The principle of social proof is one of the most powerful methods of influencing human consciousness! According to this principle, we determine what is right by figuring out what other people think is right. We consider our behavior to be correct in this situation if we often see other people behaving in this way! In other words, we think it's right to do what other people do! The principle of considering your actions to be correct, if other people do so, is logical and works well in everyday life! We tend to make fewer mistakes when we act in accordance with the norms of society!
For example, studies conducted in 1972 and 1974 by Fuller and Smith showed that recorded human laughter, which is then played on TV shows or TV shows during a situation or a joke, makes people laugh longer than usual (of course, if the joke was really funny)! People rate this kind of humorous material as more positive! In the event of a bad joke, such background laughter makes the person more loyal to the submitted material! Background laughter is social proof!
Producers on television know about these results, who deliberately dilute the series and TV programs with background laughter at the right moment, thereby showing people when to laugh and treat the material with a smile! Thus, any "flat" humorous nonsense is imposed on the population, the frequent repetition of which in a compact with background laughter soon leads to the fact that a person will eventually react positively to humor, which he would never have laughed at before. The jokes are flat, but what's the difference, it's funny!
The principle of social proof allows every individual in society to make fewer mistakes! This, in turn, provides a person with rational options for behavior in various situations and at the same time allows the use of these methods to control the consciousness of society, where these rational options are replaced with new ones that are beneficial to puppeteers who want to benefit from society! For example, in 1910, it was not customary in Russian society to consume alcohol. The society was almost completely sober! Since the implementation of alcohol propaganda, after the Second World War, the rational attitude towards alcohol has changed, and now alcohol consumption is a norm in society, which is beneficial to alcohol companies that do not care about your health and the health of your children!
Another example of the use of the principle of social proof can be found in the midst of the people's passion for the disco style, where the owners of clubs or discos manipulated the consciousness of society, fabricating the prestige of their clubs! Security on the street created long lines to enter the club, while there were few people inside the club. New visitors, seeing that there was a long line at the entrance, considered such an establishment more popular, observing the patient waiting for people in the line!
Sales consultant Robert Cavett once said "Since 95% of people are imitators and only 5% are initiators, the actions of others convince buyers more than the evidence we can offer them!"
Interesting research was conducted by Albert Bandura, who was developing ways to change unwanted behavior patterns. His work proved that a person can get rid of phobias or fears in a very simple way! For example, small children who were afraid of dogs were asked to watch a child playing with a dog for 20 minutes a day! After 4 such sessions, 67% of children agreed to play with the dog on their own! Another experiment was carried out by Bandura on children who were particularly afraid of dogs! Such children were shown video clips where several children played with a dog! The result turned out to be as effective as in the first case!
However, the principle of social proof can be used both for the benefit and harm of the population! For example, the results of an experiment conducted by psychologists Robert Liebert and Robert Baron in 1972 showed the opposite social impact! The experiment involved children who watched a television program showing scenes of physical violence. It was revealed that children after such viewing behaved more aggressively towards everyone around them than after watching a neutral program! Psychologists concluded that children, observing the behavior of people from the screen, behave similarly to the behavior of the characters of such a TV show! They become more aggressive and angry towards others, which will inevitably affect their future behavior!
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The principle of social proof works most strongly when we observe the behavior of people like us! The behavior of people with whom we have a lot in common has a great social impact on us! Advertisers know that in order to sell the advertised products well, they need to show the public that many people use the product!
Social proof works well when paired with authoritative opinion! For example, observations from health researchers have shown that school anti-smoking campaigns only have sustainable results when class leaders act as peer class advocates in the classroom!
In the mid to late 20th century, there was a huge amount of research on social proof. Some studies show that there are imitation factors among people like us! For example, in 1979 in America, after a wave of publications about suicides, the number of people who died in road accidents increased several times! According to researchers, this is due to the predisposition of some individuals to commit suicide. For example, individuals can be provoked to commit suicide by unfavorable social factors (conflict between countries, currency appreciation, stress, and so on).
Having received such information through the media, people become more irritable, angry, distracted, inattentive and unrestrained, which sometimes leads to careless actions on the road and, as a result, accidents with serious consequences! Moreover, the number of road accidents increased only in those regions where suicide cases were widely covered in the media!
The negative social impact of the media is daunting in its results! For example, statistics from David Phillips, collected from 1947 to 1974, show that within two months, after each newspaper homepage featured a suicide story, on average 58 more suicides were committed than usual! Thus, according to the results of the statistics, it was revealed that each message about suicide on the main page in the newspaper killed another 58 people!
Social proof very often makes people do sometimes rash and unreasonable acts, relying only on the actions of other people!
The sad situation is with the promotion of alcohol in our country, where a person, paying attention to people who consume alcohol, believes that if all people around are drinking alcoholic drinks, then drinking alcohol is normal. At the same time, his own health and the health of his children is no longer as important as proof that "I" is normal and no worse than others! The result of such alcoholic social influence on society is the 4th place among the countries in the world in terms of the amount of ethyl alcohol drunk per capita per year, which inevitably leads to the extinction of the peoples of Russia!