Social Proof Is The Invisible Force Influencing Your Decisions
Discover how to identify and dismantle the 3 key levers.
We all like to think we are the masters of our ships. That our actions are consequences of our thoughts and that our thoughts are ours, alone.
We all have a staunchly held belief that we are independent thinkers capable of sailing against the waves on our course of destiny.
Aside from most of us being lousy sailers, we are mostly unaware of the undercurrent of social compliance. We haphazardly get sucked into the jet stream along with everything else near it. For those who aren’t aware of it, life will be forever this way—being sucked, pushed and pulled in one direction or another.
Social proof is mostly an invisible force but the power of social proof is that even when it’s known, not only can it retain its power but it can also grow. It is anti-fragile. For those who don’t have a mental checklist ready to combat the allure of social proof, you will be forever a sheep.
For the wolfs out there this week I’m sharing the 3 reasons we easily fall into conformity and how you can spot and stop being suckered in.
Uncertainty
The Many
Similarity
Read time: 6 minutes.
Charlie Munger’s most gifted book was Robert Cialdini’s best-selling book Influence. For good reason as well. Munger understood that to pick out capable management he needed to know why people do the things they do. Influence is the bible that other books refer back to.
Here are the 3 conditions that help social proof work.
1. Uncertainty
Social proof is most influential under three conditions. The first is 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 offer emergency aid are much more influenced by the actions of other bystanders than when the situation is a clear-cut emergency.
Think of all the decisions we have to make a day. They fall in the thousands. It’s no wonder then that we use shortcuts to escape this mental gymnastics. It’d be exhausting otherwise. But because of this we rely a lot on other people’s decisions to help with our own, this creates a snowball effect of relying on other people’s choices or opinions to make our own. Most of the time this isn’t a problem, for example, if somebody asks if you want to grab a few drinks after work and because other people said yes you feel that you also have to say yes. But if you’re mostly making decisions not formed on your own opinion then whose life are you really living?
Unsure about what to do people will naturally do what they see or believe other people to be doing. This is great if you want to blend in. Perhaps you’re secretly a psychopath and need people to think you’re normal.
This however is terrible if you want to be an independent thinker-somebody who has control (mostly) of their own decisions.
If you’re somebody building something, say a business, you will need to use your judgement more than that of others. If you can’t rely on your judgement, join somebody else’s company and avoid the headache.
2. The Many
A second condition under which social proof is most influential involves "the many": people are more inclined to follow the lead of others in proportion to the others' number. When we see multiple others performing an action, we become willing to follow because the action appears to be more (1) correct/valid, (2) feasible, and (3) socially acceptable.
An unharmful example of this automatic response we have is following people online because they have X number of followers. We assume that because X amount of people (the more the better) follow this account they must have something important to say.
That may be true, but it could easily not be either. The point is your automatic response to believing that somebody with 1 million followers will have something important to say whereas the person with 100 doesn’t.
A dangerous example of this can also be found online or in other arenas where the mob can gather. If people with skewed and dangerous ideologies get to show, by way of social media, that they are appealing to the ‘masses’ or the ‘common man’ or that they are fighting against the ‘establishment’ using loaded words such as ‘patriotism’ and ‘freedom’ then it’s hard, even for reasonable and rational thinkers not to get sucked in, let alone people who are easy impressionable.
3. Similarity
The third optimizing condition for social-proof information is similarity. People conform to the beliefs and actions of comparable others, especially their peers-a phenomenon we can call peer-suasion. Evidence for the powerful influence of the actions of similar others can be seen in suicide statistics compiled by sociologist David Phillips. The statistics indicate that after highly publicized suicide stories, 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 the group's leader, Reverend Jim Jones, used both of the factors of uncertainty and similarity to induce a herdlike suicide response from the majority of the Jonestown population.
If the power of social proof by way of similarity can get (mostly) rational people to commit mass suicide then you better believe it’s something that is being put to work by others by way of convincing you to act or believe in a certain way. In no other arena is this more potent than politics. As a Brit, I do not envy the political American landscape in the slightest and begrudge the influence American politics seems to have on our own politics.
The power of similarity creates a siege mentality, creating ‘us against them’ narratives and zero-sum games. To oppose or question narratives from your own camp is outright dissent and disloyalty to be met with even more fury than you offer the opposition. This tribalistic tendency is in our blood. We prefer what we are accustomed to, what’s familiar, and are weary of what’s alien or foreign.
The role of democracy is a better world for those under its umbrella. Using social proof to set a good example, politicians would do well to try and set unity as an example, not division, but I guess unity is neither exciting nor great for elections.
Final Thoughts
Politicians will always do what politicians have always done I suspect. Getting upset at their games and tactics isn’t for rational thinkers. But it’s the politicisation of business, science, academia et al that we should all be weary of.
To separate yourself there has to be independent actions taken from independent thoughts. There should be independent conclusions from independent analysis.
Falling under the influence of social proof when being asked out for a drink after work isn’t too much of a big deal. But if your actions are derived from someone else’s and your thoughts are borrowed from others then it’s one hell of a slippery slope.
Unfortunately, we all have more in common with a captain of a ship than first meets the eye. We’re all more than willing to stay on board our sinking ship.
Until next time, Karl (The School of Knowledge).
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Photo by Jeswin Thomas: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-sitting-on-bench-under-tree-1280162/
Thanks for the reminder Karl,
appreciated it very much :)