need each other for survival. I know that's dripping with cynicism, but it's kind of true. For example, five-star reviews are all displays of loyalty, and in caveman days, loyalty would be sticking your neck out.
It is hard to find scholarly articles for loyalty because, for every one science article, there were ten about how to build loyalty, how to manipulate customer loyalty, and how to get loyalty from your reviewers or product buyers. None of it says do excellent service and make a better product at a fair price tag. They were all on how to build it with tactics and flashy ads.
Myth Two: Culture Creepy, right?
Loyalty rewards programs, political entities, business entities, cults, and religious groups asking for our loyalty are all part of a strange culture. We're going to get into the research, but, after reading, it could be spiritual idealism, a sense of belonging.
There is an effect where you would meet people in religion who felt spiritually superior because they were closer to God. For instance, people tend to think they're a little bit closer to God near a Pastor; they feel like they have a direct call to him. Sometimes it's based on their status in the church. Now, I don't think we can escape hierarchy. We have it built into us as social animals to rank each other to see ourselves compared to the group and give ourselves a number, and I think that religions and cults both do exactly this. The research we are about to get into shows this isn't an out-of-the-box phenomenon. Though forming social groups is integral to loyalty and forming a religion or cult. We're focusing on cults here.
You can have a cult around anything, as long as you're the one with the answers, and I can fill a void. Being glib about cults is finding someone with the answers, and if that person also happens to want to rank you and assign you a position in the organization, then you start getting into cult territory. A book called Cults in our Midst by Dr. Margaret Sanger features a series of articles. Sanger mentions six conditions of cultic control. We're only going to read the titles, but I encourage everyone to look this up.
1. Keep a person unaware of what is going on, and see how they will be changed one step at a time. There's a reason why all these cults start with someone who says that they are a messiah, a god reborn, or have a connection to heaven.
2. Control that person's social and physical environment, and especially control their time. Keep them busy serving in your cause.
3. Systematically create a sense of powerlessness. Strip them away from their old life and make them reliant on you.
4. Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in such a way to inhibit behavior that reflects the person's former social identity
5. Manipulate the system rewards punishments and experiences to promote learning the group's ideology.
6. Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that permits no feedback. If you question what we say, you get punished. If you accept it, you get rewarded.
A lot of these six steps are pretty close to how offices and jobs set up loyalty. They very much follow what cults do. The only real big difference is you're supposed to be rewarded if you question things in the corporate world. Most jobs want a better product or have more productivity. You're supposed to question things in a critical yet helpful way that builds what you're trying to accomplish.
So, one last thing I want to cover with cults quickly before we move on. I want to talk about John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory. The attachment theory is that children and adults will generally seek closeness when they're stressed in order to gain protection from a threat. If you get scared as a kid, you run to an adult to help, and this instinct never goes away as you grow up. It doesn't change, and everyone gets scared. People run to someone they've picked out in their life that they can trust, the way cults kind of utilize. Again, there's a reason for this. It's because when you instill a sense of powerlessness, they run to a leader. So not just cults, but everyone.
Myth Three: Loyalty is simple, right?
We're going to go through a couple of significant steps. We're not telling you anything particularly new, but we are going to talk about practical and actionable things. Our first one is a little bit counterintuitive, and I want to cover this first because I personally use it and think it's effective. It's called the Ben Franklin Effect. Ben Franklin came up with this thing, and it was something he did to his political enemies. He would ask them for a book loan or a favor, really just any favor. The idea is once someone has already performed a favor for you, they're more likely to do another one. Start small at first, and they are likely to say yes to something bigger later.
Our next one is Dale Carnegie. His phrase “be hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise” means when you compliment people, make sure it's about something truthful and honest; don't give empty compliments and be lavish in your praise. If you can, practice this because it is an excellent way to build loyalty.
Bonus: Read seven values from a Forbes article by Carol Gomen to encourage personal improvement that builds loyalty.
Final Thoughts
Loyalty is one of the most fundamental and rewarding parts of the human experience. When you find true loyalty in a partner or friend, it feels like wrapping yourself in a warm blanket when you're trapped on a glacier. And yet, businesses, politicians, and employers treat your loyalty like cheap currency, and they're not shy about asking you for it either.
Loyalty is something we all seek, even from groups that capitalize on our desperation, our need to belong. Cults go out of the way to recruit smart, educated, tenacious members to their cause. Because once feelings of loyalty and powerlessness have been instilled, smart members make the most effective members, kind of like employees. Lastly, if you want to inspire loyalty in the people around you, follow the above tips. Encourage your people, improve trust, and share values. If all that fails, then inspire loyalty; Be there to greet them at the train station every day, even if they ghost you for 9 straight years.
Written by Todd LeMense presented by Joe Anthony