A New Study Finds Hypebeasts and Chimpanzees Share a Few Tendencies When It Comes to Trends

A new study concludes that the hypebeast effect may have deep biological roots.

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Complex Original

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You should feel ashamed for knocking the hustle of your hypebeast friend. According to a study conducted by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, the desire to jump on fashion trends may be a biological tendency.

After observing a group of chimpanzees at a sanctuary in Zambia, researchers noticed that an adult female had an odd habit of putting grass in her ear. No big deal, right? The researchers thought so too, until the trend started spreading among other members of the group.

Unlike the other habits the chimpanzees had imitated, this particular behavior had no function in the pursuit of safety, food, or mating, which led experts to believe that the hypebeast effect of copying others and chasing trends is not exclusive to humans.

“[...]anthropologists and psychologists have known for a long time that humans tend to copy behaviors of others in their social groups,” says Dr. Katherine Cronin, co-author of the study, referring to fashion trends. “But here we see that chimps are also copying this sort of arbitrary behavior, which shows us that it's not only our species that tends to behave in ways that lead to some kind of cultural similarity, but actually that this tendency could have some deep biological roots.”

Now it all makes sense.

Next time you feel like giving your hypebeast friend shit for spending his rent money on limited edition sneakers, just remind yourself that he likely can’t help it. Hypebeasts, you finally have an excuse backed by science. 

[via NPR]

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