"Do As I Do": The Pendulum Rule, Conformity and Choosing Your Own Norms

The pendulum rule is Vadim Zeland’s name for the unwritten law behind every group: “do as I do”. In his Reality Transurfing books, a pendulum is a structure that forms when many people think and act alike, and he argues that the rule comes first. People copy each other, the copying hardens into a standard, and the structure grows out of the standard and then enforces it. Zeland calls this rule the most harmful thing people have invented, and he offers another in its place: be yourself, and let others be themselves.

You don’t need his energy model to recognise the pattern. Psychologists have studied it for seventy years under the names conformity, social norms and pluralistic ignorance. This page covers Zeland’s version, what the research shows, and where his account needs correcting.

What does “do as I do” mean?

Zeland’s point is that groups rarely give orders. They give examples. A stadium wave starts with a few people standing up, and within seconds forty thousand strangers are doing it. A flash mob, a new piece of slang, a dress code no one wrote down: each spreads because people watch each other and match what they see.

He sorts the examples by harm. Stadium waves and flash mobs cost nothing. Performers working a crowd into a frenzy, teenagers at a summer camp copying the loudest kids to borrow their confidence, and media pictures of what success, beauty and a normal life look like cost more, because people measure themselves against them and come up short. The rule has no author and no off switch. Each person both follows it and enforces it on the next.

In his model, people make the rule and the pendulum grows out of it. That order matters to him, because it puts the rule within reach: a structure is hard to change, but your own copying is something you can catch.

What are the two laws of the pendulum?

Zeland adds two laws that describe how a structure behaves once it exists.

The first law says a pendulum inflames any conflict it can feed on. Once two sides collide, events drift toward escalation, from a quarrel at home to a war that flares again after every ceasefire. His small example is the pedestrian ahead who keeps stepping into your path as you try to pass.

The second law says a pendulum works to keep its structure stable. People inside it act largely on autopilot, absorb its standards and defend them. He illustrates this with schools of fish, flocks of birds, ant colonies and Caral, the ancient city in Peru, and argues that such coordination needs an outside organiser, which he calls the pendulum.

The behaviour he describes in the second law is real. His argument for an outside organiser is not. Iain Couzin and colleagues (2002) showed that fish-school patterns emerge when each animal follows simple rules about its nearest neighbours, and Michele Ballerini and colleagues (2008) found that starlings track about six or seven neighbours each. A turn can still sweep through a whole flock almost at once, as Alessandro Attanasi and colleagues (2014) measured, without anyone in charge. Ant colonies run on pheromone trails and contact rates, with no central control. Caral, built around 2600 BCE (Ruth Shady Solis and colleagues, 2001), is explained by archaeologists through a fishing and cotton economy and shared ritual building. The pendulums pillar covers the first law in more detail.

Why do people follow rules they don’t believe in?

This is where Zeland’s observation is strongest, and where the research backs him most clearly.

Solomon Asch’s line-judgement studies (1951) asked people to match the length of lines after a row of actors had given the same wrong answer. About a third of answers on those trials went with the wrong majority, and around three quarters of participants conformed at least once. A meta-analysis by Rod Bond and Peter Smith (1996) found the effect across 17 countries, stronger in more collectivist cultures and weaker in the United States than it was in the 1950s.

The more surprising finding is that people often follow a norm nobody holds. Deborah Prentice and Dale Miller (1993) found that students were privately less comfortable with heavy campus drinking than they believed their peers were. Each one went along because they assumed the others meant it. The term for this is pluralistic ignorance, and it fits Zeland’s passage on intimacy closely. He argues that media shows a narrow picture of other people’s sex lives, and that many people feel abnormal measured against it while far more struggle or abstain than the picture suggests. Research supports the shape of that claim: Tracy Lambert, Arnold Kahn and Kevin Apple (2003) found students overestimated how comfortable their peers were with casual sex.

