Social proof
Encyclopedia
Social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological
phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation. This effect is prominent in ambiguous social situations where people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior, and is driven by the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation.
The effects of social influence can be seen in the tendency of large groups to conform to choices which may be either correct or mistaken, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as herd behavior
. Although social proof reflects a rational motive to take into account the information possessed by others, formal analysis shows that it can cause people to converge too quickly upon a single choice, so that decisions of even large groups of individuals may be grounded in very little information (see information cascades).
Social proof is a type of conformity. When a person is in a situation where they are unsure of the correct way to behave, they will often look to others for cues concerning the correct behavior. When "we conform because we believe that other's interpretation of an ambiguous situation is more accurate than ours and will help us choose an appropriate course of action," it is informational social influence. This is contrasted with normative social influence
wherein a person conforms to be liked or accepted by others.
Social proof often leads not just to public compliance
(conforming to the behavior of others publicly without necessarily believing it is correct) but private acceptance (conforming out of a genuine belief that others are correct).
Social proof is more powerful when being accurate is more important and when others are perceived as especially knowledgeable.
1935 experiment. In this experiment subjects were placed in a dark room and asked to look at a dot of light about 15 feet away. They were then asked how much, in inches, the dot of light was moving. In reality it was not moving at all, but due to the autokinetic effect
it appeared to move. How much the light appears to move varies from person to person but is generally consistent over time for each individual. A few days later a second part of the experiment was conducted. Each subject was paired with two other subjects and asked to give their estimate of how much the light was moving out loud. Even though the subjects had previously given different estimates, the groups would come to a common estimate. To rule out the possibility that the subjects were simply giving the group answer to avoid looking foolish while still believing their original estimate was correct, Sherif had the subjects judge the lights again by themselves after doing so in the group. They maintained the group's judgment. Because the movement of the light is ambiguous the participants were relying on each other to define reality.
Another study looked at informational social influence in eyewitness identification. Subjects were shown a slide of the "perpetrator". They were then shown a slide of a line-up of four men, one of whom was the perpetrator they had seen, and were asked to pick him out. The task was made difficult to the point of ambiguity by presenting the slides very quickly. The task was done in a group that consisted of one actual subject and three confederates (a person acting as a subject but actually working for the experimenter). The confederates answered first and all three gave the same wrong answer. In a high-importance condition of the experiment subjects were told that they were participating in a real test of eyewitness identification ability that would be used by police departments and courts, and their scores would establish the norm for performance. In a low-importance condition subjects were told that the slide task was still being developed and that the experimenters had no idea what the norm for performance was—they were just looking for useful hints to improve the task. It was found that when subjects thought the task was of high importance they were more likely to conform, giving the confederate's wrong answer 51% of the time as opposed to 35% of the time in the low-importance condition.
, where suicide rates increase following media publication about suicides. One study using agent-based modeling showed that copycat suicides are more likely when there are similarities between the person involved in the publicized suicide and the potential copycats.
If he is seen to be rejected by many women, his social value will be judged negatively. The implied cognition is then "I just saw him being rejected by many women, there is probably a good reason why they don't like him".
A son coming to his mother complaining about his running shoes, saying, “Mom, I need those new running shoes. The ones I have now make me look so uncool!” The mother responds by telling her son that he doesn’t need the new running shoes, no matter how cool they make him look. However, when the same mother sees that two of her friends have recently bought the same piece of furniture, she may buy one too. Although she didn’t care about her son’s conformity since she doesn’t care about society, she cares about her own.
The concept of "Social Proof" and the fundamental attribution error
can be easily exploited by persuading (or paying) attractive women to display (or at least fake) public interest in a man. Other people will attribute the women's behavior as due to the man's character and are unlikely to consider that they are interested in him due to the actual reasons (external gain).
Some men use photos of themselves surrounded by attractive women to enhance their perceived social value. The effectiveness of such tactics without support by other consistent behaviors associated with high social value is questionable.
Some nightclub and bar owners effectively employ social proof to increase the popularity of their venues. This is usually done by deliberately reducing the rate at which people are allowed to enter, thus artificially causing the line to be longer. Uninformed customers might perceive the long line as a signal of the place's desirability and may wait in the line merely because "if all these people are waiting, the place must be good", while in fact the venue is mediocre and nowhere near its full capacity.
