Herd behaviour and social proof
Copying others is usually a better bet than reasoning alone, until it isn't.
People weigh the options and choose what's individually best for them.
People mostly do what everyone else is doing. Copying, not calculating, drives most behaviour.
Sutherland treats habit and social copying as the two dominant forces in human behaviour, well ahead of the stable, individually reasoned preferences that economics assumes: doing what everyone else does is rarely optimal but is reliably safe, which is exactly why it's so persistent.
He grounds this in evolutionary and experimental material: a physical shop full of other shoppers normalises the act of shopping, primates who feel cheated only once they see another primate getting a better deal, and a first mover into any new behaviour taking a disproportionate reputational hit for it. He's also alert to tipping points, the moment ordering a Guinness, buying an electric car, or owning a mobile phone stops requiring justification and simply becomes the default, and to the darker version of the same mechanism, where "purity spirals" and enforced conformity punish good faith dissent regardless of whether the dissenting view happens to be correct.
An account this thoroughgoing struggles to distinguish herd behaviour that is genuinely smart, aggregated social information from herd behaviour that is simply collective error. Sutherland's own examples of 'good' norms and 'bad' ones rely on him, not the theory, to tell them apart.
147 verified insights in this theme
147 verified insights in this theme
On why people resist doing things differently even when it would benefit them.
On the false hindsight-bias picture of how new technologies actually get adopted.
On the tribal/perceptual resentment behind resistance to electric cars.
On brands suffering from user imagery rather than the product itself.
Naming the two forces Rory says drive most human behavior, in the context of why innovations spread slowly.
Illustrating slow technology adoption with a personal memory of being shouted at for using an early mobile phone in public.
Giving a personal example of innovation adoption from his own life.
On counterfactual comparison and Olympic medal outcomes.
Recounting Daniel Kahneman's private view on why comparison-heavy careers undermine happiness.
Rory on AI hype, arguing individuals can be correct about a technology while collectively swept up in irrational enthusiasm.
Rory clarifying his point about AI hype and collective irrationality.
Rory introducing the idea he calls 'airportonomics.'
Rory's airportonomics example, on airports converging toward the same design once one became the benchmark.
Rory's two-factor-authentication example of individually-rational-but-collectively-dangerous decisions.
Rory on why entrepreneurial contrarianism is unpopular but necessary.
Explaining the self-fulfilling prophecy behind Germany's underrated tourism industry.
On why social-proof heuristics evolved.
Extending Cialdini's social-proof principle to tourism marketing.
Continuing on tourists as part of the product being sold.
Explaining why Germany is underrated as a tourist destination despite its merits.
On using a trusted taste-figure's imagined preference, rather than raw feature comparison, as a heuristic when using AI for decisions.
Criticizing the practice of measuring employees purely on individual billability and accountability.
Summarizing Helen Taylor's theory of human neurodiversity as an evolved safety mechanism in groups.
On why institutions favor conventional failure over unconventional success, citing Keynes.
Explaining Brian Eno's axis theory.
On early-adopter minorities, citing his friend at Herdify.
Explaining herd behaviour and habit as forces against new behaviour.
On the real reason he bought an electric car, versus his rationalized explanations.
On the social stigma of early mobile phone adoption in the 1980s-90s.
Contrasting privately-consumed products with socially-visible ones.
On why alcoholic drinks bought in a pub carry strong social signalling.
On social tipping points in drink choice.
On social proof in drink ordering.
On network effects and contagion in buying behaviour, discussing Tom Ridge's work.
Continuing the sigmoid curve/herd effects point.
Introducing the Matthew effect / winner-takes-all dynamics.
Naming the winner-takes-all effect.
Illustrating winner-takes-all effects created by the gramophone/recorded music.
Extending the winner-takes-all point to book publishing.
Critiquing the downside of conventional benchmarking against competitors.
On why politicians and businesses default to conformity despite the cost.
Pushing back on the claim that young people don't care about pubs because they don't drink.
Critiquing the anti-car movement as a minority, London-centric view.
