How to be 'cool' or Popular In today's society

Introduction

What is your perception of popularity? This question isn't easy to answer as popularity can be defined numerous ways. Our research question for this project was "How can a person become or be perceived as "cool" in today's society?" For background information of what is cool today, we must first define cool. The article A global culture of cool? Generation Y and their perception of coolness states "Cool has a strong influence on our consumption practices, by consuming cool products, services and experiences we seek to transfer the cool status to our identity projects. Thus cool operates within a cultural framework" (Ferguson 267).We believe this topic is important because of how much influence popularity has on individuals. It is interesting to see the varying views and opinions on what individuals consider popular today. What we view from social media, school, advertisements, movies, etc., effect this perception greatly. This WebText will reveal our results on our conducted research. Our goal for this project was to gather data and conclude the determining factors of popularity.

Methods

For this research, we obtained our survey sample by spreading our anonymous survey through our various social media platforms (Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook), as well as sending it to people throughout the community. Our target demographic is any U.S. adult, not limited by race or sex. This survey was opened for a period of seven days., April 5th- April 12th. The majority of the age demographics of our survey respondents were between ages 18-24, 77.7% . More ages that participated in our survey were between ages 55-64, at 13.6%, between ages 35-44, at 9%, and over the age of 75, it was 4.6%. For our race demographics of our survey, 77.3% were White/Caucasian, 9.1% were Native American or American Indian, and 9.1% were Asian, Black/African American. 100% of our survey respondents were heterosexual.

Results

Figure 1

For figure one, our question was "what is the most admirable trait in a rapper?" We gave our survey responder five choices. The first choice that we gave was "flashy appearance" (cars, jewelry, clothing). 5% of our respondents chose this answer. The next option that we gave was "fashion", which none of our participants voted on. The next option was "confidence", which 15% of people voted on. The next option we gave was "other", which 25% of respondents voted on. Our last option we gave was "wordplay." 55% of our respondents voted on this option, which was the most popular vote amongst this particular survey question.

Figure 2

The question asked in figure two was "What makes and action hero stand out to you?". The participants were given four traits to choose from. The first option listed was "Risk-taking" 25% of our respondents chose this answer. The next option was "Charisma". 20% of our respondents chose that answer. The third option was "Tone". 10% of the participants selected "Tone" as their answer. Lastly, the final answer option given, was "Other". 25% of our participants chose "Other" as their answer.

Figure 3

This question was "What type of person would star best in a commercial?" We gave our survey respondents 8 answer options. The first option given was "athlete", which 10.53% of our respondents voted on. The next option we gave was action "hero", and 5.26% of our respondents voted on this. The next option was "rapper", and no one voted on this option. The next option given was "other" and 21.05% people voted on this answer. The next was "model" and this answer got 15.79% of votes. The next option was "famous chef" and it got no votes. The next answer given was "influencer" and this got 15.79% of votes. The last answer that we gave was "comedian", and this was the most popular answer for this survey question.

Figure 4

This question was "what stereotype was/is the coolest person in your real life school setting?" We gave our survey respondents a total of 13 answers. 5 of our options were not chosen by in of our survey participants. These options were "nerd", "mean girl", "bully", "loner", and "redneck." The next options that we gave was "rebel", "cheerleader", and "gamer". This options got 5.26% of our votes. The next options we gave was "stoner" and "other," and these got 15.79% of our votes. The next option we gave was "underdog" and "rich-kid" and these both got 10.53% of our votes. The option that had the most votes was the "jock" and 31.58% of our survey respondents voted on this.

Figure 5

This particular survey question was "have you been influenced to purchase a product that was advertised by someone famous?" We only gave our respondents two options for this question- yes or no. 45% of people voted "no", and 55% of people voted "yes". This means that the majority of people have been influenced to buy a product because of the certain person advertising it.

Figure 6

This survey question was "does owning a product promoted by a well known individual make you feel cool?" We gave our respondents 2 answers- yes or no. 30% of our responses were "yes", and 70% of our responses were "no." This means that the majority of our survey respondents did not feel anymore "cool" by owning a product promoted by a well-known individual.

