Re: Social Proof Help Required - What to Read? November 18, 2007
The Mere Exposure Effect – This is the idea that merely sharing one or two warm interactions with someone will make them perceive you in a favourable light. More importantly, imagine walking around a room where you have shared these favourable experiences with a number of people in the venue.
As you walk heads will be turning, people will be smiling at you as you walk around, others will be noticing it. Your propinquity will be increasing tenfold with every person you speak to as the mere exposure effect travels around the room.
Suddenly you will find yourself in a situation where absolutely everyone in the room is favourable towards you. There won't be anyone you can't speak to and, if done correctly, a whole bunch of people will be wondering exactly who you are. This can happen in absolutely any location; from a train or bus to a top celebrity night club in the best part of town.
There are a number of different techniques that will help you with this.
You can see how with this it would be easy to move around staff in a venue and vibe with them in a nice way, but what about people who aren't predisposed to be nice to you? In these situations it's important to learn the different ways to get new people to be friendly towards you.
First off, don't worry if you get a negative reaction. You're playing a bigger game. People around you are unlikely to notice you receiving a bad reaction, mostly due to the fact that many people are polite in the rebuttals. Just make sure that you leave any interaction in the most positive way possible. A simple phrase such as;
"I'm so sorry to have upset you, I was only looking to have a conversation with someone new. I hope I haven’t offended you. Have a great night."
Naturally you'd prefer to have a whole bunch of perfect interactions, but there is just no way of knowing whether a given interaction will always go well; obviously the more your mere exposure and propinquity built up, the better responses you will get. The trick is trying to make sure the earlier one's go as well as possible until you have the required level of social proof to be able to vibe with the entire room.
There are a number of different ways to begin speaking to people. Whatever you decide to use ultimately, there are two things to bear in mind. Try not to be threatening initially and try to add value to everyone you meet.