In this second group, the most popular songs were much more popular
(and the least popular songs were less popular) than in the independent
condition, showing that people’s behavior was influenced by the crowd.
Even more surprisingly, when they ran the experiment again, the particular
songs that became “hits” were different, showing that social influence
didn’t just make the hits bigger but also made them more unpredictable.
1 million people can’t be wrong (from thenextweb.com).
Some familiar examples of social proof on the Web are, “People who
shopped for this product also looked at...” feature and Amazon’s, “What do
customers ultimately buy after viewing this item?”.
Persuasion architects also exploit this principle in the power of defaults.
They know that the default setting of a user interface control has a
powerful influence over people’s behavior. We tend to see the default
setting as a ‘recommended’ option — the option that most other people
would choose in our situation. There are many examples of this being used
as a black hat usability technique, where additional items (like insurance)
are sneaked into the user’s basket.