Our want (and happiness) for what others want

Behaviour Change

Females are more attracted to males that have other females close by. Sage grouse hens are more likely to choose to mate with a male if other females have already chosen him. The likelihood of a female fallow deer or sage grouse entering the territory of a male is positively associated with the number of females already present. In a particularly clever experiment, scientists found that placing a stuffed female black grouse in the territory of a male who had failed to mate resulted in an increase in the number of females who enter that luckless male’s territory. Females are influenced by the preferences of other females.

At the human level as well, our automatic, nonconscious mental system uses the preferences of others to help us form our own preferences and even to help us evaluate how happy we are with a choice we have already made.

Researchers put a stuffed female black grouse beside a male that real females had ignored. More females entered his territory. Whatever qualities he possessed remained exactly as before. The visible fact of being chosen had changed.

There is something wonderfully rude about the experiment. Preference likes to describe itself as private judgement, then a taxidermy prop walks in and improves the candidate.

Crowds can carry useful information. Six occupied restaurant tables suggest that six groups noticed something the passer-by has not. Popular software may connect more easily with colleagues. A widely watched programme supplies tomorrow’s conversation. Copying other people is often cheaper than investigating everything from first principles.

The trouble is that popularity hides its production history. A genuine queue and a hired queue look identical from the pavement. “Ten thousand customers” may represent ten thousand independent judgements, or a sequence in which later buyers saw the choices of earlier ones. Once the counter is public, the number helps create the next number.

Marketers naturally adore this because the signal can do work the product has not yet earned. Crop the empty tables from the photograph. Display the busiest hour. Call an early lead “most popular” and let social proof compound it. None of these necessarily requires a lie; selection does the dirty work more elegantly.

Back in the territory, the stuffed female contributes no judgement at all. The arriving birds supply the real preference. The first piece of evidence was cloth, stuffing and a very successful pose.