How can a group of people believe a stupid thing at the same time, and how does "social proof" affect us?

I don’t know if you have had an experience like asking a question when you were in school, and in the group of people chatting, a person with more “knowledge” gave his answer, and everyone doubted that His belief turned out to be the wrong condition? Similar to this, a group of people thought that the thing was right, but then suddenly realized the experience that was wrong from the beginning. What happened and why did they believe it so easily in the first place? (similar to the herd effect)

This is actually a kind of thinking trap "social proof", let's talk about it today!

🙋‍♀️ What is "social proof" and how does it affect us subtly?

Before we officially enter today's topic, I would like to state that the topic of this article will be related to theories such as conformity effect, social identity, etc., but since they are not the same word, there are still slight differences, so they cannot be On a par, this requires special attention. I will write related topics in future articles. If you are looking forward to a specific topic, you are welcome to knock the bowl in the comment area, so stay tuned.

Getting to the point, what is social proof? To put it simply, this is an act of imitation and copying. When a person does not know enough about a thing, he blindly imitates that thing, and most of the time he thinks it must be right, and he believes it if he doesn’t doubt it. . Of course, that thing may be true, but the actual situation is often very wrong, which is to describe the absurd thinking of "the more people agree with one thing, the more correct it is".

Here's the example at the beginning: "It's like a person asked a question when he was in school, and in the group of people chatting, a person with more "knowledge" gave his answer, and everyone did not doubt it. Has his belief turned out to be the wrong condition? "

After reading the above descriptions and examples, I believe that you have a basic understanding of social proof. You may want to say, this is just a situation, and there will be correct situations, right? There is nothing wrong, it is true that you may believe in the wrong things, but you may also believe in the right things, all by chance and luck. But that's not the point at all, the point is that you believe a thing without basis, blindly, and often it happens to a group at the same time.

So, what kind of theory is this? Social identity is actually a psychological and social phenomenon , which means that our thinking will naturally affect us , but because of the development of human civilization, it has become a "thinking error" . To explain in a little professional way, social proof refers to the situation that "when human beings do not have a certain degree of understanding of a matter, they will naturally seek answers from others" .

When I understood this theory, my own thought was: " Since I can't fully and perfectly understand a thing, how can I expect others to do it? " Maybe I'm too arrogant, but the fact is that others don't. You don't necessarily know something better than you, and this kind of blind behavior will always accompany human psychological phenomena.

I wonder if after reading this article, do you think that people with certain titles, such as "authority of so-and-so" and "professor of so-and-so university", are more professional? Indeed, the fact that he can have that title means that he "may" have the corresponding ability, which is true most of the time. But in some cases, we often don’t know enough about this in detail, and only blindly believe this is obviously a “stereotype”, which will make the social proof more powerful and persuasive.

Related article: " Taichung No. 1 Middle School Music Teacher Out of Control? Talking about "Appeal to the Person" and Taiwan Education "

If you only read the above paragraph, you may think that we should try our best to avoid this situation, think more about different aspects before making a choice, and don't believe it all. In a certain way, it is true, but this is a potential psychological and thinking problem , and it is not caused by a person being too stupid (of course, if you take human beings as a premise, I have nothing to say), we simply cannot . Total restraint , and in some respects, socially proven surprises, so let's keep watching.

😱 Even if 50 million people agree with a stupid thing, it will not become the truth!

"Even if fifty million people claim that something stupid is right, that stupid thing doesn't make it right." This quote comes from William Somerset Maugham, the famous modern British novelist. Maugham). The meaning is very simple, just like the literal meaning, even if there are a lot of people who agree with a stupid thing, that thing will not become right because of it, so it will become the truth; the majority of people in society agree, and A fact cannot be changed.

And the fact is that many people don't realize this, and continue to blindly continue to believe that the thing is right. And the consensus of the group is that one thing is true, it does not necessarily have an actual basis, but it can make a group of people have the same cognition at the same time? What kind of situation is this in the end, is there any practical example to give an example?

some! A Turkish-American social psychologist, Muzafer Sherif (hereinafter referred to as Sherif), conducted an experiment on "social proof" in 1935. The experiment was divided into three phases:

First, in Phase 1, Sharif had subjects stay in a small dark room, and asked subjects to look at a spot of light about 5 meters away and judge how far the spot had moved. All subjects At the end they all gave the same answer. (Actually the light spot didn't move at all, it just seemed to move because of the dynamism effect )

Then, after a day, Sharif had the subjects split into pairs and re-tested to see if the light spot moved. The difference in this test is that Sharif asked the subjects to speak out their judgments. Although the two subjects often gave different answers at the beginning, they both gave the same answer at the end of the experiment. This is the paradoxical part of this experiment.

Sharif believes that the subjects may have given a random answer out of fear of being stupid, so they took the test again. This time, Sharif asked the subjects to judge whether the light spot moved or not, and the subjects actually maintained the answers of the original two or two groups of tests, indicating that they really thought that the answer was the most credible.

From the above experimental results, we can know that human beings are really easy to be influenced by others, which affects their own judgment, especially when they are not familiar enough with a thing and understand it.

