Let's Help Ourselves (Social Proof)
📚 Lessons from:
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
- Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
Ever notice how we’re drawn to what others like? That’s social proof—the tendency to follow the crowd, assuming it’s the smart move. Think of a crowded restaurant: if it’s packed, the food must be good, right?
Man is a “social animal”, greatly & automatically influenced by behavior he observed in men around him.
We determine what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct, which can cause large errors and ridiculous results.
Optimized conditions when we’re most vulnerable to the influence of “Social Proof”:
- Uncertainty: in its throes, conformity grows
- the many: The more we see, the more there will be (often seen as a shortcut to good decision-making). We become wiling to follow because the action appears to be more (1) correct/valid, (2) feasible, and (3) socially acceptable.
- Similarity (peer-suasion): People conform to the beliefs and actions of comparable others, especially their peers.
The power of "Social Proof":
- What we prefer to be true will seem to be true
- Monkey See, Monkey Do…Monkey Die 🐵
- Future Social Proof
Summary of Antidotes:
- 🆘 Be as precise as possible about your need for aid.
- No shortcut. Keep learning.
- Keep in mind that nothing is free (It takes effort to get genuine good stuff).
- Become sensitive to situation in which the social-proof autopilot is working with inaccurate information.
- Learn how to ignore the examples from others when they are wrong, because few skills are more worth having.
- Don’t assume - take a quick glance, ask!
We tend to assume that if a lot of people are doing the same thing, they must know something we don’t, especially when we’re uncertain, we are willing to place an enormous amount of trust in the collective knowledge of the crowd.
Quite frequently the crowd is mistaken because its members are not acting on the basis of any superior information but are reacting, themselves, to the principle of social proof. - Don’t decry the frequency with which an unwanted behavior.
Optimized conditions
1 Uncertainty
Need for Emergency
When the need for emergency aid is unclear, genuine victims are unlikely to be helped in a crowd.
In the presence of doubt, inaction by others become social proof that inaction is the right course.
Kitty Genovese syndrome (bystander effect): people don't help someone in need when others are present.
The more people around, the less likely any one person is to help.
People may assume that others will help, leading to inaction.
Bystanders who are familiar with the environment are more likely to help.
Antidote: Be as precise as possible about your need for aid
Example: Focus on one individual in the crowd, “You, sir, in the blue jacket, I need help. Call 911 for an ambulance”.
Other Examples
- Sylvan Goldman invented the shopping cart in 1934. To encourage customers to use them, he hired shoppers to wheel the carts through the store.
- Oil company executives made bad decisions to end discomfort from doubt by going along with social proof.
- Outside directors on a corporate board usually do nothing unless a big scandal forces them to act. A typical board of directors culture was once well described by Joe Rosenfield as he said
They asked me if I wanted to become a director of North-west Bell, and it was the last thing they ever asked me.
2 the many
What other people think (correct/valid)
We determine what is correct or better by finding out what other people think is correct or better. Examples:
- Elevator with people facing the rear of the elevator
- Create long waiting lines outside the stores
- Bartenders salt the tip jars to simulate tips left by prior customers
- Faked and paid reviews on product-rating websites
- Menu item sold more when labeled with “most popular”(order a dish or watch a movie because it is popular)
Age-old truism:
If one person says you have a tail, you laugh it off as stupid; but, if 3 people say it, you turn around.
95% of people are imitators (correct/valid)
95% of people are imitators, and only 5% are initiators. People are more persuaded by the actions of others than by any evidence presented to them. Examples:
- During the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, a key factor that increased mask-wearing frequency in Japan was seeing other people wearing masks.
- A Toyota dealership in Tulsa, Oklahoma, ran recruitment ads saying they needed help to keep up with the demand for vehicles, which led to a significant increase in vehicle sales (less effective if said “people are buying our vehicles like crazy! Come get yours”
If lots can do it, it must not be difficult to pull off (feasibility)
If we see a lot of other people doing something, it doesn’t just mean it’s probably a good idea. It also means we could probably do it too. Examples:
- Residents were more willing to recycle themselves when they believed many of their neighbors recycled.
- How a 3-year old boy learned to swim
"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."
Foster social acceptance & escape social rejection
Example:
- Cults recruiting new members (especially those feeling lonely or disconnected) by showering of affection (i.e. love bombing). Later, threatened withdrawal of that affection to retain members. After having cut their bonds to outsiders, as the cults invariably urge, members have nowhere else to turn for social acceptance.
3 Similarity _peer-suasion
Examples:
- Advertisers know that one successful way to sell a product to ordinary viewers (who compose the largest potential market) is to demonstrate that other “ordinary” people like and use it.
- We frequently think of teenagers as rebellious and independent-minded. It is important to recognize that typically this is true only with respect to their parents. Among their peers, they conform massively to what a social proof tells them is proper.
- After a suicide-prevention program informing New Jersey teenagers of the alarming number of adolescents who take their own lives, participants become more likely to see suicde as a potential solution to their own problems.
- Physicians who overprescribe certain drugs (e.g. antibiotics, antipsychotics) rarely change behavior unless shown their prescription rate exceeds the norm of their peers.
- Speeding becomes more likeiy if one believe the behavior is performed frequently by others
- After being told that majority of their peers favored the use of torture in interrogations, 80% of college students saw the practice as more morally acceptable.
Antidotes:
- Don’t decry the frequency with which an unwanted behavior (e.g. drinking & driving, teen suicide, etc.) is performed, as a way to stop it. This could normalize undesirable behavior. e.g. Don't focus on labeling on a small percentage of theft and fail to label honorable guests as the great majority
Power of "Social Proof"
What we prefer to be true will seem to be true
Example:
- Martin claimed to receive messages from beings on Clarion, including a prophecy of a flood on December 21, 1954. A small group of believers, supported by Charles Laughead, made major life changes, such as quitting jobs and giving away possessions, in preparation for a flying saucer rescue.
… “I have to believe the flood is coming on the 21st because I’ve spent all my money. I quit my job… I have to believe”
Monkey See-Monkey Do-Monkey Die
Example:
- Singapore Bank Crash: Mistaking the gathering for a crush of customers poised to withdraw their funds from a failing bank, passerby panicked and got in line to withdraw their deposits, which led more passerby to do the same. Soon after opening its doors, the bank was forced to close to prevent a complete crash.
- The People’s Temple was a cult like organization based in San Francisco that drew its recruits from the city’s poor. n 1977 almost 1,000 Americans had moved to Jonestown, as it was called, hoping to create a new life. They were mostly poor and uneducated individuals who were willing to give up their freedoms of thought and action for the safety of a place where all decisions would be made for them.
In 1978 the Congressmen Leo R. Ryan and few others went to Guyana to investigate the cult and were murdered. When the leader Jones convinced that he would be arrested, he gathered the entire community around him and issued a call for each person’s death by taking poison one by one.
910 people died in an orderly, willful fashion.
Future Social Proof
When we notice a change, we expect the change will likely continue in the same direction when it appears as a trend.
Examples:
- This simple presumption has fueled every financial-investment bull market and real-estate bubble on record.
- When informed that only a minority performs an action, people are reluctant to perform it themselves. However, if they learn that within the minority, more and more others are engaging in it, they begin enacting the behavior too.