It's a cognitive bias that causes people to think or act in a certain manner because they believe that other people are doing the same.
For example, the bandwagon effect might cause someone to adopt a certain political ideology, simply because influential people in their social circle have adopted the same ideology.
- The bandwagon effect can influence people’s political choices.
- It can influence consumers’ decisions regarding which products to buy.
- It can influence users’ decisions regarding how to rate stories or comments.
- It can influence investors’ financial choices.
- It can influence doctors’ medical decisions.
- It can influence organizations’ implementation of new technologies.
It serves as a mental shortcut that people instinctively use in order to make a decision quickly.
Specifically, bandwagon cues, which are signs that other people believe something or are doing something, can trigger the thought that “if other people like this, then I should too”.
- Slow down your reasoning process. Let some time pass between the point at which you encounter social cues and the point at which you make a final decision on something.
- Set up optimal conditions for decision making. Choose to only make a certain decision when you’re by yourself.
- Consider alternative options. Think about alternative options that you can choose beyond the one that is adopted by the majority.
For example, you could choose to openly display social proof or bandwagon cues, in order to signal to other people that there is support for whatever it is you are promoting.
Video-sharing sites demonstrate the benefits of displaying these cues, since people often use popularity cues such as the number of views that a video has in order to decide whether to watch it or not.
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The Influence on others happens in several ways:
- Understanding the Verbatim Effect can help us present the information in a tailored way, facilitating retention in others, using repetition or highlighting.
- This can also help us make people remember the tiny details, leading to avoidance of common misunderstandings.
- It can help us trim our presentations, removing all the information that we know won't be remembered by the audience anyway.
It occurs primarily due to the fact that we tend to naturally examine and remember events primarily through our personal point of view.
Even when we realize that we should adjust our perspective to see things through other people’s eyes, we tend to anchor this new perspective to our own, and we often fail to adjust from our original viewpoint enough to properly assess how other people feel.
Since we spend the majority of the time experiencing things from our own perspective, we struggle to imagine the perspective of others.
The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that makes it difficult for people to account for the fact that other people’s thoughts, beliefs, and views are different from their own.