From Robert Cialdini’s “Influence”
Social Proof Principle
- “The principle of social proof states that we use information about how others have behaved to help us determine proper conduct for ourselves. But as the dropped-wallet experiment showed, we are most influenced in this fashion by the actions of others like us.” (p. 149)
- “Without question, when people are uncertain, they are more likely to use others’ actions to decide how they themselves should act. But, in addition, there is another important working condition: similarity. The principle of social proof operates most powerfully when we are observing the behavior of people just like us.” (p. 140)
Examples:
- TV shows use laugh machines to get the audience to laugh.
- When there is an opera concert, managers hire actors and put them in the audience. They ask the actors to clap enthusiastically which gets the public to clap enthusiastically!
- A club owner hire actors to form a long line. This makes the public think the club is desirable and want to join the line.
- A kid was afraid of dogs. He watched kids play with dogs on TV for 20 min. a day. He no longer was afraid of dogs. The kids he watched were similar age to him.
- A father tried to teach his son to swim but his son refused to learn. The father even tried to hire a swim instructor for his son, but his son refused. One day his father saw his son swimming.
“Well, I’m three years old, and Tommy is three years old. And Tommy can swim without a ring, so that means I can too.” (p. 143) - A Cult believed they would would be picked up by Aliens at midnight. They gathered together but at midnight the Aliens didn’t come. The leader believed their gathering shined a bright light and saved the earth. The leader called the media to publicize their story. Some members of the public called the Cult to tell them they also believed in the Aliens. The new believers gave the Cult members Social Proof. “I’ve had to go a long way. I’ve given up just about everything. I’ve cut every tie. I’ve burned every bridge. I’ve turned my back on the world. I can’t afford to doubt. I have to believe. And there isn’t any other truth.” (p. 128)
- Jonestown Cult. The leader brought the members to South America. He asked everyone to kill themselves by drinking poison with some flavoring (this is how the term, drinking the Kool Aid became popular). Over 900 people killed themselves. Being in South America, they were in an uncertain environment, and they looked at each other for Social Proof.
- Catherine Genovese was attacked 3 times over a 35 min period and killed by a knife. She was attacked in an apartment building where people could see or hear her. There were 38 bystanders in the apartment building and none of them called the police. They didn’t help her due to Social Proof. They didn’t see other people help, so they didn’t think they needed to help.
- Experiments showed groups of people helped someone less than a single bystander. For example, a man is having a seizure in front of a group. Due to Social Proof, if other people didn’t help, they didn’t help. When a man is having a seizure in front on one bystander, he was more likely to help. When there was smoke seeping into a room full of people, they were less likely to notice something wrong. If there was smoke seeping into a room of just one person, he was more likely to notice something wrong.
“a victim is much more likely to be helped by a lone bystander than by a group, especially if the people in the group are strangers to one another.” (p. 135) - If you are in trouble, “my advice would be to isolate one individual from the crowd: Stare, speak, and point directly at that person and no one else: “You, sir, in the blue jacket, I need help. Call an ambulance.” (p. 138)
- Experiments were done to show that when wallets were lost, people returned the wallets if the letter in the wallet was similar to them. If the letter was written in good English, Americans were more likely to return the wallet.
- A child watches another similar child on TV having a good experience with a dentist. The child is more likely to believe going to the dentist will be a good experience.
- Sales companies hire a fake actor to look like they are giving an unbias review of their products on TV. The fake actor looks like the public so the public will use that as Social Proof to buy the product.
- When Suicide is on the news, Suicide rates go up immediately. If it’s a solo suicide, then solo suicided deaths go up. If it’s a suicide with multiple deaths from murder, than those go up. If it’s a young person who commits suicide, then young people suicide deaths go up. If it’s an older person who commits suicide, then older people suicide deaths go up.
- After a heavyweight fight, homicide rates went up. If a black fighter lost, the homicide rate for black people went up. If a white fighter lost, the homicide rate for white people went up.
- “There is a lesson here: An automatic-pilot device, like social proof, should never be trusted fully; even when no saboteur has fed bad information into the mechanism, it can sometimes go haywire by itself. We need to check the machine from time to time to be sure that it hasn’t worked itself out of sync with the other sources of evidence in the situation—the objective facts, our prior experiences, our own judgments.” (p. 163)