Robert B. Cialdini describes the principle of social proof in his book Influence: Social and Practice . He states that we view a behavior as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it (p. 95). Simply put, most people feel that if everyone else is doing something, then it must be the right thing to do! Social proof is used from birth, as babies imitate sounds and gestures of their parents. It is also used by adults in varying situations, ranging from deciding which fork to use at a fancy dinner, to what clothes to buy, to where they should vacation. This reaction paper will discuss modern applications of social proof and a phenomenon called pluralistic ignorance, as portrayed in Cialdini's article.

Social Proof is used frequently in advertising and television. Commercials have testimonies from actual consumers (or actors pretending to be consumers) who fondly describe their experiences with a certain product. This leads viewers to believe that they will have similar, and equally satisfying, results if they buy the product. Advertisers often make statements like 9 out of 10 doctors recommend or more moms prefer.. to make their product appear more desirable. Cialdini writes, "Advertisers love to inform us when a product is the fastest growing or largest selling because they don't have to convince us directly that the product is good; they need only say that many others think so" (p. 97). I noticed that Burger King is currently boasting that its French fries have beaten McDonalds fries in a national taste test. McDonalds is counter-arguing that people really prefer their fries because they sell more fries per year. Both companies are capitalizing on social proof, knowing that it is almost irresistible for consumers not to go to Burger King or McDonalds to eat the fries that the nation is raving about.

Yet, social proof is more than just a winning advertising strategy. There are many reasons that social proof is beneficial to all people. For instance, if 9 out of 10 doctors really prefer a certain cough medicine, the medicine will probably be helpful. Using social proof, the consumer can get the best medicine without trying 20 different brands of cough syrup, which would waste time and energy, not to mention the extra time spent coughing. The company wins and so does the consumer. Humans use social proof daily because it is usually an effective way to make decisions in varying situations with the highest odds of having satisfactory results.

Sometimes social proof operates on an unconscious level. Experiments have shown that T.V. audiences laugh louder, longer, and more frequently when watching a program with canned laughter in the background then one without canned laughter (p. 95). This study shows that people will be influenced by social proof even when it is obvious that the social proof is manufactured. The fact that a television show has placed the sound of people laughing after mediocre jokes does not mean that the jokes are somehow now humorous. However, the experimenters have shown that this is exactly what appears to happen for viewers. Cialdini chides, We have become so accustomed to taking the humorous reactions of others as evidence of what deserves laughter that we too can be made to respond to the sound, and not to the substance, of the real thing (Cialdini, 1993; p. 96). In cases of deciding on cough syrup social proof is useful, but it is important not to be tricked into using social proof when the proof is blatantly false.

Cialdini describes a horrifying incident that occurred in New York in 1964 to a woman named Catherine Genovese. She was attacked and stabbed repeatedly one night after work, on the street in front of her apartment building. This story is in itself disturbing, yet the reason the case is still written about in psychology books is that 38 respectable, law abiding citizens watched the assault and murder over a period of 35 minutes (Cialdini, 1993; p. 106). The 38 citizens were the neighbors of the woman, each was safe in his or her apartment, far away from the killers blade, but not one of them called the police or attempted to intervene. If even one person had taken action, Catherine surly would have lived.

This event was highly publicized by the media. People questioned whether humankind had sank to such a level of callousness and depersonalization that humans would no longer help their own neighbors. Psychologists and critics focused primarily on the huge number of bystanders as the prime evidence that they now lived in a cold and uncaring society. After all, not one of the people bothered to help. The witnesses could not explain their actions so psychologists began to explore the phenomenon.

Cialdini cites Bibb Latane and John Darley as the first to explain that the situation was an example of pluralistic ignorance. Like social proof, pluralistic ignorance occurs when people observe those around them to decide how they themselves should act. However, with pluralistic ignorance, the people observe that no one around them is doing anything and they react by also doing nothing. In Genovese's case, bystanders did not see any of the other neighbors reacting to the situation. They must have felt, at a basic level, that they did not need to react either. After all, if something really were wrong, wouldn't everyone else be reacting rather than standing around watching? Latane and Darley suggested that no one had helped precisely because there were so many observers . . . With several potential helpers around, the personal responsibility of each individual is reduced (Cialdini, 1993; p. 108). Each person expected one of the other neighbors to make the phone call to the police or to begin the chain of action.

I believe that this is the correct interpretation of the events of Catherine Genovese's death. I recently experienced a situation similar to, yet not as horrifying as, the thirty eight witnesses of her murder. Friday night my boyfriend and I were driving to the theater around 9:45 p.m. to see the highly publicized sequel to the horror film Scream. To get to the theater it was necessary for us to drive a short distance on the freeway. As we drove, I looked out the window at the side of the road, wondering how I had let myself be convinced to see Scream 2 after my reaction to the first movie. I had felt nauseated and disturbed at the violence for days. It was in this confused state of mind that I saw a man. He was lying face up, his arms and his legs falling gently to his sides, positioned in the corpse poise that we practiced in my Yoga Hatha class. Motionless, on the pavement to the right of the bright white highway line, he could have been meditating or sleeping. Actually, he was dead. I only know this because after the movie, when we were driving back home, we saw flares, a police car, and many officials standing around the man on the highway. It had started to rain. The man was still not moving.

Saturday night, on the 11:00 clock news, my roommate and I watched the short report of the hit and run murder of a Eugene man on I-5. I felt guilty that I had not been the one to call the police. After all, I had seen the man, but I had done nothing to help him. Generally I am a caring and considerate person and I can remember many situations where I have gone out of my way to help friends and strangers. What about this situation made me feel that it was all right to pass by?

