The Principle of Being First or Cialdini’s Proof

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A friend of mine, Mike and his lovely wife got got onto the tube (or subway) the other day and noticed a guy covered in blood slouching or rather sitting alone on one side of the carriage while half a dozen or more travellers sat opposite him. Mike’s first reaction was to join the other people to avoid the bloodied man but in an instant his wife took matters into her own hands.

She crossed over to the man to ask him if he was OK or needed help. While she was speaking to him, a strange thing happened - the other people began to gather around too and engaged the sitation with the hurt man. At the next station the emergency stop button was pushed and London Underground staff removed the man to a get medical attention. What Mike witnessed in the carriage baffled him. Why did everyone on the underground train at first avoid the bleeding man until Mike’s wife approached him and then act very concerned arounf him?

The answer lies with a sociologist called Robert Cialdini who wrote a book called Influence: Science and Practice and described in it an experiment he carried out in Chicago.

Cialdini left a brand new car (off the showroom floor) on the street in one of Chicago’s ‘bad’ neighbourhoods. They returned to collect the car the next morning to find that it was still there and had not been touched. Not a scratch was to be found.

So, some time later, they left a similar car near the same spot as the first but this time they left it with a broken rear window. The next morning, Cialdini went to retrieve the car and found that it had been totally demolished and stripped of its tyres.

What had happened? What took place overnight to cause such devastation? Why was the new car not touched but the second car with a broken window demolished?

The answer lies in the principle of influence that Cialdini calls ’social proof’- when people do not know what action to take or how to behave, they look for someone within their peer group to ‘teach’ them what do or behave. In other words, when a person establishes (goes first) a pattern of behaviour (actions), the rest of the group follows or may even begin to emulate the leader.

Most of us will have experienced this first hand many times in our lives. For instance, at school how many of you hung back to see which group was the ‘in-crowd’ and you then made you way into the group?

I like the dinner party story. How many of you have been invited to a ‘larnie’ (high society) dinner bash and once seated have agonised over which spoon or knife and fork is used for which course?! I have and so decided to hang back a bit and playact at more social interaction until someone with a similar entre’ picks up the correct utensil! And so it went through to cheese and biscuits, me waiting for a ‘leader’ to show me the way to prevent me from being ostrasized by the group for being inept at dinner etiquette.

Cialdin provides us with a great insight into how to become a leader and to be the first to take a course of action or behave in a certain way. The best bit is that by being first you establish the rules. You have previously probably held back before due to not knowing what the rules are. Well by being first, and recognising that no rules exist as a guide, you can be first and thereby establish and set the rules for the rest of the workplace, community, friends or strangers on a train to folow. In lots of instances you do not need to even think about your actions. Like my friend Mike’s wife, instinct drove her to react to the bleeding man. She did not hold back and debate the existence or absence of guidelines. She just did it.

As Mike says, “Understanding the power of social proof gives us a valuable insight into our ability to assume a leadership role in nearly any work, family, or social situation. A large part of the impact we have on our environments, our teams, our community, or our children is down to our ability to do one thing – to ‘go first’ with the kind of behavior we want to encourage in others.”

So if you want to see or experience how you can impact your immediate environment, go first. When you want improvements from your dpartment, go first with the experiment(s) to bring about the improvement. Even if you make mistakes, you make it OK for the team to experiment. Ultimately, improvement will occur because you showed them how. Mistakes n all.

Mike says you should try this experiment:

1. The next time you are in a public place where someone is asking people for money, notice the many different ways people have of not giving it to them. Some will pretend not to see the person, others will look at them with disgust, and some will shrug their shoulders apologetically as they hurry past.

2. ‘Go first’ by reaching into your pocket and giving them some money.

3. Step back and observe (subtly!) how many other people step forward to help out.

I have done this experiment and others. Like the pedestrian crossing example. Hold back and see how many wait with you even though they are allowed by law to cross anyway.

Bottom line, if you want to be a leader - you have to go first.

UPDATE: I should explain the car experiment. Well when the first car was left alone in the street, nobody in any of the streetgangs or individuals took the lead to go smash a pristine vehicle. There was possibly no existing behaviour pattern among them to kickstart any demolition.

In the second experiment, the broken window possibly led someone in the gangs or an individual to mistakenly believe that a ‘bro’ had already taken the initiative to begin the demolition so as a behaviour had been established it was now OK for the rest to follow suit.

I have seen this alongside our roads with abandonded vehicles. They remain intact for a week or maybe two then suddenly one day, the back window gets bashed in. This leads to a gradual increase in demolition probably by other people not related in anyway to the initial person who broke the rear window. Interesting huh?!

The Principle of Being First or Cialdini’s Proof