On status anxiety as a constant, evolved psychological drive.
On confected outrage on both left and right being manufactured signaling by a narrow group.
Describing the 'purity spiral' — signaling moral purity through heightened sensitivity, regardless of the actual interests of those supposedly protected.
A personal theory about social pressure suppressing British men's clothing choices.
On the two default human decision modes: habit and herd behavior.
Rory recounting his early exposure to the World Wide Web via his brother's flatmate connection to Tim Berners-Lee.
Rory on herd instinct as a further evolutionary bias against going independent.
Rory using electric-car adoption as behavioral evidence for how people feel post-decision, not pre-decision.
Rory extending the electric-car observation to automatic transmission.
Rory generalizing from the automatic-car observation to career-change decisions.
Defining fame as a second-order social-proof effect rather than mere awareness.
Explaining why some markets need regulation to preserve trust.
Anecdote illustrating how new technologies are initially socially unacceptable before mass adoption.
On how memory compresses the slow adoption curve of new technologies.
Explaining the psychology behind slow technology adoption curves.
Summarizing the lesson of one-way technology adoptions like air fryers, automatics, and electric cars.
Rory on how airport shopping malls became a status symbol that then became obligatory everywhere.
Rory on Geoffrey Miller's prediction in Spent about status signaling shifting to travel/experiences.
Rory's warning about category-wide trust collapse, illustrated with the timeshare industry.
Rory's London-taxi example of how a small fraction of bad actors can collapse trust in an entire category.
Rory on why sporting or acting careers look more attractive than they statistically are.
On the two competing human drives that advertising has to balance.
Continuing on why advertising people default to championing distinctiveness over belonging.
Rory recounting a futurologist's insight about trends vs vectors.
Rory on the symmetry of trend lifecycles.
Rory on social norms determining drink choice.
Rory on the social discomfort of adopting big new ideas.
Rory on the two defaults driving human behaviour.
Rory on winner-take-all dynamics from social copying.
Rory on mimetics and admiration by proxy.
Rory on mimetic desire driving fashionability.
Rory explaining why he uses an Android phone as a rebalancing act.
Rory on how the desire for exclusivity overrode investors' due diligence with Madoff.
Rory on fashion cycles as change without genuine improvement.
Rory on sourdough bread overrunning other bread varieties, like an invasive species.
Rory linking trend dynamics to evolutionary biology's runaway feedback effects.
Rory on adoption curves flipping social norms once a technology becomes ubiquitous.
Rory citing Nicholas Christakis's research on social contagion in adoption of solar panels.
Rory on visible consumption driving social-proof effects for Guinness.
Comparing backlash to Jaguar's rebrand with Dylan going electric.
On why cultural 'scenes' (like Austin) form and snowball.
On the social unacceptability of admitting a preference for suburban living.
Recounting Rick Rubin's account of his bipolar Long Island/Manhattan upbringing.
On social conformity constraining authentic taste in tight cultural bubbles.
On ideological conformity within the Democratic party's coalition.
Continuing the 'album politics' critique of ideological conformity.
On British cultural limits to displaying wealth, followed by the flat-in-London/Range-Rover example.
Describing the socially acceptable wealth ceiling in British upper-middle-class life.
Concluding the Coke Hilltop ad origin story about shared-adversity bonding.
On technologies (a 19th-century railway, parking apps) that begin as a choice and end as a universal, inescapable norm.
Explaining why an Indian restaurant chain opened for breakfast to seed the appearance of a busy lunchtime.
Arguing a shop sale isn't purely a price-demand-curve effect.
Rory on 'behavioral gridlock' preventing Americans from collectively demanding more vacation time.
Rory explaining why nobody wants to be first to adopt flexible-work norms before they're socially safe.
Contrasting pre-internet messy courtship/house-hunting with algorithmically uniform online filtering.
Describing the shift from drink-driving laws being merely obeyed to being genuinely internalized by his children's generation.
Describing the restaurant sign that discourages phone use via implicit social norm rather than a rule.