International Law

Peanut Butter on the Chin

Book cover via Amazon

I have never heard this story about social proof and authority before - you will love it.

"At company retreats in Aspen, Colo., over the last five decades, between skiing and spa-ing, corporate executives often attended performances at the Crystal Palace dinner theater.

There, more often than not, they would implore the cabaret's founder, Mead Metcalf, to sing his signature tune, "Peanut Butter on the Chin."

Metcalf, who recently retired, claims he hated "the stupid song," but couldn't resist the shouted requests from a roomful of bigwigs.

And it's clear why they loved the ditty, whose main character is a corporate CEO who, in a rush to get to work, fails to clean his face after a hasty breakfast -- and then passes the entire day with a lump of peanut butter on his chin.

Of course, no one dares to give the boss a heads-up about the embarrassing blob. When he finally gets home after a busy day and takes his first look in a mirror, he is horrified by what he sees and concludes that he has made a fool of himself in the eyes of his minions.

The song's second stanza finds the CEO back in the office the following day. And, lo and behold, his entire management team sports lumps of peanut butter on the chin!

I thought about this lighthearted ode to corporate conformity while reading a much more serious account of the psychology that causes it: The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Philip Zimbardo's riveting -- and chilling -- account of the prison experiment he conducted at Stanford University in 1971."

Corporations as prisons?  Who knew?

Full post as published by Misleading Advertising Law on October 24, 2008 (boomark / email).