On social proof

People must make decisions on how to manage situations they experience continually during their lives. The final decisions are often subject to certain characteristics of situations:

• The time limit on the decision-making process. This limit may be self-imposed or dictated by the situation. Example: a decision on taking an exit in a highway; the distance between the car and the exit, the speed of the car, and other parameters determine the time limit.
• The assignment of importance to the consequences of the decision. This importance is often subjective. Example: someone with low income may put higher importance on the consequences of having a baby. In contrast, consequences of which socks to wear at a given day are generally assigned less importance.
• The uncertainty about the situation. People enter a situation with a certain degree of certainty on it. The degree of certainty can be expressed as the experience or knowledge or both. On experiencing the situation, new certainty can be produced. Example: an driver knows how to enter a roundabout, but the particular state of the traffic on entering the roundabout may provide further information towards a decision.

Humans must then optimise these and other parameters towards achieving a “good decision”. The concept of goodness in this statement is subjective, influenced by ethics and other individual or cultural parameters. Some expressions of goodness can be the utility of the consequences, the efficiency of the decision process or the degree of immediate or long-term satisfaction for the decision-maker.

There are at least two strong trends in modern society that hinder this process:

• A busy culture emphasises efficiency of decision-making to make room for more time. This can lead to sub-optimal decisions. Interestingly, if we perceive this suboptimality, it can also diminish trust in our own decisions, in a way increasing our awareness of uncertainty.
• Consumerism generates situations with an increasing number of choices. This directly impact our perception of uncertainty.

The concept of social proof, coined by the psychologist Robert Cialdini in his book Influence, regards the adoption from some people of other people decisions in particular situations. In a way, it involves certain people delegating the search for the “good decision” to others, resulting in an interesting expression of trust in the dominant decision. These are some conditions that foster this delegation:

• The time limit is tight. Imagine for example moving queues in a supermarket. If there’s a high number of people, it’s uncertain if moving will be beneficial, but there’s little time to consider this. As a consequence, an individual observes others decisions, and follows the dominant decision. Ironically, this can sometimes lead to a final state similar or worse than the initial.
• The importance of the consequences is low. Imagine the process of buying a new notebook for casual note-taking. The absolute price is low, the differences in price and quality among notebooks are also minimal, specially for the purpose. The decision on this situation can be to choose a random notebook, but to further optimise towards the good solution, people often look for notebook reviews and buy the best rated one, trusting the dominant decision. Imagine in contrast the purchase of a house. Note the item does not need to have a high price but rather be valuable for the individual.

Social proof is by itself a neutral phenomenon, it can derive in positive or negative results towards the greater good. There is a special concern with the generation of herd behaviours, in particular when people inadvertently abuse the delegation of decisions, for example they delegate in situations where consequences matter to them, even if they are not aware of this importance.