Social Proof- Don’t be the part of the herd
“The
one who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd.”
You are going to your office. At an intersection, you
encounter a group of people, all staring at the sky. Without even thinking
about it, you peer upward too, to check what is happening. Why? Because of
Social proof.
In the middle of a play, when the actor enacts a great
scene, someone begins to clap and suddenly the whole theatre joins in. You do,
too.
Why? Social proof.
After the play, you walk out and ask the valet to get
your car. You watch how the people in front of you give a tip to the valet, even though, officially, the service is
included in the ticket price, What do you do? You probably leave a tip as well.
Social proof, sometimes roughly termed the “Herd
Instinct,” dictates that individuals feel they are behaving correctly when they
act the same as other people. In other words, the more people who follow a
certain idea, the better or truer we deem the idea to be. And the more people
who display a certain behavior, the more appropriate this behavior is judged
by others.
This is, of course, absurd.
This behavior exists and is seen in fashion,
investment. management techniques, stock markets, hobbies, religion, and diets.
It can paralyze whole cultures, and in extreme behavior, it is seen when sects
commit collective suicide.
A simple experiment, carried out in the 1950s by
legendary psychologist Solomon Asch, shows how peer pressure can warp common
sense.
A subject was shown a line drawn on paper, and next to
it three lines— numbered 1, 2, and 3—one shorter, one longer, and one the same
length as the original one. He or she must indicate which of the three lines
corresponds to the original one.
If the person is alone in the room, he gives correct
answers because the task is really quite simple. Now five other people enter
the room; they are all actors, which the subject does not know. One after
another, they give wrong answers, saying “number 1,” although it’s very clear
that number 3 is the correct answer.
Then it is the subject’s turn again. In one-third of
cases, he will answer incorrectly to match the other people’s responses.
Why do we act like this?
Well, in the past, following others was a good
survival strategy. Suppose that thousands of years ago you were with your
hunter-gatherer friends, and suddenly they all bolted. What would you have
done?
Would you have stayed put, scratching your head, and
weighing up whether what you were looking at was a lion or something that just
looked like a lion but was in fact a harmless animal that could serve as good
meat?
No, you would have sprinted after your friends. Later
on, when you were safe, you could have reflected on what had actually happened.
Those who acted differently —and I am sure there were
some—became meat for the animals.
We are the direct heirs of those who copied the
others’ behavior. This pattern is so deeply rooted in us that we still use it
today, even when it offers no survival advantage.
Comedy and talk shows make use of social proof by
inserting canned laughter at strategic spots, inciting the audience to laugh
along.
We are no longer in the jungle where our first
reaction has to be survival. I am reminded of English novelist W. Somerset
Maugham’s wise words: “If fifty million people say something foolish, it is still
foolish.”
Don’t follow the herd blindly. We tend to follow the herd because we think our
different opinion might lead to embarrassment but what we never understand is
that people love as well as admire the courage, when one gives his or her true
opinion or walks on their own path.
Chanakya once said, “it is better to go alone than
being on the same path as a foolish crowd.”
Don’t follow the herd blindly, don’t look for social proof and stay blessed forever.
