Talk:Social proof

I question the neutrality, too
Simply put, this entry makes a strong assertion that Social Proof is an inherently negative thing, providing only invalid insight and leading to only negative behavior and a mob mentality. You don't need to know much about sociology to realize that observation of others' behavior can also be be an important and useful clue in re: appropriate behavior. Social animals learn from one another, for better and/or worse.Kdava (talk) 11:25, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

booth girls, podium girls, etc...
Would be a bit more balanced if mention of marketing usages of this such as booth girls, podium girls, etc...  hmm... launch parties and the like are also the same kind of thing too. Mathmo 15:49, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Though at first it might seem that above mentioned use of attractive women in marketting would be exploitation of the social proof principle, I think it's merely using them to have positive associations with the product. If the attractive women were depicted as actually using the product, and the intended audience also consisted of mainly attractive (or aspiring to be) women, then that would mean social proof principle is being used.

I think maybe beuty and cosmetic products might use some form of social proof, but in the case of say cars (where attractive women are not the intended audience) use of women is to associate the car with positive emotions. --Justas 130.126.184.166 04:04, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

'I dispute the neutrality of this article as it is one big advert!'
'Scuse the shouting but I really do believe it has been created as nothing more than a form of advertising!

I ended up at this page via a link from a website claiming to be a guide to 'Online marketing secrets' which is one of those naff advert-packed sites that claim to give advice but actually just recommend programs they are an affiliate of.

I believe the owner of that site has set up this page merely to add veracity & authority to their website, making them appear reliable, above board & more trustworthy because they are mentioned on Wikipedia.

I am now going to edit out the links to that website & I expect this move to be challenged at some point so thought I ought to explain my motivation beforehand, thus saving any unecessary questioning of said motives at a later date.

Thank You!

insomnianiac 22:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

how is a blog a form of Social Proof?
A blog is usually written by one person. How does one use a blog to create social proof? I can see how maybe if multiple blogs are saying something positive about a certain product or service then those blogs are a form of SP for the product/service.

If this is a common practice, ie. to set up a bunch of seemingly independent blogs to praise a product, then more details should be provided.


 * A blog can be social proof for the person who writes it, from the number of comments/traffic they get. Mathmo Talk 21:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * A blog can be social proof for the person who writes it, from the number of comments/traffic they get. Mathmo Talk 21:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

A better description...
I looked up Social Proof on wikipedia after reading the chapter summary at http://www.media-studies.ca/articles/influence_ch4.htm, which I found really informative and interesting. The wikipedia article is clearly not up to scratch, however I don't feel qualified to correct it. Someone with more knowledge than myself may wish to use the above link as a starting point.

Merge
Whoever suggested merge with Bandwagon effect, this was a bad idea. No merge, thanks. Netrat (talk)

Reworking article
Hello all, just wanted to let anyone interested know that I'm currently working on rewriting some of this article. Primarily adding more, citable information, and taking out some of the information that's just paraphrased anecdotes from Influence. I'm merging in things as I complete them, but if you want to see the stuff that I've currently only sketched out I'm working on that in userspace.

Also, it looks like Informational_social_influence should be merged with this article; I can take a look at initiating that once I've solidified most of my edits to this article.

Thanks! -trevorsavagerose (talk) 00:45, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to Merge Informational Social Influence into this article
I propose that the article Informational_social_influence be merged into this article on Social proof. They both seem to address identical concepts, and both from the same perspective of Psychology. Informational Social Influence's content should be relatively easy to merge into this article; I'm working on replacing/bolstering this article's anecdotes with examples from research, and most of the content from Informational Social Influence would seem to fit into that section. trevorsavagerose (talk) 01:06, 10 April 2011 (UTC) Support. No need for two articles. --MartinPoulter (talk) 08:57, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Cleaning up Examples
The subsection name "In social interactions" makes no sense, since all the example are, by definition, social interactions and so I split it in to a properly cited "In family interactions" section and a citationless "In public interactions" section in an attempt to give the sections more accurate names. Additionally, I'm marking a couple things in that section as needing a citation, and, honestly, I'm not sure how neutral they are, and I know neutrality can be a matter of opinion, but the examples in the new "in public interactions" section do not seem balanced and seem rather misogynistic, specifically the ones which specifically deal with women's interest in men and supposed action of some men who try to attract interest, but I think that could be balanced out more by addition of a CITED EXAMPLE including men using the same logic to judge women or each other, or simply completely rewriting the first set of examples in that section, since they're uncited. Zanotam (talk) 02:03, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Example deleted
This is not an example of social proof. Where's the information asymmetry? The citation is a dead link.

"===In family interactions=== A son coming to his mother complaining about his running shoes, saying, “Mom, I need those new running shoes. The ones I have now make me look so uncool!” The mother responds by telling her son that he doesn’t need the new running shoes, no matter how cool they make him look. However, when the same mother sees that two of her friends have recently bought the same piece of furniture, she may buy one too. Although she didn’t care about her son’s conformity since she doesn’t care about his peer group, she cares about her own.

173.25.54.191 (talk) 10:23, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

"... these fake followers will never help meet business objectives ..."
I find it hard to believe that any reasonable article would boldly predict the future in this way. TooManyFingers (talk) 03:59, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I concurred - I've removed the comment as both unsourced and it shouldn't have been in wiki's voice Nosebagbear (talk) 14:03, 7 December 2020 (UTC)