INFLUENCE: The Principle of Social Proof

"Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini

Social Proof

• One means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct. The principle applies especially to the way we decide what constitutes correct behavior. We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.
  
• Commercial producers often don't bother to get genuine testimonials. They merely hire actors to play the roles of average people testifying in an unrehearsed fashion to an interviewer.
• Audiences have been successfully manipulated by those who use social evidence, even when that evidence has been openly falsified.
• Situations are manufactured by exploiters intent on creating the impression - reality be damned - that a multitude is performing the way the exploiters want us to perform.
• Ah, uncertainty - the right-hand man of the principle of social proof. When people are uncertain, they look to the actions of others to guide their own actions. It is others of a special kind whose behavior will be most unquestionably followed --> similar others.
• Certain troubled people who read of another's self-inflicted death kill themselves in imitation. In a morbid illustration of the principle of social proof, these people decide how they should act on the basis of how some other troubled person has acted.
• We will use the actions of others to decide on proper behavior for ourselves, especially when we view those others as similar to ourselves.
• The principle of social proof operates most powerfully when we are observing the behavior of people just like us. It is the conduct of such people that gives us the greatest insight into what constitutes correct behavior for ourselves. We are more inclined to follow the lead of a similar individual than a dissimilar one.
• Without question, when people are uncertain, they are more likely to use others' actions to decide how they themselves should act.
• In general, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct.
• The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more the idea will be correct.
• Oddly, it was not their prior certainty that drove the members (of the apocalyptic cult) to propagate faith; it was an encroaching sense of uncertainty (that the apocalypse was not going to happen).
• While the withdrawn children who had not seen O'Connors film (which showed withdrawn kids joining everybody else and playing and having fun with their peers) remained as isolated as ever, those who had viewed it were now leading their schools in amount of social activity. It seems that this twenty-three minute movie, viewed just once, was enough to reverse a potential pattern of lifelong maladaptive behavior. Such is the potency of the principle of social proof.
• Cavett Robert: "Since 95% of the people are imitators and only 5% initiators, people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer."
• At the height of the disco craze, certain discotheque owners manufactured a brand of visible social proof for the clubs quality by creating long waiting lines outside when there was plenty of room inside.
• The producers of charity telethons devote inordinate amounts of time to the incessant listing of viewers who have already pledged contributions. The message being communicated to the holdouts is clear: "Look at all the people who have decided to give. It must be the correct thing to do."
• Advertisers love to inform us when a product is the "fastest growing" or "largest selling" because they don't have to convince us directly that the product is good, they only need say that many others think so, which seems proof enough.
• Bartenders often "salt" their tip jars with a few dollar bills at the beginning of the evening to simulate tips left by prior customers and thereby to give the impression that tipping with folding money is proper barroom behavior. Church ushers do the same.
• We have become so accustomed to taking the humorous reactions of others as evidence of what deserves laughter that we, too, can be made to respond to the sound, and not to the substance of the real thing. (re: laugh tracks on sitcoms)
• It provides a convenient shortcut for determining how to behave but, at the same time, makes one who uses the shortcut vulnerable to the attacks of profiteers who lie in wait along its path.