Similarly, a person who is in high demand - for example a CEO - may continue to get
many attractive job offers and can as a result extract a considerable wage premium -
even if his/her objective performance has been poor. When people appear successful,
potential employers and others who evaluate them tend to search more intensively for virtues
or positive characteristics that are "congruent" with or explain the person's success, and
to ignore or underestimate the person's faults. People who experience positive social proof
may also benefit from a halo effect
. Other attributes are deemed to be more positive
than they actually are. Additionally, the person's attributes may be viewed with
a positive framing
bias. For example, a person might be viewed as arrogant if
they have negative social proof, and bold if they have positive social proof.
For these reasons, social proof is important in determining a potential employer's
consideration set. Social proof naturally also applies to products and is used
extensively in marketing and sales. Situations that violate social proof can cause
cognitive dissonance
, and can cause people to have a sense of loss of control or
failure of the "just world hypothesis".
who are instructed to give ovations at pre-arranged times. Usually, these people are the ones who clap initially, and the rest of the audience follows. Such ovations may be perceived by non-expert audience members as signals of the performance's quality.
Contrary to common annoyance of canned laughter
in television shows, television studios have discovered that they can increase the perceived "funniness" of a show by merely playing canned laughter at key "funny" moments. They have found that even though viewers find canned laughter highly annoying, they perceive shows that happen to use canned laughter more funny than the shows that do not use canned laughter.
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation. This effect is prominent in ambiguous social situations where people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior, and is driven by the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation.
The effects of social influence can be seen in the tendency of large groups to conform to choices which may be either correct or mistaken, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as herd behavior
Herd behavior
Herd behavior describes how individuals in a group can act together without planned direction. The term pertains to the behavior of animals in herds, flocks and schools, and to human conduct during activities such as stock market bubbles and crashes, street demonstrations, sporting events,...
. Although social proof reflects a rational motive to take into account the information possessed by others, formal analysis shows that it can cause people to converge too quickly upon a single choice, so that decisions of even large groups of individuals may be grounded in very little information (see information cascades).
Social proof is a type of conformity. When a person is in a situation where they are unsure of the correct way to behave, they will often look to others for cues concerning the correct behavior. When "we conform because we believe that other's interpretation of an ambiguous situation is more accurate than ours and will help us choose an appropriate course of action," it is informational social influence. This is contrasted with normative social influence
Normative Social Influence
Normative social influence is one form of conformity. It is "the influence of other people that leads us to conform in order to be liked and accepted by them." This often leads to public compliance—but not necessarily private acceptance—of the group's social norms. When people tend to conform to...
wherein a person conforms to be liked or accepted by others.
Social proof often leads not just to public compliance
Compliance (psychology)
Compliance refers to a response — specifically, a submission — made in reaction to a request. The request may be explicit or implicit . The target may or may not recognize that he or she is being urged to act in a particular way.Social psychology is centered on the idea of social influence...
(conforming to the behavior of others publicly without necessarily believing it is correct) but private acceptance (conforming out of a genuine belief that others are correct).
Social proof is more powerful when being accurate is more important and when others are perceived as especially knowledgeable.
Multiple source effect
The multiple source effect occurs when people give more credence to ideas that are stated by multiple sources. This effect can be clearly seen when social proof occurs. For instance, one study observed that people who hear five positive reviews on a book as read by five different synthesized voices perceive that book more favorably than if they hear the same five reviews as read by one sythesized voice.Uncertainty about the correct conclusion
Uncertainty is a major factor that encourages the use of social proof. One study found that when evaluating a product, consumers were more likely to incorporate the opinions of others through the use of social proof when their own experiences with the product were ambiguous, leaving uncertainty as to the correct conclusion that they should make.Similarity to the surrounding group
Similarity also motivates the use of social proof; when a person perceives themselves as similar to the people around them, they are more likely to adopt and perceive as correct the observed behavior of these people. This has been noted in areas such as the use of laugh tracks, where participants will laugh longer and harder when they perceive the people laughing to be similar to themselves.Early research
The most famous study of social proof is Muzafer Sherif'sMuzafer Sherif
Muzafer Sherif was one of the founders of social psychology...
1935 experiment. In this experiment subjects were placed in a dark room and asked to look at a dot of light about 15 feet away. They were then asked how much, in inches, the dot of light was moving. In reality it was not moving at all, but due to the autokinetic effect
Autokinetic effect
The autokinetic effect is a phenomenon of human visual perception in which a stationary, small point of light in an otherwise dark or featureless environment appears to move. It was first recorded by a Russian officer keeping watch who observed illusory movement of a star near the horizon...
it appeared to move. How much the light appears to move varies from person to person but is generally consistent over time for each individual. A few days later a second part of the experiment was conducted. Each subject was paired with two other subjects and asked to give their estimate of how much the light was moving out loud. Even though the subjects had previously given different estimates, the groups would come to a common estimate. To rule out the possibility that the subjects were simply giving the group answer to avoid looking foolish while still believing their original estimate was correct, Sherif had the subjects judge the lights again by themselves after doing so in the group. They maintained the group's judgment. Because the movement of the light is ambiguous the participants were relying on each other to define reality.
