Reasons Behind Why People Follow the Crowd
People often believe that they have control over their own decisions; however, the article reveals the truth behind our behaviors. Social psychology tells us that, because humans are social beings, we are naturally influenced by other’s thoughts and behaviors. One study that psychologist Robert Cialdini conducted was on Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park, where there was a sign saying, “Your heritage is being vandalized every day by theft losses of petrified wood of 14 tons a year, mostly a small piece at a time.” Surprisingly enough, the path that did not have the sign had one-third less theft compared to the path that had the sign. This was because visitors interpreted the sign that it is okay to take small pieces since it is stolen almost every day by other people. The article also lists out several reasons behind why we follow the crowd. First, we rely on signals such as popularity. If everyone else buys a product, then we assume that the product is worth our attention. Second, since humans and social beings, we naturally know that the chances of surviving are greater when we copy other’s behaviors. This is also known as the conformist tendency.
It was interesting to read the article because most of the concepts overlapped with what we covered in class. First, the reasons that the article provides on why we follow the crowd were very similar to the direct benefits and information-based benefits that we learned. The first reason for popularity seemed to be the information-based benefits, where the behavior of others conveys information about what they know. People think that there must be a reason why things are popular. They do not have much private information, so they follow the “wisdom of the crowd.” This is also relevant to Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park experiment because the sign said there is theft every day, which shows how popular and many people steal wood. Adding on, the second reasoning on conformist tendency seems similar to the direct benefits, where there are benefits from aligning with the crowd, regardless of whether it’s a good idea in isolation or not. In order to survive, it is best to stay in a big community, and therefore people align with the crowd. We have learned from class that these two benefit-reasons are perfectly rational reasons behind why we follow the crowd, and they naturally create information cascade herding. One last note to add on is that I was also able to think of the structural balance theory from the second reasoning. Usually, people with similar ideas have a positive relationship between others, and this creates a balanced triangle since all edges are positive. As social beings, people pursue positive relationships, and this naturally creates balanced triangles throughout the network, which is the concept of conformist tendency.