Social Proof

Why do we follow others rather than think for ourselves?

I was recently in Iguazu National Park — home of the world’s largest waterfall and some incredible photo opportunities. The duel national parks, one in Brazil side and the other Argentina, have built incredible infrastructure that allow tourists to walk along cliff sides or over portions of the river that afford different perspectives of the hundreds of interconnecting falls. Of course everyone was taking lots of photos but what I noticed was the crowds often walked right by incredible vantage points and congregated around lesser ones.

The paths are self-contained with a metal grating underneath and metals rails on both sides, often raised above an uneven ground. Narrow most of the time they occasionally opened and became much wider. The wider points were without fail filled with people snapping photos while almost no one ever stopped on the standard path. Sometimes the wider areas were in fact great spots for photos and the standard path not, however just as often it seemed this was dictated by topographical convenience. The land flattened out in some areas with poorer views and often became steeper at better ones. Most people rushed from one wide platform to the next — from one group of people snapping photos to the next — without more than glancing from the spaces in between. In fact, at these wider areas there was often a line to take a photo at a particular spot so people might spend a fair bit of time there waiting on line before rushing off to the next one. Curiously, I observed that when there was a lull and the space had emptied when a new crowd came the particular spot deemed best might change. Whenever a line formed, it grew quickly and that exact spot is where everyone took their photos from, even though in the previous group the queue might have been in a different location that now elicited little interest.

This is called Social Proof. It’s a type of shortcut our brains make using the logic that if others have deemed this correct then it must be so. In the absence of other people trust was given to the park’s design, assuming wider areas indicated better photos and when there were people already present then wherever others thought the best spot for a photo must also be true.

All over the park there are Coati — a sort of mix between a raccoon and lemur. They are well adjusted to all the humans and come very close, even walking along or crossing the paths built for tourists. The Devil’s Throat path is mostly over the upper Iguazu River as a series of bridges from island to island take you closer to the center. Along the way there was a Coati resting on the path in the shade from an overhanging tree. Someone stopped to take a photo and sure enough most others took out their cameras as well. The Coati didn’t mind as people got very close for their photos and one young woman, with a crowd around, decided to crunch down and put an opened bottle of water in the animal’s face. The Coati didn’t seem interested but the woman persisted, as others snapped photos, eventually tilting the bottle enough so that water poured out on its snout, which clearly perturbed the animal and caused it to get up and leave. We were on a small island surrounded by easily accessible fresh water and the woman did not seem to have a lot of knowledge or experience in dealing with animals. Was her motivation to help the animal or was it to be seen as someone who would help animals?

Another psychological phenomenon is Normative Social Influence (goal of affiliation). Humans are fundamentally motivated by the need to belong — this need motivates people to engage in behavior that will induce the approval of their peers.

An hour later I saw the same woman again. Argentina built a miniature rail system to bring people around the park and she was in front of me on the train with her group of friends. She was eating ice cream with a plastic spoon out of a cardboard bowl. When she finished she casually threw her garbage into the forest alongside the tracks.

The same person who wanted to be seen as someone who was empathetic to animals had no issues with littering in front of the same group. That struck me as odd. Based on her Spanish dialect I judged her to be from the general area, likely Argentina or Paraguay, and I know that littering is common in those places with little or no social ostracism like we might see in other parts of the world.

So there are explanations for all of these behavior, and even evolutionary reasons — besides social proof being a shortcut that allows us to make decisions faster, for much of human evolution to go against the majority could have led to an ostracism that left you alone and vulnerable in a dangerous world.

Still, I’m left wondering why we can’t think for ourselves to a greater extent than we often do? Do we always have to follow the crowd? Do we always need to be prompted by others in order to change our behavior or ethics? Articles that tell you what to think are far more common than ones that ask you to think. If you Google things like social proof the results are overwhelmingly about using psychology against people and tricking them — like a pick-up artist trying to manipulate a female target or a new corporate brand that wants to sell you things you didn’t know you needed. The question we should be asking is, how can we learn to think more independently and critically?