Influence: Science and Practice (33 page)

Author’s note:
Once again we can see that social proof is most telling for those who feel unfamiliar or unsure in a specific situation and who, consequently, must look outside of themselves for evidence of how best to behave there.

Summary

The principle of social proof states that one important means that people use to decide what to believe or how to act in a situation is to look at what other people are believing or doing there. Powerful imitative effects have been found among both children and adults and in such diverse activities as purchase decisions, charity donations, and phobia remission. The principle of social proof can be used to stimulate a person’s compliance with a request by informing the person that many other individuals (the more, the better) are or have been complying with it.

Social proof is most influential under two 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 help are much more influenced by the actions of other bystanders than when the situation is a clear-cut emergency. The second condition under which social proof is most influential is similarity: People are more inclined to follow the lead of similar others. Evidence for the powerful effect of the actions of similar others on human behavior can be readily seen in the suicide statistics compiled by sociologist David Phillips. Those 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 that 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.

Recommendations to reduce our susceptibility to faulty social proof include a sensitivity to clearly counterfeit evidence of what similar others are doing and a recognition that the actions of similar others should not form the sole basis for our decisions.

Study Questions

Content Mastery

1. Describe the principle of social proof and how it can explain the effect of canned laughter on an audience’s reaction to comedy material.
   
2. In the Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter study of the end-of-the-world cult, group members pushed to win new converts only after their doomsday predictions proved false. Why?
   
3. Which two factors maximize the influence of social proof on an individual? What was it about the Jonestown, Guyana, situation that allowed these two factors to operate forcefully?
   
4. What is pluralistic ignorance? How does it influence bystander intervention in emergencies?
   
5. Which naturally occurring conditions of city life reduce the chance of bystander intervention in an emergency?
   
6. What is the Werther effect? How does it explain the puzzling relationship between highly publicized suicide stories and startling increases in the number of airplane and automobile fatalities following publication of the stories?
   

Critical Thinking

1. If you had to deliver a lecture to heart patients concerning the best way to secure help should they experience heart trouble in a public place, which steps would you tell them to take?
   
2. In early 1986, someone injected cyanide into Tylenol capsules on store shelves, creating widespread publicity and a national furor after a New York woman died from ingesting one of the capsules. The weeks that followed saw a rash of product tampering incidents. Three other popular over-the-counter medications were found laced with poison; pieces of glass were inserted in packages of cereal and ice cream; even bathroom tissue was not immune—in one office building, the toilet paper in the public restrooms was sprayed with Mace. Although the Tylenol incident itself could not have been foreseen, explain why, after reading this chapter, you might have predicted the aftermath.
   
3. Suppose you were a TV producer given the delicate job of creating a series of public service programs designed to reduce teenage suicide. Knowing that research suggests that previous programming may have inadvertently increased teen suicides via the principle of social proof, what would you do to use the same principle to make it likely that your shows would reduce the problem among those who watched? Who would you interview on-camera? Would any of them be troubled teenagers? Which questions would you ask them?
   
4. Describe a situation in your past in which you were tricked into compliance by someone who counterfeited the principle of social proof. How would you handle a similar situation today?
   
5. How does the photograph that opens this chapter reflect the topic of the chapter?
   

Chapter 5
Liking
The Friendly Thief

The main work of a trial attorney is to make a jury like his client.

—Clarence Darrow

F
EW OF US WOULD BE SURPRISED TO LEARN THAT, AS A RULE, WE
most prefer to say yes to the requests of people we know and like. What might be startling to note, however, is that this simple rule is used in hundreds of ways by total strangers to get us to comply with
their
requests.

The clearest illustration I know of the professional exploitation of the liking rule is the Tupperware party, which I consider a classic compliance setting. Anybody familiar with the workings of a Tupperware party will recognize the use of the various weapons of influence we have examined so far:

Reciprocity.
To start, games are played and prizes won by the party goers; anyone who doesn’t win a prize gets to choose one from a grab bag so that everyone has received a gift before the buying begins.

Commitment.
Participants are urged to describe publicly the uses and benefits they have found for the Tupperware they already own.

Social proof.
Once the buying begins, each purchase builds the idea that other, similar people want the products; therefore, it must be good.

All the weapons of influence are present to help things along, but the real power of the Tupperware party comes from a particular arrangement that trades on the liking rule. Despite the entertaining and persuasive selling skills of the Tupperware demonstrator, the true request to purchase the product does not come from this stranger; it comes from a friend to every person in the room. Oh, the Tupperware representative may physically ask for each party goer’s order, all right; but the more psychologically compelling requester is sitting off to the side, smiling, chatting, and serving refreshments. She is the party hostess, who has called her friends together for the demonstration in her home and who, everyone knows, makes a profit from each piece sold at the party.

By providing the hostess with a percentage of the take, the Tupperware Home Parties Corporation arranges for its customers to buy from and for a friend rather than from an unknown salesperson. In this way, the attraction, the warmth, the security, and the obligation of friendship are brought to bear on the sales setting (Taylor, 1978). In fact, consumer researchers who have examined the social ties between the hostess and the party goers in home party sales settings have affirmed the power of the company’s approach: The strength of that social bond is twice as likely to determine product purchase as is preference for the product itself (Frenzen & Davis, 1990). The results have been remarkable. It was recently estimated that Tupperware sales now exceed 2.5 million dollars a day! Indeed, Tupperware’s success has spread around the world to societies in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, where one’s place in a network of friends and family is more socially significant than in the United States (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Smith, Bond, & Kagitcibasi, 2006). As a result, now less than a quarter of Tupperware sales take place in North America.