Another study looked at informational social influence in eyewitness identification. Subjects were shown a slide of the "perpetrator". They were then shown a slide of a line-up of four men, one of whom was the perpetrator they had seen, and were asked to pick him out. The task was made difficult to the point of ambiguity by presenting the slides very quickly. The task was done in a group that consisted of one actual subject and three confederates (a person acting as a subject but actually working for the experimenter). The confederates answered first and all three gave the same wrong answer. In a high-importance condition of the experiment subjects were told that they were participating in a real test of eyewitness identification ability that would be used by police departments and courts, and their scores would establish the norm for performance. In a low-importance condition subjects were told that the slide task was still being developed and that the experimenters had no idea what the norm for performance was—they were just looking for useful hints to improve the task. It was found that when subjects thought the task was of high importance they were more likely to conform, giving the confederate's wrong answer 51% of the time as opposed to 35% of the time in the low-importance condition.
Cultural effects on social proof
The strength of social proof also varies across different cultures. For instance, studies have shown that subjects in collectivist cultures conform to others' social proof more often than those in individualist cultures.Copycat suicides
Social proof has been proposed as an explanation for Copycat suicideCopycat suicide
A copycat suicide is defined as an emulation of another suicide that the person attempting suicide knows about either from local knowledge or due to accounts or depictions of the original suicide on television and in other media....
, where suicide rates increase following media publication about suicides. One study using agent-based modeling showed that copycat suicides are more likely when there are similarities between the person involved in the publicized suicide and the potential copycats.
In social interactions
The social value of unfamiliar people is ambiguous and requires a lot of effort to assess accurately. Given limited time and motivation, other people will often evaluate others based on how surrounding people behave towards them. For example, if a man is seen to be in the company of attractive women, or is associated with them, then his social value and attractiveness will be perceived to be greater. The implied cognition in this case would be "All those girls seem to really like him, there must be something about him that's high value".If he is seen to be rejected by many women, his social value will be judged negatively. The implied cognition is then "I just saw him being rejected by many women, there is probably a good reason why they don't like him".
A son coming to his mother complaining about his running shoes, saying, “Mom, I need those new running shoes. The ones I have now make me look so uncool!” The mother responds by telling her son that he doesn’t need the new running shoes, no matter how cool they make him look. However, when the same mother sees that two of her friends have recently bought the same piece of furniture, she may buy one too. Although she didn’t care about her son’s conformity since she doesn’t care about society, she cares about her own.
The concept of "Social Proof" and the fundamental attribution error
Fundamental attribution error
In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error describes the tendency to over-value dispositional or personality-based explanations for the observed behaviors of others while under-valuing situational explanations for those behaviors...
can be easily exploited by persuading (or paying) attractive women to display (or at least fake) public interest in a man. Other people will attribute the women's behavior as due to the man's character and are unlikely to consider that they are interested in him due to the actual reasons (external gain).
Some men use photos of themselves surrounded by attractive women to enhance their perceived social value. The effectiveness of such tactics without support by other consistent behaviors associated with high social value is questionable.
Some nightclub and bar owners effectively employ social proof to increase the popularity of their venues. This is usually done by deliberately reducing the rate at which people are allowed to enter, thus artificially causing the line to be longer. Uninformed customers might perceive the long line as a signal of the place's desirability and may wait in the line merely because "if all these people are waiting, the place must be good", while in fact the venue is mediocre and nowhere near its full capacity.
In employment
Similarly, a person who has been unemployed for a long time may have a hard time finding a new job - even if they are highly skilled and qualified. Potential employers attribute wrongly the person's lack of employment to the person rather than the situation. This causes the potential employers to search more intensively for flaws or other negative characteristics that are "congruent" with or explain the person's failure and to discount the applicant's virtues.Similarly, a person who is in high demand - for example a CEO - may continue to get
many attractive job offers and can as a result extract a considerable wage premium -
even if his/her objective performance has been poor. When people appear successful,
potential employers and others who evaluate them tend to search more intensively for virtues
or positive characteristics that are "congruent" with or explain the person's success, and
to ignore or underestimate the person's faults. People who experience positive social proof
may also benefit from a halo effect
Halo effect
The halo effect is a cognitive bias whereby one trait influences another trait or traits of that person or object. This is very common among physically attractiveness...
