The power to persuade people?

It’s not just politicians like David Cameron and Barack Obama reading ‘Nudge’ (Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein), marketers are also turning to it to discover how persuasion is no longer an art but is now a science.

Studies have shown that most of the time we like to follow the crowd. If we are asked, we insist that we are not swayed by others opinions and that we make our own minds up however our behaviour and evolution belie this. Initially we have evolved to live in groups and with similar aims, so similar behaviour and co-operation become a lot more likely.

An example of when group norms have persuaded people to behave in a certain way was in a hotel bathroom. When people read the signs in their rooms asking them to help save the environment (and the hotel’s laundry bill) by keeping their towels for more than a day, many people complied. But not everyone. When the sign was changed to say that most people who stayed re-used their towels, people were significantly more likely to keep their towels.

There is a still a feeling that you are acting on free will however you are being subtly pushed in a particular direction. This only works if you feel that you have something in common with the rest of the group otherwise you won’t want to fit in with them.

Advertisers are already using this in a number of ways – including it in copy (‘thousands of people like you are already singing up to this offer’) and allowing people to badge themselves so that there is a collective visible momentum (charity ribbons/ armbands). Is social media now the ultimate way to showcase behaviours of our peers and thus influence the behaviour of others like them?