

The phrase “social proof” seems to have originated online in 2007 - api
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%22social%20proof%22

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FiatLuxDave
It appears to come from much earlier than 2007. See for example: Cialdini,
Robert B.; Wosinska, W.; Barett, D. W.; Gornik-Durose, M. (October 1999).
"Compliance with a request in two cultures: The differential influence of
social proof and commitment/consistency on collectivists and individualists".
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 25 (10): 1242–1253.
doi:10.1177/0146167299258006

Robert Cialdini may be the one who is most associated with this phrase. A few
other items which reference it are:

Cialdini, Robert B. (October 2001). "Harnessing the science of persuasion".
Harvard Business Review 79 (9): 72–79.

Cialdini, Robert (1993). Influence (3rd ed.). New York: HarperCollins.

So, I suppose the real question is, why does Google trends show a beginning in
2007?

Edit: There appear to be a number of articles about Cialdini's book in 2007.
It appears that there was a Washington Post article in 2007 that spurred the
interest spike: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/pearls-
befo...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/pearls-before-
breakfast-can-one-of-the-nations-great-musicians-cut-through-the-fog-of-a-dc-
rush-hour-lets-find-
out/2014/09/23/8a6d46da-4331-11e4-b47c-f5889e061e5f_story.html)

~~~
dalke
Not knowing anything about "social proof" or why it's important to know when
it appears online, but the term appeared online well before 2007. For example,
[https://web.archive.org/web/20000511115153/http://www.isoc.o...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000511115153/http://www.isoc.org/inet99/proceedings/3g/3g_2.htm)
(from 2000) says:

> Social proof. In many social situations, one of the mental shortcuts on
> which we rely, in determining what course of action is most appropriate, is
> to look to see what other people in the vicinity are doing or saying. This
> phenomenon, known as social proof, can prompt us to take actions that may be
> against our self-interest without taking the time to consider them more
> deeply. Cults from the Jonestown Temple to Heaven's Gate, for example,
> provide cogent evidence of how strong the effects of that phenomenon can be
> in the right circumstances. [19]

Therefore, it's likely an artifact of Google trends.

Various sources cite: White, S. H. (1977). Social proof structures: The
dialectic of method and theory in the work of psychology. Life-span
developmental psychology: Dialectical perspectives on experimental research,
59-92 as the source of the term.

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api
Posted this out of curiosity -- does anyone know what "patient zero" is for
this meme?

It's a meme that I find possibly harmful, since it amounts to the idea that
herd effects and other forms of social confirmation bias are a good thing and
that these biases should be intentionally built into the decision making
process. It also carries some other questionable baggage / corollaries:

\- Secrets do not exist, hence trade secrets and contrarian business models or
scientific ideas are rare or nonexistent.

\- Markets are almost perfectly efficient -- including the marketplace of
ideas.

\- Conceptual thought and first-principles reasoning are very unreliable.

\- In addition to intellectual biases toward cargo cultism and herd effects,
it also introduces a powerful bias toward cronyism and "old boy networks."

I'm also curious if the original idea was possibly more nuanced than that.
It's very common for a nuanced idea (e.g. disruption) to get very dumbed down
by the game of telephone.

Related: [http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-conventional-
wisdom-...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-conventional-wisdom-on-
oil-is-always-wrong/)

Social proof would seem to be an intrinsically _bad_ thing in investing -- so
why is this concept so popular among investors?

