All things being equal, you root for your own sex, your own culture, your own locality…and what you want to prove is that you are better than the oth… - Robert B. Cialdini

Once again we can see that social proof is most powerful for those who feel unfamiliar or unsure in a specific situation and who, consequently, must look outside of themselves for evidence of how best to behave there.

Knowing what I now know, if I could go back in time, would I make the same choice?

Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies? The result was that once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed, even though no real reason, no new information, was added to justify their compliance. Just as the “cheep-cheep” sound of turkey chicks triggered an automatic mothering response from maternal turkeys — even when it emanated from a stuffed polecat — so, too, did the word “because” trigger an automatic compliance response