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After carrying out a survey on several people who walked into an office in a day; several students and university professors, two telephone repair men and a janitor, their reaction was critically invariable since upon asking their views on canned laughter they all termed it as stupid, fake and phony and despite my interviewees being a small number, it is possible that they represent the common negative sentiments shared by a vast number of the population. But despite all these negative sentiments, why is canned laughter so popular among television executives? It is intriguingly simple; they have information of what research says that audiences when exposed to canned laughter, they tend to laugh longer and more often when exposed to them and rating the material and also that canned laughter is highly effective for poor jokes. Introduction of the laugh tracks on these programs which are seemingly comic increases the audience’s humorous and appreciative response even and especially when the material is of poor quality. This is evident with television programs which are seemingly artless but saturated with canned laughter and eventually they appeal to the audience.
It is perplexing how canned laughter works on us since it is quite easy to identify between real laughter and artificial laughter. The hilarity we hear is not matched to the quality of the joke that follows on but this mechanically fabricated merriment which is artificially created by a technician at a control board despite being transparent forgery works on us! However, in order to uncover the power of canned laughter, it is important we understand yet another influential potential weapon; the principle of social proof. The principle of social proof states that in order for us to determine what is correct, we first find out what other people think is correct. This principle applies mainly how we reach decisions of what is regarded as correct behavior. It states that we view a behavior as correct in given situations to the degree we see others effecting it. Acting in accordance with social evidence than contrary to it we will make fewer mistakes as is seen how people follow the crowd since it seems to be the right thing to do. As a constituent of other weapons of influence, a shortcut is created to determine behavioral manner but however the user of the shortcut is vulnerable to being attacked by the profiteer usually lying in wait somewhere along that path.
Canned laughter hence can be attributed to the principle of social proof whereby we respond in a mindless and reflexive fashion where we get fooled by partial or fake evidence. Our folly is not responding to other people’slaughter to decide what is humorous but is doing so in response to patently fraud laughter. We have become too accustomed to responding to the humorous reactions of others to determine what’s funny or not and can be made to respond to the sound and not the substance of the actual thing. Our preferences for shortcuts are being exploitedby the television executives since we have tendency to react automatically on basis of partial or fake evidence knowing that it will cue our tapes.
Television executives are however not the only ones using social evidence for profit; a variety of settings tend to make us assume that an action is correct if more people are doing it. Bartenders use the same principle whereby they fill up the tips jar with several dollar bills so as to motivate customers to tip more. Even in churches collection baskets may be salted a little so as to create the same effect and hence increase in collections made. Audiences of evangelical preachers are seeded with ringers who usually come forward to make contributions and donations hence a majority of the people follow suit.
Advertisers, authors among others in business use the lines such as best-selling or most used or fastest growing tags with their products since they do not require to convince us that the product is good but to convince more people to use it. Same goes for readers when they walk in a bookshop, almost all books have the tag “best seller” of a certain nation hence attracting them to buying them. Nightclub owners manufacture their own social proof brand whereby they create long waiting lines for their clubs despite there being plenty space in the clubs. Since ninety five percent of people are imitators and five percent initiators, we see salesmen spicing their pitches with numerous accounts of individuals using their products and their satisfactory remarks.
Albert Bandura, a psychologist has used the principle of social proof and has got astounding results from his experiments. In one whereby he was with nursery school age children who had fear of dogs, they watched for four days a child as young as them play with a dog for twenty minutes and by the end of the exercise, over sixty seven percent were willing to climb into a play pen and paly with a dog without fear. In another experiment, instead of a live show, he used many various tapes of various young children playing with dogs they were most effective in that how the principle of social proof works in accordance to following actions of majority of the people. It was observed that having various recordings can help children overcome their fears as was done to those afraid of dogs.
All weapons of influence work better in certain conditions than others and if we are to defend ourselves adequately against such weapons, it is vital to identify the vital operating conditions in order to know when it is most vulnerable to be influenced. Lack of familiarity also leads to uncertainty in some cases since while unsure of ourselves in an ambiguous situation where uncertainty reigns we are prone to looking at and accepting the actions of others and deeming them correct. This can be seen through Sylvan Goldman, the inventor of shopping carts which could be pushed instead of carrying the heavy shopping baskets. He hired a few of the shops attendants to push the carts around and many people who came into the shop followed suit. This invention led him being a multimillionaire; he had a 400 million dollar estate at his time of death.
