age American, while the other letters were written in broken English
by the first finder, who identified himself as a recently arrived foreigner.
In other words, the person who had initially found the wallet and had
tried to return it was depicted by the letter as being either similar or
dissimilar to most Americans.
The interesting question was whether the Manhattanites who found
the wallet and letter would be more influenced to mail the wallet if the
first man who had tried to do so was similar to them. The answer was
plain: Only 33 percent of the wallets were returned when the first
finder was seen as dissimilar, but fully 70 percent were returned when
he was thought to be a similar other. These results suggest an important
qualification of the principle of social proof. We will use the actions of
others to decide on proper behavior for ourselves, especially when we
view those others as similar to ourselves.
This tendency applies not only to adults but to children as well. Health
researchers have found, for example, that a school-based antismoking
program had lasting effects only when it used same-age peer leaders
as teachers. Another study found that children who saw a film depicting
a child’s positive visit to the dentist lowered their own dental anxieties
principally when they were the same age as the child in the film. I wish
I had known about this second study when, a few years before it was
published, I was trying to reduce a different kind of anxiety in my son,
Chris.
I live in Arizona, where backyard swimming pools abound. One re-
grettable consequence is that every year several young children drown
after falling into an unattended pool. I was determined, therefore, to
teach Chris how to swim at an early age. The problem was not that he
was afraid of the water. He loved it. But he would not get into the pool
without wearing his inflatable plastic inner tube, no matter how I tried
to coax, talk, or shame him out of it. After getting nowhere for two
months, I hired some help: a graduate student of mine—a big, strapping
former lifeguard who had once worked as a swimming instructor. He
failed as totally as I had. He couldn’t persuade Chris to attempt even
a stroke outside of his plastic ring.
Around this time, Chris was attending a day camp that provided a
number of activities to its members, including use of a large pool, which
he scrupulously avoided. One day, shortly after the graduate student
fiasco, I went to get Chris from camp a bit early and, with mouth agape,
watched him run down the diving board and jump into the middle of
the deepest part of the pool. Panicking, I began pulling off my shoes to
jump in to his rescue when I saw him bob to the surface and paddle
safely to the side of the pool—where I dashed, shoes in hand, to meet
him.
108 / Influence