Enhancing Outcomes

A final application of social proof is to improve the course of your work with people as well as to inspire new people to hire you and refer to you. The most powerful social proof is real-world results. Your goals are threefold:

1. Serve your clients to the best of your abilities.

2. Create a positive benefit for those who refer to you.

3. Attract new clients.

Helping your clients achieve better outcomes accomplishes all three of these things. Your clients and referral partners benefit, and you have another instance of social proof for the benefits of your services.

Reducing harmful behaviors and increasing helpful behaviors

“Every day, about 3,000 young people put their lives in danger by beginning to smoke cigarettes.”

What impact do you think that this statement would have on the reduction of teen smoking?

This statement, similar to what you may see in a common public service announcement, would probably backfire. According to the law of social norms, teenagers considering smoking may embrace the idea that a lot of other teenagers smoke. Instead of thinking, “Smoking is bad,” they may think, “Smoking is normal.”

Instead, a statement like the following one, found on the National Institute for Drug Abuse Web site (nida.nih.gov) is more likely to reduce teen substance use: “Contrary to popular belief, most teenagers do not use marijuana. Among students surveyed in a yearly national survey, only about one in seven 10th graders report they are current marijuana users (that is, used marijuana within the past month).”

See the difference?

Shine the spotlight

The survival of a park in Arizona, Petrified Forest National Park, has been threatened because visitors take home pieces of petrified wood from the park as souvenirs. To test the impact of the park’s signage, Robert Cialdini conducted an experiment similar to the hotel room study he cocreated, but with the goal of decreasing rather than increasing an environmentally friendly behavior.

Two signs were created to be placed along paths in the park. The first addressed social proof: “Many past visitors have removed the petrified wood from the park, changing the natural state of the Petrified Forest.” This sign was accompanied by an image of several people taking the wood.

The second sign said, “Please don’t remove the petrified wood from the park, in order to preserve the natural state of the Petrified Forest.” This sign had a picture of one person taking a piece of wood with a red circle and bar over his hand.

What do you think happened?

When the researchers compared the impact of these two signs on the amount of wood taken versus a control group that had no sign, they found a dramatic difference: the amount of wood stolen nearly tripled in the area where the social proof (“Many past visitors …”) sign was placed versus the control group with no sign. The second sign, which asked people not to remove wood, slightly reduced the amount of wood taken.

The researchers recommended that park management go a step further and focus their signage on the people who respect the park, showing those who do not that they are in the minority at less than 3 percent. When people feel as though everyone’s doing something, they have no problem doing it too, whereas when they feel as though very few people are doing something, they feel that they are in the spotlight and are less likely to do it.

What are the unhelpful behaviors that your clients do that stand in the way of their goals? How can you use social proof to reduce those behaviors?

What are the helpful behaviors that your clients do that facilitate the achievement of their goals? How can you use social proof to increase those behaviors?

Now that you understand the power of social influence with social proof and are committed to the ethical use of it to positively impact your clients and referral partners, let’s turn our attention to another powerful law of social influence: reciprocity.