Social Proof

The Concept of Social Proof

If you've ever noticed that it is comforting to follow a path taken or a choice made by many others, you have succumbed to the concept of social proof. The term social proof was first introduced by?Robert Cialdini?in his 1984 book?Influence [1]. The Wiki definition of social proof is:

Social proof is a psychological and social phenomenon where people copy the actions of others in an attempt to undertake behaviour in a given situation.

The principle of social proof dictates that we use information about the way others have behaved to help us determine a particular course of action, choice or direction. If you have read an online review of a product before making a purchase, then you have actively engaged the social proof concept. Social proof is the basis for influencer marketing, which is now considered to fastest-growing consumer acquisition channel (https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-proof-examples) or explains why an experts stamp of approval is a strong marketing tool.

Therefore, social proof can be a very helpful concept in making decisions, as generally, we will make fewer mistakes when following the choice of the majority than acting contrary to it. However, like many other behavioural concepts, it is a good master but a bad servant. Based on the social proof concept, the "Werther effect" has been found by the work of David Philips (1974) to increase the rate of suicide after media coverage of suicide. This effect was coined after the release of a book (The Sorrows of Young Werther) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774), was considered to increase the rate of suicide significantly.

Most recently, the Covid pandemic caused non-adaptive buying of toilet roll here in Australia and other countries, when authorities ardently advised that there was no foreseeable shortage or reason to stockpile toilet roll. This was promoted by trending hashtags on social media such as #toiletpapergate and #toletpapercrisis, which provided leverage to the social proof concept (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51731422).

How does this concept influence human behaviour in a fire situation? Whether a person is alone or in a group will have an effect on their response to any event due to group inhibition and the diffusion of responsibility [3]. Occupants in a group do not want to be the first to react to an initial fire cue for fear of being adjudged to overreact; instead, they would look for further fire cues or validation of the fire threat. This assumption that the situation is safe is also referred to as normalcy bias [4].

Research undertaken by Latane and Darley [3] examined and compared the response of an individual alone in a room with the controlled ingress of smoke to the response of an individual in a room with two passive "confederate" occupants who were directed not to react to the smoke. The results showed that 75% of the alone subjects reported the fire within the experimental period (6 minutes) compared to 10% in the confederate group situation. This indicates the influence of social proof on decision making in a fire scenario. Video footage of the study is available here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE5YwN4NW5o

Herd mentality,?mob mentality?or?pack mentality?describes how people can be influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviours on a largely emotional rather than rational basis. When individuals are affected by mob mentality, they may make different decisions than they would have individually. This can lead to individuals engaging in behaviour that they would not undertake if they were alone. This is better put by Friedrich Nietzsche:

Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule (from Robert Green, The Laws of Human Nature, 2018) [2].

1.?????Cialdini, Robert B.?Influence. Vol. 3. Port Harcourt: A. Michel, 1987.

2.?????Greene, Robert.?The laws of human nature. Penguin Books, 2018.

3.?????B. Latane and J. M. Darley, "Group inhibition of bystander intervention in emergencies," Journal of personality and social psychology, vol. 10, no. 3, p. 215, 1968.

4.?????K. Okabe, "A Study on the Socio-Phychological Effect of a False Warning of the Tokai Earthquake in Japan," in A Paper Presented at the Tenth World Congress of Sociology, Mexico City, Mexico, 1982