The same mechanism runs through appearance and achievement. Leon Festinger’s social comparison theory (1954) describes people judging themselves against others when they lack an objective measure. A meta-analysis by Shelly Grabe, Monique Ward and Janet Hyde (2008) linked exposure to thin-ideal media with worse body image in women, and Erin Vogel and colleagues (2014) linked upward comparison on social media to lower self-esteem.

That is the rule at work: a standard set by examples, followed because everyone thinks everyone else endorses it. It connects to what Maxwell Maltz called false beliefs, ideas accepted from others and then lived as fact.

Does the crowd decide who becomes a star?

Zeland argues that pendulums “light up” the people who go their own way. Anyone who refuses to march in line either becomes an outcast or becomes the new model everyone copies. He tells the story of two famous bands whose success arrived in sudden waves after long quiet periods, and concludes that popularity is a collective event more than a verdict on quality.

His dates are wrong. The Beatles’ first single, “Love Me Do” (1962), reached number 17 in the UK chart, not number one. ABBA’s first attempt at Eurovision, “Ring Ring”, finished third in the 1973 Swedish selection before “Waterloo” won the contest in 1974.

His conclusion has strong support. Matthew Salganik, Peter Dodds and Duncan Watts (2006) ran an online music market in which over 14,000 people rated and downloaded songs by unknown bands. When participants could see what others had downloaded, the hits became bigger and less predictable, and the same song could top one parallel “world” and flop in another. Quality mattered, but it explained only part of success. The crowd’s copying did the rest.

What is the Transurfing rule?

Zeland’s alternative is short: be yourself, and let others be themselves. He presents it as the cancellation of the comparison the pendulum rule creates. If you stop measuring yourself against the crowd’s standard, the standard loses its grip on you.

He insists on the second half, and most summaries drop it. A person who wakes up to the rule and then looks down on everyone still following it has built a fresh comparison, “awake” against “asleep”, and turned themselves into the outcast. The rule asks for no contempt. It asks you to stop copying without demanding that anyone else stop.

This links to his idea of importance. The more weight you place on fitting in, or on standing out, the more the group’s standard can move you. Dropping the rule means caring less about the verdict in either direction.

Do you have to leave a group to be free of its rule?

Zeland says no, and this is one of the more grounded parts of his account. Belonging to a structure buys security at the cost of some individuality. Running to the mountains doesn’t solve that, because there is no life outside structures. His advice is to stay what he calls the captain inside the structure: watch the scene as a spectator while you play your part on stage, drop the habit of justifying yourself, and stop defending your worth to people who are only following the rule. He links this to his description of ordinary life as a waking dream, in which most reactions run on autopilot.

He applies it to careers. In large organisations, he argues, people rise by how well they fit and support the system’s stability, and initiative can be punished. He calls this doing things “correctly” rather than “well”. Research on person-organisation fit (Amy Kristof-Brown and colleagues, 2005) supports the milder version: fit with an organisation’s values predicts satisfaction and commitment. It is a reason to read the system you’re in, never a reason to stop doing good work.

His claim that rule-breakers become either leaders or outcasts also has research behind it. Edwin Hollander (1958) described “idiosyncrasy credit”: people who have first shown competence and loyalty to a group are allowed to depart from its norms, and their departures can shift the group. Serge Moscovici and colleagues (1969) found that a small, consistent minority could move a majority’s judgements. Silvia Bellezza, Francesca Gino and Anat Keinan (2014) found that deliberate nonconformity, such as wearing red sneakers to a formal setting, can raise perceived status when it looks chosen rather than careless.

Norms can also be chosen on purpose. In a study by Wesley Schultz and colleagues (2007), households told they used less energy than their neighbours started using more, drifting toward the average. Adding a sign of approval for their low use stopped the drift. The descriptive norm pulled people toward the middle until a chosen standard replaced it.

