Ever notice yourself copying what others are doing or saying at social events? This is probably happening because of a psychological condition called the informational social influence.

So, I’ve been seeing a lot of people wearing puffer jackets lately, like I mentioned before, and wanted one too. But I didn’t know which style or size was good for me. This is where my sister and cousins came in.

We were shopping during Boxing Week (it’s like Black Friday in the US but around Christmas Day) and I asked them to help me find a new jacket because I wanted their advice. I tried a few on (different styles and different colours) and I liked most of them.

But there was a specific one that my family liked more than the others. And because I valued their opinion, I also found that one specific jacket to look the best on me.

So what’s the point of this uninteresting story? Well, it’s an example of how people will look to others to find out how they should behave when they don’t know how to react.

What is Informational Social Influence?

This psychological theory is called informational social influence. There are three situations when this will be applied:

When someone lacks knowledge

When a person is in an unclear situation

When someone adopts group view

The Autokinetic Experiment

In 1935, Muzafer Sherif set up an experiment to study how people conform and behave when social situations are unclear.

Sherif used an autokinetic light (a small spot of light that seems to move in a dark room but doesn’t) and wanted to see how individuals would estimate the distance of the light.

In the first portion of his experiment, he had individual participants estimate it. The results varied considerably.

Then, in the second portion, he grouped people together. But to test if people would conform to group-thought, Sherif manipulated the groups by including two people who had similar results and one that had a way different result. He wanted to see if the odd one out would conform.

So, he did the same thing as earlier -put up a small spot of light and had participants, one by one, yell out their estimates. The estimates were all similar. But the interesting thing about this was that the one participant who had a different answer in the previous portion conformed and agreed with the group’s estimate.

So what does this mean? Well, it just means that people will tend to conform to the group over going against it. However, there could be a myriad of reasons why this is the case.

How to Use This Theory in Your Ads

To use this psychological theory in your ads, you really just need influencers and experts to talk about and show praise for your product or service. Have them use the product and share how its benefits are curing their pain points. Also, have groups of regular people do it too.

This will get people who don’t have solutions to a problem choose your item or service to fix their pain point because they see a lot of people using it. They will conform to what everybody else views as the solution.

READ MORE: Psychology of Marketing

Have you ever witnessed yourself conforming to group-thought or behaviour? Share your experiences below. And if you were to use this theory in a marketing campaign, how would you do it? Share that also if you want to.