Several years ago I wrote about the "benefits" of frat hazing.  I put benefits in quotes because I wasn't promoting hazing itself, but I was promoting the idea of understanding why hazing works to create very loyal members of the group.  I recently started reading a book called Influence:  The Psychology of Persuasion that touched upon this very idea, and it was so interesting I had to share, and hope to expand on why it is important when it comes to the concept of resident retention!

The book explains that frats are not composed of social deviants who always enjoy torturing other people.  Here is an interesting excerpt:

The picture that emerges of the perpetrators of hazing practices is of normal individuals who tend to be psychologically stable and socially concerned but who become aberrantly harsh as a group at only one time - immediately before the admission of new members to the society.  The evidence, then, points to the ceremony as the culprit.  There must be something about its rigors that is vital to the group.  There must be some function to its harshness that the group will fight relentlessly to maintain.

To explain why this ritual appears to be so important for frats, the book then cites a 1959 study that indicated that "persons who go through a great deal of pain to attain something tend to value it more highly than persons who attain the same thing with a minimum of effort."  This is very much  in line with the "IKEA Effect" and a post I wrote about building emotional ownership, where people have more satisfaction with something if they worked to build it themselves.  The same thing can be seen with interpersonal relationships, where people stand by dysfunctional relationships that are clearly a negative impact on their lives, simply because they have invested so much time and effort in the relationship previously.  In all of these examples, effort + pain = loyalty.

So what does this have to do with resident retention?  Although I'm sure some of you would absolutely love duct taping some of your residents to a tree and paddling them, that's not really an option.  But the concept does show there is a potential for loyalty to be established by requiring effort from the resident him/herself.  This is important because it is exactly opposite of what we generally teach, isn't it?  Everything is about making it as easy as humanly possible to rent at our communities, rather than requiring effort which might establish more loyalty in the long run. 

But let's face it - it simply isn't going to happen.  No community is going to purposefully make it more challenging to rent at a community.  So is there a way to establish a "pain" of initiation outside of making it harder to actually sign a lease?  Although it is not exactly the same, what we CAN do is establish a sense of seniority!  Currently, we absolutely celebrate new residents, but in this frame of mind, we are putting the "pledges" on the highest pedestal in our community, aren't we?  What we should be doing is reversing this completely, ensuring that the benefits to living at the apartment community increase as the resident stays longer.  A long time resident should be getting perks and benefits well beyond what a new resident (pledge) gets.   Whether it is preferred parking spots, apartment upgrades, or other "unlocked" features of the community, seniority establishes a quasi initiation before getting the full benefits of the community.

By establishing seniority, a long-term resident isn't just leaving their existing apartment, they are also giving up all the privileges they have built up over the years at their community, as well as some element of prestige.  If they move away, then potentially they have to start at square one, and nobody likes to do that.

So although the practice of hazing is not one we should revere, it does shed some light on the interesting aspects of how loyalty is created, which might lead us to being able to replicate the concept in a somewhat pain-free way!  What do you think?