Social Proof: When the Majority Influences Your Behavior
We often look to others to inform us how we should behave in certain situations. This conformity is referred to as social proof. Our compliance may be motivated by our need to understand an ambiguous situation (informational social influence) as well as our need to be accepted by a social group (normative social influence).
Early research by Solomon Asch found social proof to be a robust phenomenon. In one popular study, Asch had a group of participants compared the lengths of lines. All but one of the participants in the group were secretly told to give the wrong answer. Despite the obvious correct answer, the real participant often gave the incorrect response in accordance with the group.
Here is a video depicting Asch’s original experiment:
Research has found that social proof is more likely to influence us when:
- there is a greater majority within a group (e.g., majority equals 99% verses only 60%)
- there are a greater number of people in the majority (e.g., the majority contains 100 people verses only 10)
- the situation is ambiguous
- people are considered part of our in-group, or are perceived as similar to us
- we have a need to be correct
- we adhere to a more collectivist rather than individualist ideology or culture