In his book, ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion’, author Robert Cialdini cited numerous mechanisms through which humans can be manipulated by “compliance professionals.” There are many well worn and implications for marketing and technology, but when reading through the description for ‘social proof,’ something struck me.
‘Social proof’ can manifest in numerous ways. However, one particularly notable example is the tendency for individuals to extract ‘permission’ to take a particular action from the behaviour of ‘people like them.’ The stories in the book centred around the increase in suicides from demographically similar individuals when a report of someone ‘like them’ taking their own life was reported in local newspapers. When we are uncertain about taking a particular course of action, especially a consequential one, we look for evidence that it’s ‘ok.’ In this context, it was people like us doing the same thing.
The way social proof for ‘people like us’ manifest in current marketing tactics is relatively superficial. Ads targeting young people will show young people enjoying the product. Pop-ups on e-commerce sites will inform us that someone in our town has just purchased the product we happen to be looking at. People are incentivised to share their purchases on social networks, where their peers, who happen to share many ‘like’ characteristics will see it.
Technology is enhancing our ability to look at individuals in increasingly sophisticated ways. Biometric data, such as changes in heart rate, taken from that smartwatch you’re wearing, registers your pulse quickening as you pass a store and pause to look at something that catches your eye. Recognition of micro-expressions are captured in response to different pairs of glasses when you decided to try various pairs on using that handy augmented reality feature. Changes in vocal inflexion and the specific linguistic choices you make when you order particular items with your Alexa all serve to create a view of emotional investment in a purchase decision.
The examples above represent a mere fraction of the possible ways in which we will be modelled and understood. When combined with enormous data-sets and the power of AI and machine learning, the ability to tease out correlations, the pictures of ‘people like us’, who don’t just look like us, but think, act and react like us will be uncanny. Fold in future methods of hyper-personalisation, and the well-worn persuasion tactic of ‘social proof’ suddenly shifts to another level entirely.
This future may not be here in full effect yet, but it’s coming. And it’s yet another reason to be vigilant about the sovereignty of your data, mindful of the services you ‘make use of’, and critically, to work on your mind, to enhance your conscious awareness of, and resilience to, the world around us.