6/12/26
How many times have you ordered food, stayed in a hotel, watched a movie, ordered a book, based on the review ratings.
Of late, purchase decisions change, based on the review ratings.
But, despite being dissapointed with the experience, even after the 5 star ratings, you still check the rating, the next time, before ordering.
Similarly, you are going to your office. At an intersection, you encounter a group of people, all staring at the sky. Without even thinking about it, you peer upward too, to check what is happening.
In the middle of a play, when the actor enacts a great scene, someone begins to clap and suddenly the whole theatre joins in. You do, too.
Why? Social proof.
It operates on the principle of the “wisdom of the crowd”—the assumption that if many other people are doing or endorsing something, it must be correct, popular, or safe.
Social proof, sometimes roughly termed the “Herd Instinct,” dictates that individuals feel they are behaving correctly when they act the same as other people. In other words, the more people who follow a certain idea, the better or truer we deem the idea to be. And the more people who display a certain behaviour, the more appropriate this behaviour is judged by others.
This is, of course, absurd.
This behaviour exists and is seen in fashion, investment, management techniques, stock markets, hobbies, religion, and diets. It can paralyse whole cultures, and in extreme behaviour, it is seen when sects commit collective suicide.
Why do we act like this?
Well, in the past, following others was a good survival strategy. Suppose that thousands of years ago you were with your hunter-gatherer friends, and suddenly they all bolted. What would you have done?
Would you have stayed put, scratching your head, and weighing up whether what you were looking at was a lion or something that just looked like a lion but was in fact a harmless animal that could serve as good meat?
No, you would have sprinted after your friends. Later on, when you were safe, you could have reflected on what had actually happened.
Those who acted differently —and I am sure there were some—became meat for the animals.
We are the direct heirs of those who copied the others’ behaviour. This pattern is so deeply rooted in us that we still use it today, even when it offers no survival advantage.
Comedy and talk shows make use of social proof by inserting canned laughter at strategic spots, inciting the audience to laugh along.
We are no longer in the jungle where our first reaction has to be survival.
I’am reminded of English novelist W. Somerset Maugham’s wise words: “If fifty million people say something foolish, it is still foolish.”
Don’t follow the herd blindly, don’t look for ‘Social proof’ and stay blessed forever.