. Other attributes are deemed to be more positive
than they actually are. Additionally, the person's attributes may be viewed with
a positive framing
Framing
Framing or enframing may refer to:* Framing , the most common carpentry work* Framing or Framing effect , terminology used in communication theory, sociology, and other disciplines where it relates to the construction and presentation of a fact or issue "framed" from a particular perspective*...
bias. For example, a person might be viewed as arrogant if
they have negative social proof, and bold if they have positive social proof.
For these reasons, social proof is important in determining a potential employer's
consideration set. Social proof naturally also applies to products and is used
extensively in marketing and sales. Situations that violate social proof can cause
cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying,...
, and can cause people to have a sense of loss of control or
failure of the "just world hypothesis".
In entertainment
Theaters sometimes use specially planted audience membersClaque
Claque is an organized body of professional applauders in French theatres and opera houses. Members of a claque are called claqueurs....
who are instructed to give ovations at pre-arranged times. Usually, these people are the ones who clap initially, and the rest of the audience follows. Such ovations may be perceived by non-expert audience members as signals of the performance's quality.
Contrary to common annoyance of canned laughter
Laugh track
A laugh track is a separate soundtrack invented by Charles "Charley" Douglass, with the artificial sound of audience laughter, made to be inserted into television programming of comedy shows and sitcoms.The term "laugh track" does not apply to the genuine audience laughter on shows that shoot in...
in television shows, television studios have discovered that they can increase the perceived "funniness" of a show by merely playing canned laughter at key "funny" moments. They have found that even though viewers find canned laughter highly annoying, they perceive shows that happen to use canned laughter more funny than the shows that do not use canned laughter.
Possession of special knowledge
If one perceives that s/he is better advised about a situation than the surrounding group, then s/he is less likely to follow the group's behavior.Identification with authority
If one perceives themselves as a relevant authority figure in the situation, they are less likely to follow the surrounding group's behavior. This is a combination of "Identification of the surrounding group with self" and "Possession of special knowledge". People in authority positions tend to place themselves in different categories than other people and usually they have special training or knowledge that allows them to conclude that they are better informed than the surrounding group."Smart money"
One might perceive particular groups of others, identified by their behavior or other characteristics, to be more reliable guides to the situation than the average person. One might think truck drivers to be more frequent, and therefore more experienced drivers than others, and therefore weigh more heavily the number of trucks than the number of cars parked when judging the quality of a restaurant. One might identify the movement of betting odds or securities prices at certain times as revealing the preferences of "smart money" -- those more likely to be in the know.See also
- Bystander effectBystander effectThe bystander effect or Genovese syndrome is a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases where individuals do not offer any means of help in an emergency situation to the victim when other people are present...
- Critical mass (sociodynamics)Critical mass (sociodynamics)Critical mass is a sociodynamic term to describe the existence of sufficient momentum in a social system such that the momentum becomes self-sustaining and creates further growth....
- Crowd psychologyCrowd psychologyCrowd psychology is a branch of social psychology. Ordinary people can typically gain direct power by acting collectively. Historically, because large groups of people have been able to bring about dramatic and sudden social change in a manner that bypasses established due process, they have also...
- Information cascades
- Tipping point (sociology)
- ShillShillA shill, plant or stooge is a person who helps a person or organization without disclosing that he or she has a close relationship with that person or organization...
- The Third WaveThe Third WaveThe Third Wave was an experiment to demonstrate that even democratic societies are not immune to the appeal of fascism. It was undertaken by history teacher Ron Jones with sophomore high school students attending his "Contemporary World" history class as part of a study of Nazi Germany...
- Peer pressurePeer pressurePeer pressure refers to the influence exerted by a peer group in encouraging a person to change his or her attitudes, values, or behavior in order to conform to group norms. Social groups affected include membership groups, when the individual is "formally" a member , or a social clique...
- Bandwagon effectBandwagon effectThe bandwagon effect is a well documented form of groupthink in behavioral science and has many applications. The general rule is that conduct or beliefs spread among people, as fads and trends clearly do, with "the probability of any individual adopting it increasing with the proportion who have...
- Social influenceSocial influenceSocial influence occurs when an individual's thoughts, feelings or actions are affected by other people. Social influence takes many forms and can be seen in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales, and marketing...
- Observational learningObservational learningObservational learning is a type of learning that occurs as a function of observing, retaining and replicating novel behavior executed by others...