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The natural laws of human behaviour (not)
Unlike physical objects, which behave according to the laws of gravity or thermodynamics, our behaviour is not that easy to describe
If you have been accessing Wikipedia recently, you may have noticed a fundraising banner popping up. And has been the case for the last few years, the text seeks to encourage visitors to the site to donate using a technique known as social proof. Especially when we are uncertain how to act or behave, and we don’t have a strong preference, we will be inclined to look at what others do or don’t do, so the theory goes.
Taking the lead of our fellow humans
A frequently cited illustration of social proof comes from research by psychologists Noah Goldstein, Robert Cialdini and Vladas Griskevicius. They experimented with different messages intended to encourage hotel guests to reuse their towels, rather than require new ones every morning. Different formulations were tried, like a standard “Save the environment, please reuse your towels during your stay” or more direct “Save the environment, and join your fellow guests in reusing your towels — in a study conducted earlier, 75% of our guests used their towels more than once”. The participation rate for the former message was the lowest at…
