Making Social Validation Work

The power of social validation can be used to your benefit in any persuasive situation. If your product or service is socially validated, people are most likely to use it or to switch to it. People are always looking around and comparing themselves to see if they line up with everyone else. If they feel a discrepancy between where they are and where everyone else is, they will most likely conform to the group standard. Consider the following ways you can enhance the effects of social validation to your benefit:

1.

The larger the group, the better. The larger the group, the more people will conform. Social theory shows us that when a group grows, so does conformity to that group.

2.

The greater the familiarity, the better. The more a person can identify with the group, the more that person will be influenced to change their behavior and/or opinions. Social validation is more powerful when we observe people we consider to be just like us.[23]

3.

The clearer the principle of social validation, the better. Find the best use of social validation in your product or service. Is it the best selling, the most popular, used by the elite, the fastest growing? Is it part of a trend or is it the industry standard? Who uses it? Do you have testimonials from other clients or users?

[23]Festinger, Pepitone, and Newcomb, ‘‘Some Consequences of Deindividuation.’’

Chapter 7: The Law of Scarcity--Get

Anyone to Take Immediate Action

Overview

Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.

—JIM ROHN

Online auctions drive me nuts. In most auctions, I find an item I like and I put in what I think is a reasonable, winning bid. I promise myself that I won’t bid higher. But I always get caught. When I get the outbid notice, I can’t believe somebody outbid me. What if I can’t find this item again? They obviously think this item is worth more than I do. Then I find myself wanting it even more—whatever it is—and I bid far more than I originally intended. The thrill of winning usually outweighs the pain of the price I paid.

In 1996, Jackie Kennedy’s personal belongings were put up for auction. Everyone knew such items would reel in top dollar. More than 100,000 catalogs were sold prior to the auction. Hardcover catalogs sold at ninety dollars a copy, while paperback catalogs cost forty-five dollars a copy. The week the belongings were on public display, more than 40,000 people took part. The hype and anticipation surrounding the event catapulted prices far beyond the originally anticipated prices. For example, a brooch estimated at $6,000 to $8,000 sold for $415,000; John F. Kennedy’s golf clubs were estimated at $700 to $900 but sold for $772,500; a wooden cigar box estimated at $2,000 sold for $547,500; even a cigarette lighter inscribed with the letter ‘‘J’’—estimated at $300—sold for $85,000.[1]

Think about potatoes. Nothing special, right? There was a time in history (late 1700s) when potatoes were not a popular food. The French thought potatoes were connected with leprosy, the Germans thought they were nothing better than feed for livestock, and Russian peasants actually thought they were poisonous! Then Catherine the Great came along and turned potatoes into gold. She had high fences installed to enclose her potato fields. Signs dotted the land warning the Russian citizens not to steal her potatoes. With the potatoes suddenly off limits, they became the talk of the town! Imagine what those peasants were thinking as they watched those big, tall fences go up: ‘‘Why are they fencing in the potato fields? Why are the rich keeping the potatoes all to themselves? Why are we restricted to the same old beef stew every single day? We deserve potatoes, too! We need potatoes! Give us potatoes!’’[2]

[1]See http://www.usatoday.com/life/special/jackie/ljack000.htm

[2]A. Pratkanis and E. Aronson, Age of Propaganda (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1991), p. 188.

Why Scarcity Drives Us Wild

The Law of Scarcity plays a large role in the persuasion process. Opportunities are always more valuable and exciting when they are scarce and less available. We want to be the ones to own the rare items or to get the last widget on the shelf. The more the scarcity of an item increases, the more the item increases in value, and the greater the urge to own it.

Whenever choice is limited or threatened, the human need to maintain a share of the limited commodity makes us crave it even more. Scarcity increases the value of any product or service. Scarcity drives people to action, making us act quickly for fear of missing out on an opportunity. Potentially losing something before we’ve even had an opportunity to possess it drives people to action. We don’t want to miss out on anything we could have had. We want to get around any restriction placed upon us. We feel uptight and want back our freedom. This causes tension and unrest. The Law of Scarcity not only pertains to physical products, but also to time, information, price, and knowledge.

The Threat of Potential Loss

Anytime someone feels their freedom—to choose, think, or act—is being restricted, they ‘‘experience psychological reactance and attempt to restore their freedom.’’[3] With this restriction on freedom we are driven to latch on to that thing which we fear will be restricted even more. Instead of standing by and saying, ‘‘Okay, I’ll give that up,’’ we take the opposite approach. Suddenly, that restricted item is even more important to us. Researchers call this tendency ‘‘reactance.’’[4] An intensely motivational state, reactance causes us to be emotional, single-minded, or even irrational. We hate feeling restricted, so we are highly motivated to resolve anything that creates that feeling. It is due to reactance that we act, and that we want it now.

