Reality Reconstruction

The Pull Of The Crowd

Imagine that you’re walking down the street on a lazy, Sunday afternoon. Maybe you’re going to the mall, or to meet up with a friend for lunch. You’re in no hurry. You’ve walked down this street many times before; you know all the shops inside out.

As you’re strolling down the sidewalk, you happen to glance a large crowd across the street. They seem to be clustered around the entrance of a particular store. You think you know which shop they’re in front of, but you can’t make out the name because there are so many people. The people all looking intently at the shops entrance. They’re not idly chatting amongst themselves, or starting mindlessly at their cell phones. A few seem to be standing as high as they can, stretching their necks to get a better view.

What is going on?

If you are curious at all, simply be reading this, then you’ve fallen prey to the irresistible pull of social proof. Had this been a real occurrence, there’s a fifty-fifty chance you would have crossed the street at the first opportunity to see what all the fuss was about.

The basic mechanism of social proof is that whenever in doubt; check your peers for guidance. The group usually knows best. At least that’s the assumption.

Sometimes referred to the herd mentality (perhaps a bit derogatorily), social proof is not something many would admit to falling under the influence of. When asked why you are wearing that particular clothing item, most people wouldn’t readily admit it was because everybody else was.

We humans don’t like to admit that we are sometimes mindless herd following automatons, going wherever the crowd goes.
But study after study shows that social proof wields a very powerful influence on personal decision-making. There are several different kinds of social proof of varying strength.

In the above example, you weren’t in any hurry, and it wasn’t dangerous nor did it cost you anything to cross the street to see what was going on. In this case, social proof can be very, very strong. Marketers love things like this, as it gives them nearly free advertising.

For example, if you were to click on Youtube, and see five or ten different videos, all with relatively the same title, and all with relatively the same thumbnail image, what would you use as your guide to decide? Most quickly check the view count, and simply choose the one with the highest views.

Social proof in action.

The strange thing is that although study after study bears this out, few people will admit to doing so. We like to believe we have rational reasons for doing things, and due to the wonders of cognitive dissonance, we actually convince ourselves that we made a rational decision microseconds after we were unconsciously swayed by social proof.

Is this some kind of deficiency of our celebrated human mind that has created language, culture, and spaceship to the moon?

Not at all.

Our brains and bodies (at least in their latest revision) evolved and were refined for hundreds of thousands of years in a time when our daily existence was a struggle for survival. For the vast majority of human history, we were a relatively nomadic people, having to deal with ever changing geographic and whether conditions. Uncertainty was a part of life.

So we developed an instinct to follow the crowd. It was safer, it helped us survive, and our ancestors passed down those genes to us.

Sure there were the non-conformists of the day who zigged when everybody else zagged, but they didn’t survive long enough to pass on any of those non-conformist genes. They either got eaten by tigers or fell of cliffs while the rest of the group was safely following the riverbed, in a large, protected group.

Even today, social proof can be an extremely useful tool. Once I took a trip to a foreign country, and I was at a complete loss of where to go to get my baggage. I couldn’t read any of the signs, and instructions had been given in a language I didn’t understand.

Luckily, social proof came to the rescue. All I did was follow everybody else, and stick close to people that I recognized from my flight. Sure enough, I arrived at the correct baggage carousel (there were about eight) along with everybody else. Social proof does have its benefits.

In other cases, social proof can take some time to take hold. Consider the following example.

In the 50′s in farm country in the United States, a new type of corn was created that yielded 20% more corn per plant. This would mean a direct increase in salable product by 20% for the farmers, without any increase in land or water use. The plants had been adequately tested and shown to consistently produce 20% more corn.

They gave the new seed to a few farmers, and despite their success, the neighboring farmers were reluctant to try it at first. Then they slowly introduced it into their crops, in small percentages at first. It took a full 9 years before all the farmers had switched completely over to the new crop.

In this case, the social proof of the farmers using and benefiting from the new seed was tempered by a sense of protection of their current state of affairs. Surely they wanted to increase their yields and their income, but they also wanted to make sure they protected what they had.

There are still plenty of ways that social proof is beneficial. It saves thinking time, and it ensures you aren’t making any horrendous mistakes. Be careful though. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking, “It’s better to fail with the crowd than succeed on my own.” This has tendency to limit your success in life.

Social proof is everywhere you look. In advertising, in the clothes that you wear, and even the precise moment you decide to cross the street, when waiting in a crowd.

Despite our vast advances in technology, science, arts, literature, space exploration and human development, we are still, at heart, pack animals.

One powerful way to make sure you aren’t getting sucked into anything is to try and imagine doing whatever it is you are doing, if nobody else was doing it.

Would you suddenly cross the street to look into that shop if nobody was gathered in front?

Would you wear that particular clothing style or brand name if nobody else was?

You’ll find that if you take the time to question your choices, and choose based on your own consciously determined preferences, and not those of the crowd, you will gain much more self confidence, as well as stand out from the crowd.

And pretty soon everybody else will be following you.

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