"Social Proof"?

You can't do math proofs that way! 'Tisn't Rigorous.

I, for one, have been mystified by the Professor Burton's use of the phrase "Social Proof." (Not befuddled, confused, or annoyed...ok, fine, a little annoyed, but mostly just mystified.)

Image by Matt Banks

Yessirree, we have a buzzword. Is it an important one? I think so. The ideas we've associated with it seem to point to a solidification and understanding of the social structures our networked society has been building over the last two decades.

Of course, when I think of Social Proof, I think of math proofs. After accepting that they don't make sense in this context, I start thinking of numismatists' proof sets and half-percent alcohol content. Perhaps CSI comes to mind.

That is why I really like the first thing Wikipedia does with the phrase. It drops it.

Any place you see "Social Proof," replace it with "informational social influence."



Much better, right?



Oh, fine, so it's not.

"Social Proof" is actually a technical term in psychology referring to a specific strategy for handling incomplete information in social situations.

For example, let's say you need to sign up for a specific class next semester. (Let's skip the process of just how you came to that decision; it just has to be next semester.) When you go to sign up, how do you know which professor you want? There might be several, all teaching the same class from the same book.

1. Check the professor's credentials. Oh; all five have Ph.D.'s in the field, and experience indicates that "Ph.D." is not necessarily Good Teacher (though at BYU a certain amount of work goes into making this so). This is more a measure of their peers' evaluation of their research rather than a measure of how good the class will be for you.
2. Look at registration trends. After seniors register, there is often a certain non-random distribution of registrants in each section.
3. Ask a peer in the major. "Oh; I hear Doc Mightymouse is good, but avoid Prof. Blah." This is often relying on their gathered information, and it may not be as good as what you already know.
4. Ask a veteran in the major. "Oh; I don't really know X and Y, but I've had Z and really liked/hated him/her/it." This often comes with anecdotal evidence, and the experiential aspect usually makes me more confident in the information. 
5. Be the expert. If you've had all of the listed professors, you have an opinion. In this case, you're not using this checklist, are you? ;)
   

This is a simplified list, yes. The idea is that we often use our social connections to gather information when direct information is not available. 

Real people do this every day. Yes, you too. Mystical Social Proof is already Part of You.

What Dr. Burton did in his recent(ish) blog post was to describe how this peer-evaluating process works in academia, then give us steps and pointers in how to deliberately use it to forward our own agendas. One of the most important points has been that your "peers" in the world in the networking sense are NOT your "peers" in the social sense. While it has been working, I think I have failed to catch on in part because I haven't accepted his social proof of "social proof." I hope this post helps others stuck in the same spot.

(This does, by the way, tie in to math. A mathematical proof is a way of being sure that something mathematical is true. Social proof is the evidence we gather from social cues to confirm a fact we are unsure of, usually in a social setting.)