Cialdini quotes Tesser, Campbell, & Mickler (1993) as writing that when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct (Cialdini, 1993; p. 107). When each person in a group of people is looking around them to see what his or her peers are doing, pluralistic ignorance occurs. Each person is attempting to gather social proof from the other members of the group, so none of the group members take any action because they are waiting to see what the others do. It becomes a circle of inaction that is hard to break. In the situation I mentioned earlier, no other cars were stopping or slowing down, so I assumed that I was making something as ordinary as a homeless man sleeping into a huge problem. If no one else thought there was a problem, then there probably wasn't, I rationalized. Besides that, I was on the way to the theater and I do have an over active imagination. . . My rationalizations were much easier than taking individual action. I had been programmed by social proof to respond to what I thought everyone else was doing, even in a situation where I should have acted individually.

My experience made me understand, to some degree, what the bystanders of Catherine Genovese's death experienced. However, in my situation, there was a great deal of uncertainty whether the man were hurt or sleeping. In Genovese's case, there was little uncertainty, her screams for help were clearly audible. Cialdini reveals that the greater the uncertainty in a situation, the less chance a bystander will aid the victim. This makes perfect sense to me because in ambiguous situations there are more ways of rationalizing not helping without feeling guilt or a sense of responsibility. I rationalized my actions by telling myself that the situation was potentially dangerous to myself and my boyfriend, perhaps the man was feigning injury and would steal our car when we got out to investigate.

Since Catherine Genovese's death psychologists have done many experiments to study pluralistic ignorance. Latane and Darley conducted an experiment to discover whether an accident victim (in their case a student pretending to have an epileptic seizure) is more likely to receive help if he or she has one bystander or a group of bystanders as witnesses. The results showed that the person would receive help 85 percent of the time if one bystander was present but only 31 percent of the time with five bystanders present (Cialdini, 1993; p. 109). These results show that one is more than 50 percent more likely to be helped during an accident if there is one, rather than many, people around. A separate study, done in Toledo, showed that lone bystanders would help an accident victim 90 percent of the time, but when the bystander was in the presence of two passive bystanders (who were confederates of the experimenter), then the victim only received help 16 percent of the time (Cialdini, 1993; p. 110-111).

I think that a fascinating follow up to Latane and Darley's experiments would be to talk with the people who passed by the experimental victims, to explain to them that they ignored a person who was experiencing a life-threatening situation, and to have them fill out a questionnaire gaging the amount of guilt that they felt. It would be interesting to see whether or not the amount of guilt felt is dramatically increased by the severity of the supposed situation (assuming that the people took the experiment seriously). For example, would a person who ignored a person with a broken ankle feel less guilt than a person who ignored a choking or heart attack victim? I think that this would be the case. As it was, I felt a great deal of guilt in my situation. If I had learned that the man lied alive for hours before he was found, or that he could have been saved if help was received sooner, I would not have forgiven myself.

If the experiment did not prove that people felt more guilt after ignoring a more serious situation, it could be an example of cognitive dissonance. This occurs when a person has a discrepancy between an attitude and a behavior or between an attitude and new information (Westen, 1996; p. 668). This discrepancy leads to tension and confusion. The tension leads the individual to reevaluate and readjust his or her previous attitude, behavior, or new information to eliminate the discrepancy (p. 668). In the case of the new experiment, the subjects would feel guilty that they did not help the victim because they hold an attitude or value that it is right to help people in need. To deal with the discrepancy between this attitude and the fact that they did not behave in a helpful way towards a person in need, the subjects might change their original attitude. They might tell themselves that they did the right thing and even tell themselves that next time they came across someone in need that they would do the same thing again. These results would be similar to Festinger and Carlsmiths test using monotonous tasks (p. 669).

My primary hesitations with the supposed experiment might outweigh the benefits. First, I do not know if it would be accurate to judge peoples guilt if they knew that the person in question was not really hurt. However, if the experimenter did not tell the person that it was an experiment, they would wonder why the person with the questionnaires just happened to be there (also not helping the victim). Second, if the subjects were told that they just passed a fake victim, they might be even more hesitant to help out the next time they saw an accident, believing that it too was a set-up. In a world where more than half of bystanders don't stop anyway, this would be a large price to pay. Perhaps the best way to fight pluralistic ignorance is not another test but it is education to teach people how to help themselves or others during accidents.

Cialdini suggests that if people finds themselves in a situation where they need emergency help, to avoid being victims of pluralistic ignorance, they should take precautions. First, they should make it clear that they are in an emergency situation by verbally crying for help, if possible. Also, they should make eye contact with, point, and/or verbally designate one of the bystanders to help. If possible victims should say to someone, Please, you sir, in the blue sweatshirt and jeans, call an ambulance. I am having a heart attack. After this is done, the bystander will almost always give assistance and he or she will even designate others around to help. The effect of pluralistic ignorance can be broken after individuals have been personally drawn into the situation.

Cialdini's article too draws the reader in, at least it did so to me. His article is fascinating, applying pluralistic ignorance to cults, mass suicides, and traffic accidents. It is strange to have human religious gatherings and deaths explained in terms of psychological processes, not God or fate. It takes a bit of the mysticism out, that is for sure. On one page of Cialdini's article there is a cartoon picture of a herd of pigs walking unquestioningly into a pork processing plant. One little piggy says to his friend, Well, so much for the safety-in-numbers theory (p. 131). Perhaps the most important thing to learn from Cialdini's article is to remind us how often we are guided by social proof and the herd mentality. For me, this prospect is disturbing and prompts me to want to go out and do something completely politically incorrect, something that the herd isn't doing today. I wonder if this article has that effect on everyone else? Maybe we should all go out and do something crazy, together. I will wait for your cue...

References

Cialdini, R. B. (1993). Influence: Science and Practice. New York: HarperCollins.

Westen, D. (1996). Psychology: Mind, Brain, and Culture. New York: Wiley.