Psychological Phenomena In Everyday Life
Following the crowd can have disastrous consequences. However, you can use it to improve the way people perceive you. Read on to learn more about social proof, the halo effect and the bystander effect.
Social Proof
In our day to day lives, we tend to do what everyone else does in most situations. This warrants the title of psychological phenomenon.
In most social situations, we assume that everyone else knows more than ourselves. As such, we tend to copy everyone else since they must be right. This can easily lead to situations where everyone assumes everyone else is correct and an errorneous decision is made. This in itself can lead to disaster.
The Bystander Effect
As a result of social proof, when a situation arises where a bystander is required to act, no one will do anything if there are lots of bystanders around.
Let’s say a woman is in trouble and needs help from just one person, but there’s an entire crowd of people around her. If no one knows how to handle the situation properly, the chances of someone helping out are extremely low. There are two main reasons for this effect.
The first is that the responsibility of helping the woman is diffused across the entire crowd. That means there isn’t a significant amount of responsibility on any single person. As such, there is less incentive to act. If the number of bystanders is decreased then the responsibility is greater on each person, increasing the chances of someone helping out. This outlines the sad fact that no one will help the woman in need if there are lots of people.
The second is a result of social proof. If everyone else isn’t helping out, then why should we?
“There’s probably someone else in the crowd better suited to helping her out.”
“I shouldn’t do anything if everyone else isn’t doing something, since there’s probably a reason that no one’s helping her.”
This bystander effect can lead to disastrous events, especially when someone’s in need. The main solution to this problem is increasing awareness of the bystander effect. Now that you know, you can act against the traditional line of thinking when confronted with a sticky situation! Also, it can be countered by assigning responsibility to just one person in the crowd instead of letting it diffuse.
The Halo Effect
When you see someone that looks kind or attractive, that perception tends to leak out towards their other characteristics. Say you saw a really pretty lady, or a charming man. Based on these initial perceptions, you’ll begin to assign similar ‘good’ characteristics towards their other personality traits.
“Oh she looks really pretty. She’s probably got lots of friends, intelligent, kind…”
Similarly, if someone is perceived as having lots of friends then by social proof, that person must have good qualities.
“Wow that guy’s so popular! He must be charming, attractive, thoughtful…”
Obviously you don’t actively think of these characteristics. They tend to just leak out from their first good characteristic into other unrelated traits. The opposite is the Devil Effect. If someone’s really ugly then you tend to leak negative characteristics for them.
Everyday Life
Taking these psychological phenomena into consideration, you can manipulate other people’s perception of you. Using social proof, you can sway a group’s judgement in your favour if the situation calls for it. You can negate the bystander effect by taking responsibility and that will invoke the rest of the crowd to think positively of you. The halo effect can be used in conjunction with social proof and the bystander effect by giving yourself a good initial characteristic that will leak into your other characteristics.
Just try it the next time you meet someone and you will see positive results. Making yourself seem better than you really are, it’s great isn’t it?
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