Social Engineering - Christopher Hadnagy [118]
Social proof is not just influenced by large groups, but also by high-profile individuals. For instance, a single celebrity becoming associated with product will make others want to be associated with the celebrity’s positive traits, and they will then use the same product.
Many examples exist of celebrity endorsements, but in recent years the company that became a major supplier for berets was able to get Samuel L. Jackson to endorse its product, as shown in Figure 6-3.
Figure 6-3: Samuel L. Jackson endorsing a Kangol hat.
In its marketing efforts the company said its hats were some of the hottest on the market and the proof was that Mr. Jackson can be seen wearing them.
Advertisers often say things like, “largest selling” or “hottest product” to convince their audience that they have the backing of many of our peers in these claims.
In addition, the Media-Studies.ca website posted an article on influencing its targets using social proof (www.media-studies.ca/articles/influence_ch4.htm):
Experiments have found that the use of canned laughter causes an audience to laugh longer and more often when humorous material is presented and to rate the material as funnier. In addition, some evidence indicates that canned laughter is most effective for poor jokes.” The question is: why does it work, especially when the laugh track is often so obviously fake? To answer this question, Cialdini posits the principle of social proof: “One means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct…We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.”
As with the other “weapons of influence,” social proof is a shortcut that usually works well for us: if we conform to the behavior we see around us, we are less likely to make a social faux pas. The fact that canned laughter provokes an automatic response in audiences suggests that auditory cues are powerful stimuli because they influence us at a level of consciousness that is difficult to critique.
Other examples are how bartenders or other establishments will “salt the tip jar,” by placing a few bills in the jar. As a patron approaches to purchase food the implication is, “Many before you have tipped me, why don’t you?” And it works, too!
One of the most profound bits of research in this field that really stands out was done by Dr. K. D. Craig in 1978. Dr. Craig devoted his life to the study of pain and its effect on people. In 1978 he published a paper entitled “Social Modeling Influences on Sensory Decision Theory and Psychophysiological Indexes of Pain” (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/690805?dopt=Abstract), in which he did an experiment that he described as:
Subjects exposed to social models dissimulating tolerance or intolerance generally exhibit matching behavior in their verbal ratings of painful stimulation. It has been unclear, however, whether these changes reflect voluntary alteration of evidence or genuine changes in distress.
This study used alternative measures and controlled for methodological limitations of earlier studies by examining non-palmar skin potential in addition to palmar skin conductance and heart rate indexes of psycho-physiological response to electric shock, and by evaluating verbal expressions of pain with sensory decision theory methodology.
Several indexes of non-palmar skin potential and heart rate reactivity exhibited lower reactivity in the tolerant group. Tolerant modeling was also associated with decreases in subjective stress. The results were consistent with the position that changes in pain indexes associated with exposure to a tolerant model represented variations in fundamental characteristics of painful experiences as opposed to suppression of information.
To boil this down, what he basically did was shock people