Social proof and where to stand in an elevator

2 September 2009

Birds of a feather, flock together. Or so the saying goes. Put differently, we like to be around people like us and we like to be like them. We use others as a kind of 'behavioural compass' to help us think about the right thing to do.

In Bob Cialdini's classic book 'Influence', he describes how you're much better off if one person sees you being mugged or sees smoke coming from under a door than if a crowd of people do. He argues that if you do find yourself in a bad situation and there's a crowd of onlookers, look someone in the eye, point at that person and say "You, madam, in the blue dress, please help." Pleas for help made to a group of people will tend to go unanswered until one person acts, then the social proof works in reverse and others will jump in to help. As Walter Lippmann said 'when we all think alike, no one thinks very much'.

The concept of social proof is nothing new, but it's interesting to see how it is successfully exploited by brands to their own ends. The PR surrounding the launch of the iPhone was dominated by images of people waiting in line to buy an iPhone. The theory goes that when we see lots of people waiting in line we assume they must want something worth waiting for; in the end, we start thinking the iPhone must be worth buying.

Branded news sites use it by showing their most read articles, Amazon shows what other customers have bought based on your own selections. We recently included social proof as a lever for a client to explore how an experience could be designed; one where people would see others displaying what we could describe as 'desired behaviours' and follow suit. The evidence for exploiting social proof from the research was there in abundance and our workshops kept coming back to it. In the debriefs, the theory was explained and examples were given. It was not until we showed them a clip from the US version of Candid Camera that the theory really come to life. While watching the video they were able to make connections with their own opportunity.

Using evidence gleaned from research gets us so far - bringing in learning from different worlds (in this case 1960s television) helped us get much further in telling a story than another page of verbatim or flat video from a group discussion - or god forbid, bullet points.

If you have any stories or video demonstrating how social proof works to influence people's behaviour please drop me a line.

Anonymous
Posts: 2

Re:
Reply #2 on : Mon October 05, 2009, 20:32:34

Thanks Jon! Really good to get the feedback - and thanks for the example:)

Jonathan Gable
Posts: 2

Look- up in the sky!
Reply #1 on : Thu October 01, 2009, 17:23:59

The Candid Camera clip is a riot! Thanks. It's a similar phenomenon to the one Mark Earls cites in "HERD" where if one person stands on a street corner looking straight up, no one else will. But if four people all look up at the same time, that will cause others to look up too, until the behavior ripples outward from the origin of the group.
Nice newsletter and website, btw

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