Social Proof
Imagine for a moment you are in an unfamiliar situation. What are you supposed to do? How are you supposed to behave? Where do you go?
To answer these questions, you likely would look at the people around you and copy them. Do as the Romans do.
This is known as social proof. It’s often exploited to get you to buy products (ever used product reviews to decide what to buy?) But more importantly it’s a sign of insecurity.
Imagine again that you are in an unfamiliar situation. But now imagine that you have supreme confidence. You have what you need to solve any problem and rise to any occasion. With such confidence, who cares what other people are doing?
Leaders and creators don’t fall under the spell of social proof. You can’t make new things by following others. But most people, most of the time, are casting sideways glances at others to make sure they’re not standing out too much.
The interesting thing about looking at others is we have no way of knowing if others know what they’re doing. Why do I trust others’ judgment more than my own? In an unfamiliar situation, why do I feel like other people know more than I do?
I fall victim to social proof when it comes to diet. I wrote previously that I’m trying to find a diet to reduce my inflammation. I’ve read extensively about different diets, and I find myself aligned with whatever diet was advocated by the last article I read.
I mean, other people seem so confident in their diets! And they seemingly get results. I have neither of those things.
But this lack of confidence undermines my efforts. Any dietary success takes a while to materialize, often several months. Yo-yo’ing between approaches just means I’ll never see positive results. It would be much better to stick to one approach, any approach, for an extended period of time to give myself a chance to succeed.
It takes a lot of discipline to trust yourself when no one else is going along — see Asch’s Conformity Experiments for a very interesting example of this. It’s very tempting to be wrong with everyone else than be right by yourself.
At the end of the day…easy does it. It’s ok to do things differently — and even if you do, it goes unnoticed most of the time. But keep in mind that doing things differently are where new discoveries are made.