It is also observed that for a bystander to help out in an emergency is unlikely due to there being other bystanders present and this mainly is because there is a common thought that there being many people around, the personal responsibility is reduced. They think that perhaps one of the bystanders will call for help or that somebody else already has done so with that common thought being in every bystander’s mind, in the end nobody helps out. Another reason to this is psychological and intriguing and founded on the social proof principle involving the pluralist ignorance effect. Not very often is an emergency an emergency; a man lying in the alley may be a heart attack victim or a drunk sleeping it off, the commotion next door may be a marital dispute where intervention would be unwelcome or an assailant that requires police intervention but in times of such uncertainty, the common tendency is to look around for other clues. Due to the reactions of other around we tend to assume that the situation is not an emergency. We tend to forget that everyone else around is more often than not looking for social evidence. This is because we all would rather appear poised and unflustered among others and most likely to search for evidence placidly with brief and camouflaged glances at those around us. Hence everyone due to observing others looking unruffled and fail to act, as a result of the principle of social proof the emergency is hence considered a non-emergency.
An experiment carried out with an epileptic student showed him being helped eighty five percent of the time while there was a single bystander and thirty one percent while multiple bystanders were present. Another experiment was that if an individual noted smoke seeping from a house it was reported in seventy five percent of the cases but in groups of threes, there were reports of such at thirty eight percent of times. Same case of how a single bystander would help out while there were multiple bystanders only sixteen percent of the times were they assisted. As a victim, it is crucial you do more than alert bystanders while in danger; remove the uncertainties associated with how and who should provide the assistance else your chances of survival slip away. The best way to make your resounding call more effective while in a crowd is to point out one person and let them know or at least have an idea of how to help or what kind of emergency you are in. This dispels all uncertainties that may prevent one getting emergency action required. Scientific evidence shows that the result should be quick and effective assistance.
Generally, while in need of emergency aid one should reduce the uncertainties of those around you concerning your condition and their responsibilities. Be precise about the kind of aid you require and avoid bystanders from making their own conclusions since the principle of social proof and consequent plural ignorance effect ay lead them to disregarding your situation as a nonemergency. Keep this in mind as a strategy to creating compliance with an emergency request. Furthermore, the failure of your request could mean losing your life.
Uncertainty in certain situations has proved to leading others to acting more in line with actions of others. Similarity is however another vital working condition. We are more prone to following in the steps of a similar individual more than following a dissimilar one reason being observing people who are just like us gives us the correct insight into the constituents of behavior for ourselves. Scientific research shows more compelling evidence in similarity in determination of whether one will imitate another’s behaviors. An apt illustration can be seen from a study carried out in a campus environment where there was a fund raising event and the requester claimed to be a student at the institution and implied that therefore the rest should follow suit to support the same cause. The result was the charity donations being more than double. These results suggest the important role played by the principle of social proof of how we tend to use the actions of others to decide on proper behavior for ourselves especially on viewing others to be like ourselves.
This is not only applicable to adults only but to children too. It was observed that children who saw a film depicting a dental visit being a positive experience lowered their dental visit anxieties principally when at the same age as the child in the film. Despite having seen the impact social proof can have on human decision making, a seemingly nonsensical statistical illustration arises. After a suicide makes headlines, on newspapers both local and international, there is an alarming rate of plane crashes and jets. Reason being the same social conditions causing suicides to occur are the same leading to accidental deaths. For instance, those prone to suicidal thoughts may react to stressful events by ending it all while others react to the same events by being distracted, angry impatient and nervous. This at most times escalates to the handymen operating and maintaining devices and machinery such as cars and airplanes become clumsy hence they become less safe and there is a sharp increase in deaths related to automobiles and aircrafts.
According to these interpretations of the social conditions, the same societal factors leading to intentional deaths happen to be the same leading to accidental ones hence the strong connection between intentional and accidental deaths. However, interestingly, another statistical analysis fails to agree with this. It states that the other explains that fatal crashes occur more in areas where suicide has been committed and highly publicized compared to where it happens and is hushed away from the media and press.
In attempts to explain the relationship between suicides and escalated deaths has led to creation of a bereavement account since the publicizing of deaths of well-known and respected public figures throws people in a state of utter shock hence leading to the increase in the deaths due to careless driving among other factors. David Philips points a finger at something he terms as the Werther Effect, a story which is chilling and intriguing. It originates from German literature from over two thousand years ago, created by Johann von Goethe who produced a novel titled The Story of Young Werther. In this book, the young hero, Werther commits suicide and it has a major impact. The novel not only brought Goethe to fame but also led to a wave of emulative suicides across Europe which led to the novel being banned in several countries.
