The Proverbial Cliff

The proverbial cliff. 

Rolf Dobelli, author of The Art of Thinking Clearly includes the concept of social proof in his book. Basically social proof is the idea of the herd mentality; going along with the crowd or jumping off the proverbial cliff with everyone else. 

Rolf states, "The more people who follow a certain idea, the better (truer) we deem the idea to be." In addition, "...the more people who display a certain behavior, the more appropriate this behavior is judged by others." 

Now because I have the tendency to ask a multitude of questions, I have often found myself out of step with the masses. I'm not quick to jump on the bandwagon, and most trends pass me by. However, I couldn't help but think about how we process information in the context of social proof. 

Many times we think something to be true just because we have been inundated with that information. Maybe, we might do better to fact check a few things before we are so quick to jump on board. As author Aldous Huxley so aptly put, "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."

I recently heard about an event in Dallas where a multitude of people choose to walk across hot coals at the prodding of the motivational speaker. Predictably, many of them had to make a trip to the hospital. Now the whole thing seemed quite ridiculous, but why had so many chosen to go along with the idea?

Take a moment to ask a question or two, and listen to that voice inside, so you don't fall victim to social proof.