Discussion

Figure 1

We can see that most our respondents find wordplay to be the most popular trait in rappers. Seeing as rap and hip-hop is one of the most popular forms of music in today's media, many people can be influenced by this trait. To be cool in today's society, it may help to speak intelligently and fluently. Contrary to what we believed prior, fashion was not very popular with our respondents. Having a lot of "swag" or "drip" seems to not effect how cool you can be today. Overall, dress and style has a low impact on popularity. We can use research from Rappers and Threads: An Analysis of Endorsement Behavior by Rap Artists to connect this to influence on other people. The article states that rap artists do not have a significant impact on the clothing market due to their popularity in the music industry not carrying the same weight in the fashion industry (Harris 16-17). Rappers, unlike what we previously thought, do not have a strong influence over what people might choose to wear.

Figure 2

Our respondents' views on the most popular traits in action movie heroes are shown. Risk taking and charisma were the two most popular answers, followed by miscellaneous "other" answers such as their morals and ethics. Based off of these results, we can conclude that if a person acts charismatic in their social interactions and takes risk when needed, it will help them to achieve cool status amongst their peers.

Figure 3

Most of our respondents believed comedians star best in commercials. These commercials have shown to have a small amount of influence on if people purchase products or not as shown in figure four. If people act comedic, cracking jokes and making people smile, they should be able to influence people into believing they're cool similar to these commercials. Models and influencers were a close second to comedians, and athletes scored surprisingly low. Models and influencers make most of their money through social media nowadays, so having a significant or influential presence on these platforms should help to raise how cool you are.

Figure 4

Based off our results in figure 4 a "Jock" was the most popular stereotype in a school setting. This has a lot of influence on how children grow up and how they do in school. This effects grades as well as a social perspective. This effects what group kids will try to fit into in school as well and not be who they really are but change to try to be cool or popular in school. This aligns well with background research we found in the journal Too cool at school-understanding teenagers by the PsychNology Journal. Their experiment was based around collecting a sample group of students from a school from various backgrounds (sports, nerdy, etc.), and having fellow students vote on how "cool" they were. The result was that Gary, the student who was most well known for his athleticism and his time playing sports for the school, was voted the most cool (Horton 83-84). Both our survey and the research point towards jock being the most popular stereotype in school settings.

Figure 5

Being influenced to buy a product from a celebrity or from an advertisement comes from a generation that is trying to be cool or viewed as cool in a society. What is popular currently in this generation may not be viewed as popular to another generation so having influence to buy products shows not only how much influence but also what generation is viewed as popular or cool. According to our research from How marketers can use celebrities to sell more effectively by the Journal of Consumer Behavior, using celebrities is not much more or less effective than other marketing strategies used in advertising (Pringle 6). This seems to back up our survey results, as the spread between choices was almost even.

Figure 6

We asked does owning a product promoted by a well known individual make you feel cool. This relates to our topic because buying product from someone who is popular or buying something to make you feel cool shows influence from celebrities. Influence to buy products shows views of what is considered to be cool or popular in today's society. Results from our survey show that owning products that were advertised by someone well known will have a low effect on how cool you are.

Conclusion

One of our biggest limitations with this project was that we couldn't survey anyone under 18 years old. With not being able to survey anyone under the age of 18, we do not feel like we got accurate results. Advertisements mostly target Individuals under age of 18 for their influence on products. Also we feel like middle school students and high school students are more easily influenced. Therefore, popularity and being 'cool' has much more meaning to them. Not being able to have our survey on Qualtrics also really had limitations for our project. Not being able to have our survey spread throughout more age groups, caused us to have limited feedback. For future research, it could greatly benefit to have been able to survey middle and high school students. This would have given our survey a greater range of results. We feel as though we would get better results without this limitation. Overall, the data we collected through our research has lead us to answer our question of how to be 'cool' or popular in todays society. We see from a variety of settings such as music, school, and advertisements what the most popular traits and characteristics are. Each question provided us with results on what people view as the most popular traits on the specific subject. The results shown above describe "How to be considered 'cool' In today's society".

Works Cited

Pringle, Hamish, and Les Binet. "How marketers can use celebrities to sell more effectively." Journal of Consumer Behaviour: An International Research Review 4.3 (2005): 201-214.

Harris, Kristie. "Rappers and Threads: An Analysis of Endorsement Behavior by Rap Artists." (2005).

Horton, Matthew, et al. "Too cool at school-understanding cool teenagers." PsychNology Journal 10.2 (2012): 73-91.

Ferguson, Shelagh. "A global culture of cool? Generation Y and their perception of coolness." Young Consumers (2011).

APA