myriad of decisions without personally having to investigate the detailed
pros and cons of each.
In this sense, the principle of social proof equips us with a wonderful
kind of automatic-pilot device not unlike that aboard most aircraft.
Yet there are occasional but real problems with automatic pilots.
Those problems appear whenever the flight information locked into
the control mechanism is wrong. In these instances, we will be taken
off course. Depending on the size of the error, the consequences can be
severe. But, because the automatic pilot afforded by the principle of
social proof is more often an ally than an enemy, we can’t be expected
to want simply to disconnect it. Thus we are faced with a classic prob-
lem: how to make use of a piece of equipment that simultaneously be-
nefits and imperils our welfare.
Fortunately, there is a way out of the dilemma. Because the disadvant-
ages of automatic pilots arise principally when incorrect data have been
put into the control system, our best defense against these disadvantages
is to recognize when the data are in error. If we can become sensitive
to situations where the social-proof automatic pilot is working with
inaccurate information, we can disengage the mechanism and grasp
the controls when we need to.
There are two types of situation in which incorrect data cause the
principle of social proof to give us poor counsel. The first occurs when
the social evidence has been purposely falsified. Invariably these situ-
ations are manufactured by exploiters intent on creating the impres-
sion—reality be damned—that a multitude is performing the way the
exploiters want us to perform. The canned laughter of TV comedy
shows, which we have already discussed, is one variety of faked data
of this sort. But there is a great deal more; and much of the fakery is
strikingly obvious.
For instance, canned responses are not unique to the electronic media
or even to the electronic age. In fact, the heavy-handed exploitation of
the principle of social proof can be traced through the history of one of
our most venerable art forms: grand opera. This is the phenomenon
called claquing, said to have been begun in 1820 by a pair of Paris opera-
house habitués named Sauton and Porcher. The men were more than
operagoers, though. They were businessmen whose product was ap-
plause.
Organizing under the title L’Assurance des Succès Dramatiques, they
leased themselves and their employees to singers and opera managers
who wished to be assured of an appreciative audience response. So ef-
fective were they in stimulating genuine audience reaction with their
rigged reactions that before long claques (usually consisting of a lead-
118 / Influence