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The principle of Social Proof states that one important means that people use to decide what to believe or how to act in a situation is to look at what other people are believing or doing there. Powerful imitative effects have been found among both children and adults and in such diverse activities as purchase decisions, charity donations, and phobia remission. The principle of Social Proof can be used to stimulate a person’s compliance with a request by informing the person that many other individuals (the more, the better) are or have been complying with it.
Social proof is most influential under two conditions:
1. Uncertainty: When people are unsure, when the situation is ambiguous, they are more likely to attend to the actions of others and to accept those actions as correct. In ambiguous situations, for instance, the decisions of bystanders to help are much more influenced by the actions of other bystanders than when the situation is a clear-cut emergency.
2. Similarity: People are more inclined to follow the lead of similar others. Evidence for the powerful effect of the actions of similar others on human behaviour can be readily seen in the suicide statistics compiled by Sociologist David Phillips. Those statistics indicate that after a highly publicized suicide story other troubled individuals, who are similar to the suicide-story victim, decide to kill themselves. An analysis of the mass suicide incident at Jonestown, Guyana, suggests that the group’s leader, Reverend Jim Jones, used both of the factors of uncertainty and similarity to induce a herd like suicide response from a majority of the Jonestown population.
Recommendations to reduce susceptibility to faulty social proof include a sensitivity to clearly counterfeit evidence of what similar others are doing and a recognition that the actions of similar others should not form a sole basis for our decisions.
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- Influence: Part 4 – Principle of Liking
- Influence: Part 6 – Principle of Scarcity
- Proof that women are problems
- Influence: Part 5 – Principle of Authority
- Men are more tolerant than women
Posted by Jonathan in Psychology