The Law of Social Proof : Everybody's doing it!

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I was browsing through a newspaper yesterday happily convinced of the rationality of human kind when I came across an item concerning a so-called mystery illness in a school in England. It seems a total of 53 pupils and adults were taken to hospital after suddenly developing sickness and headaches at Collenswood School in Stevenage.



Strangely though, doctors could find nothing wrong. Consultant clinical psychologist Khwaja Abbas said: "When one person feels ill it is not uncommon for others around them to have the same symptoms. It is not hypochondria; the symptoms can be quite real. Mass hysteria is a likely explanation for what happened at the school."

Mass hysteria indeed, but what exactly does that mean? How do you catch a ‘thought disease’?

Social proof

It is a well-accepted fact now that we are all ‘social beings’ with a ¬basic need to be connected to others. What is not so well known is that we are such social creatures that we are highly susceptible to being influenced by ‘the herd’. We are all vulnerable to what Robert B Cialdini has termed ‘social proof’ in his seminal book Influence.

Social influence, loss of independence and mass hysteria

Musing over the concept of social proof I remembered the tulip ‘craze’ which originated in Holland.

The story begins in 1559. Conrad Guestner brought the first tulip bulbs from Constantinople to Holland and Germany, and people fell in love with them. Soon tulip bulbs became a status symbol for the wealthy — because they were beautiful and hard to get.

Early buyers loved tulips. And as the tulip craze spread and their popularity boomed, tulips started to be bought and sold as stock commodities. Buying tulips was a good investment. Everyone was doing it!

Eventually (but quicker than you might imagine as social proof behaviour can spread like wildfire) the most expensive bulbs sold for up to $76,000! Can you imagine spending $76,000 for a single tulip bulb? Maybe not. However if every one around you accepted this as normal behaviour…

Next, Incredible Instances of Social Proof in Action...