A while back, Elon Musk himself tweeted a list of 50 cognitive biases he thinks we all should learn about at a young age. We’ve already posted several of them on the Social Leverage blog over the past year or so. And while many of us probably haven’t had the opportunity to discover them in our younger days, even learning them now can be a tremendous help to founders and investors alike.
Today’s post covers The Bandwagon Effect.
The bandwagon effect is the phenomenon where people adopt beliefs and behaviors only because others are doing so. It’s a type of social proof. People look to what others are doing as evidence of what they should be doing. It is a self-fulling prophecy in so much as the more prevalent a belief or behavior, the more people adopt it. It is prevalent in many domains, including consumer behavior and political alignment – regardless of the evidence to support a particular belief or behavior.
The power of the bandwagon effect comes from our desire to fit in with our peers. Fashion trends are but one example of the phenomenon. For illustration let’s switch the wagon for a train. Imagine a train station, where the train is about to depart. In the beginning only a few people get on, but as more and more people board, others begin to follow – thinking the train must be going somewhere important. Eventually the train is filled to capacity. This is similar to how the bandwagon effect works, where people adapt a position because they see everyone else doing the same thing, even if they originally may not have had any interest in it.
"I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect." ~ Edward Gibbon
If the bandwagon effect leads people to adopt opinions or beliefs simply because they’re popular, rather than because they’re well-reasoned, the quote suggests it’s a waste of time to argue with them. They’re not likely to be swayed by logic.
Earlier posts on Cognitive Biases: