93. When People are Uncertain, They Look to Others to Decide What to Do

Has this ever happened to you? You are making a presentation at the end of which you will be asking people to decide on a plan of action. You’ve talked individually to all the participants ahead of time, and consensus is that people want to move ahead with the decision to act. You give your presentation, and then the discussion about the decision ensues. To your surprise, the group ends up deciding not to make a decision or take an action at this time. What happened?

Uncertainty Tips the Scale

In my book Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click?, I talk about the tendency to look to others to decide what to do. It’s called social validation.

Bibb Latane and John Darley (1970) conducted research in which they set up ambiguous situations to see if people were affected by what others around them were or were not doing. Participants in the research would go into a room, supposedly to fill out a survey on creativity. In the room would be one or more other people, pretending they were also participants, but who were really part of the experiment. Sometimes there would be one other person in the room, sometimes more. While people were filling out their creativity survey, smoke would start to come into the room from an air vent. Would the participant leave the room? Go tell someone about the smoke? Just ignore it?

People Take Action Only If Others Take Action

What action, if any, the participant took depended on the behavior of the other people in the room, as well as how many other people there were. The more people, and the more the others ignored the smoke, the more the participant was likely to do nothing. If the participant was alone, he or she would leave the room and notify someone. But if there were others in the room and they didn’t react, then the participant would do nothing.

Phrasing Matters

Because people tend to do what others do, the way you word possible decisions makes a big difference. Let’s say you are giving a presentation on why you shouldn’t smoke cigarettes. You could say:

“In 2009, 20.6 percent of US adults 18 or over were cigarette smokers.“

Or you could say:

“In 2009, 79.4 percent of US adults 18 or over did not smoke cigarettes.”

The latter statement would be more influential in getting people to stop smoking or not start, because it implies that most people don’t smoke.