Psychology professors love Social-Proof Tendency because in their experiments it

causes ridiculous results. For instance, if a professor arranges for some

stranger to enter an elevator wherein ten “compliance practitioners” are all

silently standing so that they face the rear of the elevator, the stranger will

often turn around and do the same. The psychology professors can also use

Social-Proof Tendency to cause people to make large and ridiculous measurement

errors.

 

And, of course, teenagers’ parents usually learn more than they would like about

teenagers’ cognitive errors from Social-Proof Tendency. This phenomenon was

recently involved in a break- through by Judith Rich Harris who demonstrated

that superrespect by young people for their peers, rather than for parents or

other adults, is ordained to some considerable extent by the genes of the young

people. This makes it wise for parents to rely more on manipulating the quality

of the peers than on exhortations to their own offspring. A person like Ms.

Harris, who can provide an insight of this quality and utility, backed by new

reasons, has not lived in vain.

 

And in the highest reaches of business, it is not all uncommon to find leaders

who display followership akin to that of teenagers. If one oil company foolishly

buys a mine, other oil companies often quickly join in buying mines. So also if

the purchased company makes fertilizer. Both of these oil company buying fads

actually bloomed, with bad results.