And just think about it, only two people were tested in the experiment, so only two people were affected. However, our society and life are not like this. With the development of the Internet, it has become very easy to obtain information. Therefore, such a situation will definitely happen from time to time. The scariest thing is that most people blindly believe that this is "right" . (There are actually other experiments on social proof, but I won't explain them because of the length.)

If it's just something innocuous, then maybe it doesn't matter. But if something like "bullying" happens, it's not that simple for a long time. When a person attacks a person with words on the Internet, it shows how bad that person is and how damnable that person is. At this time, if a lot of people blindly believe that this is the truth, then it will be a big deal.

So remember: "Even if fifty million people claim that something stupid is right, it doesn't make that stupid right."

🔍 Are there any advantages other than the disadvantages? Tell you three practical methods!

We have already said in the first paragraph: " Social proof still has unexpected performance, so let's continue to look at it. " This means that social proof is not only negative examples, and it does not only bring negative effects to human beings , so let’s look at positive examples of social proof and tell you three practical ways to do it.

The first application is "Canned Laughter" , I think everyone should be familiar with this, right? What are your thoughts on canned laughter? Do you find laughter embarrassing, annoying, or? I myself don't really like canned laughter, but not to the point of being annoying. Maybe you think adding canned laughter to a movie is a stupid thing, it will make people tired of the movie, and it will reduce the ratings of the movie.

But this is not the case, and the moderate addition of canned laughter can make the audience respond better. Some TV studios have observed that adding canned laughter to certain pre-programmed "laughter" passages makes viewers automatically think it's a "funny" passage, "so you should laugh", bringing This feeling. It may be absurd, but it is true. So adding canned laughter "in moderation" , I think, also helps.

The second application is "product marketing" . I think modern people have more or less seen some celebrities and artists who will endorse and distribute certain products, right? And why do you choose certain products when everyone has not used that product? In fact, the reason for this may be related to social proof. People will naturally think that people with better names and more fans are more credible and trustworthy, so the products they sell are naturally more popular.

Finally, there is "Internet Evaluation" . I wonder if you will first look at the Internet evaluation when you go to a restaurant, watch a movie, or play a game? This actually has something to do with social proof! Because we don’t know and understand those things, we are likely to make judgments in advance through online evaluations, and we tend to easily believe online evaluations, even though they are groundless or unreasonable at all.

Extended reading: " Category Reviews of Movies and Restaurants? What kind of evaluation is constructive? 》

The three applications of social proof have been explained above. In fact, there are many more, but due to limited space, I will introduce them here first. If you are interested in this, maybe you can find more information and do more research, which will help you become more handy in marketing.

👁‍🗨 How to avoid falling into the trap and take advantage of it?

At the end of the article, in the first half of the article, I described what kind of concept and theory social proof is; and explained how social proof affects us and makes us so "blind". In the second half, I explained the application of social proof in society. Although the "negative and positive examples" are used here to directly distinguish the good and the bad, in fact, I don't think it is necessary to talk about the good and the bad, because this It is a kind of psychological phenomenon, it just depends on how you look at it from different perspectives, and you will have the idea of whether this phenomenon is good or bad.

And once again, this is just a psychological and social phenomenon, so there is no way to completely restrain it. The reason for this may also be related to his actual role. If social proof is really useless, isn't it obsolete naturally? Therefore, I think that this psychological phenomenon of social proof must have a practical effect, but with the development of the times and human civilization, some functions that were beneficial to the ancients have become a burden in modern times.

And what we have to do, of course, is to "coexist with it" . How to actually do it? It's very simple, if you have a big influence, ignore him if you have a small influence. Something like some canned laughter, unless your goal is to embarrass the people on stage, it won't matter if you laugh along, maybe it can help if the performer isn't really doing well Relaxed atmosphere! ? Therefore , it is not necessary to pay special attention to such innocuous problems.

And what to pay special attention to? To put it simply, it is a situation that may endanger others, yourself, and society. It is recommended that you remember this concept and review it carefully when you have to make a more important choice, so as not to fall into a trap. A practical example is the problem of "bullying" . Because it endangers others, one should carefully examine what the actual situation looks like. Is everyone "bullying" one person unilaterally, or is it actually the one who seems to be bullied? Are people hateful too?

And if you are a certain manufacturer, businessman or do social marketing, then maybe you can use some methods to trigger social proof and bring you a lot of benefits. Of course, this major premise is based on "honesty". In principle, do not deceive consumers. I don't understand the marketing part that much, so I won't give an example here, and leave it to those who are interested to study it by themselves.

In general, social proof is a psychological, social phenomenon that, when viewed from different perspectives, will lead to "negative or positive" thoughts about it. And because it is impossible to completely restrain this phenomenon that naturally exists in psychology, what we have to do is to rationally examine the current situation when it may endanger ourselves, others, and society, and don’t let tragedy happen. Of course, you can also take advantage of this phenomenon in reverse and apply it in social marketing to bring you more benefits.

I hope that the "social proof" explained today can help you. If you are interested in this kind of theory like "thinking trap", you are also welcome to leave your thoughts in the comment area and knock the bowl.

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