A study involving a group of male toddlers illustrates just how powerful the Law of Scarcity is, even in very small children. In the study, the toddlers were brought into a room that held two equally exciting and appealing toys. A Plexiglas barrier was set up so that one of the toys sat next to it, while the other sat behind. The barrier wasn’t very tall, so some of the toddlers could simply reach over the top and grab for the toy. For others, though, the barrier was still too high to reach over, so they could only reach that particular toy if they went around and behind the Plexiglas. The researchers wanted to see if the obstructed toy, being more ‘‘scarce,’’ would draw more attention and be more desirable. The boys who could easily reach over the top showed no preference toward the obstructed or the unobstructed toy; the unobstructed toy was approached just as frequently and just as quickly. For the boys who could not reach over the top, however, the obstructed toy was clearly the more desirable of the two—in fact, the boys made contact with it three times faster than with the unobstructed toy![5] Even in toddlers, there was an urge to defy restriction of choice!

You Can’t Have It

In another study involving children, researchers told the children they could select from a wide array of candy bars. They then pointed out a particular candy bar and told them they should not choose that one, but any of the others would be fine. The children reacted to the threat to their freedom of choice by choosing the bar they’d been told not to select. In doing so, they felt they had preserved their freedom to select whatever bar they wanted.[6] It makes you wonder if that is also why Adam and Eve, who had the entire Garden of Eden to play in, couldn’t stay away from the forbidden fruit.

The Law of Scarcity works because it makes people feel like they will lose their opportunity to act and choose if they don’t do so immediately. The threat of such loss creates urgency in our decision making. Have you ever noticed how people tend to be more motivated when faced with potentially losing something than when they might take steps of their own accord and gain something of equal value? Studies have verified that this is a common and consistent

phenomenon.[7] For example, do you think homeowners would feel more urgency to act if they were told how much money they were going to lose if they didn’t improve their insulation, or if they were told how much money they would save? They are more likely to act if they are told about their potential loss.[8]

The mental trigger of potential loss causes such great anxiety in people that they act to prevent the loss—even though they likely are not really interested in the product itself. Imagine making a decision where you have all day to make up your mind and you have the reassurance that when you return tomorrow, the item will still be available at the same good price. You could take days to make that decision.

However, when scarcity enters the picture and you feel that the availability of the product, the timing, or even the price is bound to change without notice, the mental trigger of scarcity begins to operate. You are driven to acquire something to alleviate the threat of potential loss. That’s why shoe salespeople always bring you back the last pair of shoes available in your size at the sale price—which ends today. What we can’t have is always more desirable and exciting than what we already possess. As the adage says, ‘‘The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.’’ Any parent knows the result of telling a child she can’t have or do something. The child will immediately drop everything and want the one thing she can’t have. Look at Romeo and Juliet. The forbidden nature of their relationship made it even stronger and more appealing to them. Parents need to be cautioned about forbidding their child’s friends and lovers because the Law of Scarcity will come back to haunt them.

The manner in which an object becomes scarce also contributes to making it more desirable. In a particular study, researchers gave subjects a cookie jar containing ten cookies. Then, taking the jar back, the subjects were given a new jar containing only two cookies. One group of subjects was told their cookies had been given away to other participants because of the demand for their study. Another group was told their cookies were taken away because the proctor had made a mistake and had given them the wrong cookie jar. The results indicated that the cookies that had become scarce through social demand were rated considerably higher than the cookies that had become scarce through the proctor’s oversight. Not only this, but they were also the most highly rated of all the cookies used in the study![9]

The Law of Scarcity works even when the desired object or thing isn’t going to really benefit the recipient. A county in Florida enacted legislation forbidding the sale and use of laundry detergents containing phosphates, as phosphates negatively impact the environment and don’t help clean the clothes. Before the ban went into effect, stores experienced an increase in sales of the phosphate-containing detergents. After the ban was underway, stores within the city saw a drop in laundry detergent sales overall, while stores in surrounding counties not affected by the ban saw an increase in sales of the phosphate-containing detergents.

Later, when consumers were polled as to which detergents were better, the residents where the ban had taken place rated the restricted detergents higher than any others in all categories. The Law of Scarcity had made the limited product dramatically more appealing.[10]

[3]S. Brehm and J. Brehm, Psychological Reactance: A Theory of Freedom and Control (New York: Academic Press, 1981).

[4]F. Rhodewalt and J. Davison, ‘‘Reactance and the Coronary-Prone Behavior Pattern: The Role of Self-Attribution in Response to Reduced Behavioral Freedom,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1983): 44.

[5]J. Brehm and M. Weintraub, ‘‘Physical Barriers and Psychological Reactance: Two-Year-Olds Response to Threats to Freedom,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 35 (1977): 830–836.

[6]Thomas Hammock and Jack W. Brehm, ‘‘The Attractiveness of Choice Alternatives When Freedom to Choose Is Eliminated by a Social Agent,’’ Journal of Personality 34 (1966): 546–554.

[7]A. Tversky and D. Kahneman, ‘‘The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice,’’ Science (1981): 453–-458.

[8]M. Gonzales, E. Aronson, and M. Costanzo, ‘‘Increasing the Effectiveness of Energy Auditors: A Field

Experiment,’’ Journal of Applied Social Psychology (1988): 1046–1066.

[9]S. Worchel, J. Lee, and A. Adewole, ‘‘Effects of Supply and Demand on Ratings of Object Value,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1975): 906– 914.

[10]M. Mazis, ‘‘Antipollution Measures and Psychological Reactance Theory: A Field Experiment,’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1975): 654-666.