What the research says

Zeland’s claim	What research shows
Groups run on “do as I do”	Supported. Asch (1951); Cialdini, Reno and Kallgren (1990) found people litter more where litter already lies.
People follow standards few privately hold	Supported. Pluralistic ignorance (Prentice and Miller, 1993; Lambert, Kahn and Apple, 2003).
Media standards make people feel abnormal	Supported as an association. Grabe, Ward and Hyde (2008); Vogel and colleagues (2014).
The crowd lights up stars	Supported. Salganik, Dodds and Watts (2006). His band dates are wrong.
Rule-breakers become leaders or outcasts	Partly supported. Hollander (1958); Moscovici and colleagues (1969); Bellezza and colleagues (2014). Credit and consistency decide which.
Fish schools and ant colonies need an outside organiser	Contradicted. Local rules produce coordination (Couzin and colleagues, 2002; Ballerini and colleagues, 2008).
A pendulum is an energy structure	No evidence. Zeland himself calls his system a model.

Who should take care with this idea

Being targeted for being different is bullying. Zeland’s summer-camp example describes teenagers who don’t fit being picked on. The conformity point stands. The target never causes it by lacking awareness, and bullying calls for adults and institutions to act.

Not every norm is a pendulum’s. Safety rules, medical advice, laws and the basic decencies of a family or workplace are norms too. The question to ask of a rule is whether you have examined it, not whether a group holds it. Leaving a norm “without a fight” is the wrong frame for harassment, discrimination or abuse, which need documentation and support.

Belonging is good for you. Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues (2010) linked strong social ties to a 50% higher likelihood of survival over the study periods. Zeland’s argument concerns how a structure uses you, not whether you should belong.

Comparison can hurt. If comparing yourself with others is feeding persistent low mood, an eating problem or ongoing difficulty with sex or relationships, a doctor or licensed therapist can help more than any reframe.

Some passages in Zeland’s chapter on this rule are left out of this site, including a section that relabels children with attention difficulties as a spiritually special generation. Parents with concerns about attention should speak to a paediatrician or licensed child psychologist.

Choosing your own norms

The pendulum rule is useful because it turns a vague feeling, that your wants aren’t quite yours, into a question you can ask in the moment: am I doing this because I chose it, or because I watched someone else do it? The research says the copying is real, that it often runs on standards nobody holds, and that people who examine a norm can change it, for themselves and sometimes for the group.

What takes longer is finding out which of your standards you borrowed: what success has to look like, what counts as normal, who you’re allowed to be. Those come from your own groups and your own history, and the other people’s goals page covers one place they hide. Sorting the borrowed from the chosen, and building an identity that doesn’t need the crowd’s permission, is the work we do in coaching.

Frequently asked questions

What is the pendulum rule in Transurfing?

It is Vadim Zeland's name for the unwritten rule every group runs on: "do as I do". People create the rule by copying each other, and in his model a pendulum, a self-sustaining group structure, grows out of it. He calls it the most harmful thing people have invented.

What is the Transurfing rule?

Zeland's alternative to the pendulum rule: be yourself, and let other people be themselves. He stresses the second half. Someone who drops the crowd's rule and then looks down on the people still following it has only built a new comparison.

What are the two laws of the pendulum?

In Zeland's model, the first law says a pendulum inflames any conflict it can feed on, and the second says it works to keep its own structure stable. Research on conflict spirals and group norms describes similar patterns without his energy explanation.

Why do people follow rules they don't agree with?

Often because each person assumes everyone else agrees. Psychologists call this pluralistic ignorance: Deborah Prentice and Dale Miller (1993) found students privately less comfortable with campus drinking than they believed their peers were, so they went along with a norm few of them held.

Do you have to leave a group to stop conforming?

Zeland says no. He argues that fleeing every structure is neither possible nor desirable, and that the task is to stay aware inside the groups you belong to, keep the norms you choose and leave the others without a fight.

This article is educational and is not medical, psychological or financial advice. Talk to a qualified professional before making major changes, especially if you live with a mental health condition. Read the full disclaimer.