major strength and its major weakness. Like the other weapons of influ-
ence, it provides a convenient shortcut for determining how to behave
but, at the same time, makes one who uses the shortcut vulnerable to
the attacks of profiteers who lie in wait along its path.
In the case of canned laughter, the problem comes when we begin
responding to social proof in such a mindless and reflexive fashion that
we can be fooled by partial or fake evidence. Our folly is not that we
use others’ laughter to help decide what is humorous and when mirth
is appropriate; that is in keeping with the well-founded principle of
social proof. The folly is that we do so in response to patently fraudulent
laughter. Somehow, one disembodied feature of humor—a
sound—works like the essence of humor. The example from Chapter
1 of the turkey and the polecat is instructive here. Remember that be-
cause the particular “cheep-cheep” of turkey chicks is normally associ-
ated with newborn turkeys, their mothers will display or withhold
maternal care solely on the basis of that sound? And remember how,
consequently, it was possible to trick a female turkey into mothering a
stuffed polecat as long as the replica played the recorded “cheep-cheep”
of a baby turkey? The simulated chick sound was enough to start the
female’s mothering tape whirring.
The lesson of the turkey and the polecat illustrates uncomfortably
well the relationship between the average viewer and the laugh-track-
playing television executive. We have become so accustomed to taking
the humorous reactions of others as evidence of what deserves laughter
that we, too, can be made to respond to the sound and not to the sub-
stance of the real thing. Much as a “cheep-cheep” noise removed from
the reality of a chick can stimulate a female turkey to mother, so can a
recorded “ha-ha” removed from the reality of a genuine audience
stimulate us to laugh. The television executives are exploiting our
preference for shortcuts, our tendency to react automatically on the
basis of partial evidence. They know that their tapes will cue our tapes.
Click, whirr.
Television executives are hardly alone in their use of social evidence
for profit. Our tendency to assume that an action is more correct if
others are doing it is exploited in a variety of settings. Bartenders often
“salt” their tip jars with a few dollar bills at the beginning of the evening
to simulate tips left by prior customers and thereby to give the impres-
sion that tipping with folding money is proper barroom behavior.
Church ushers sometimes salt collection baskets for the same reason
and with the same positive effect on proceeds. Evangelical preachers
are known to seed their audience with “ringers,” who are rehearsed to
come forward at a specified time to give witness and donations. For
Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 89