Herd behavior

Have you ever found yourself wanting something you had barely thought about until everyone started talking about it? Maybe it was a phone, a fashion item, or a product people on social media could not stop talking about. Perhaps someone you know bought it and had nothing but good things to say. The more you heard about it, the more appealing it became. Suddenly, something you wouldn’t have considered became something you wanted to try. Psychologist Robert Cialdini explored this behavior in his work on persuasion, identifying social proof as one of the principles of persuasion. It describes our tendency to look at what other people are doing when deciding what to do ourselves, particularly when we are unsure.