(This posting includes a handout LINK AT THE END OF THIS POST which you are welcome to use with your students.) *

Rudy and three of his friends were trying to decide where they should go for their next vacation together, but they couldn’t agree. The other three had suggested either California, New York, or Colorado, but Rudy recommended Florida. For several days, they talked about the cost of traveling to these places, the price of hotels and things to do. Rudy wasn’t having any luck convincing them to choose Florida, but then he remembered an interesting story about a restaurant menu. This story gave him an idea about how to convince the others to agree with him.

In Beijing, China, managers of group of restaurants asked researchers to help them increase the sales of certain dishes on their menus. They didn’t want the increase in sales to cost them more money. For example, they didn’t want to lower the price, or use more expensive ingredients or hire new experienced chefs. They just wanted to change the label next to the dishes on the menu. They tried labels like “Restaurant Specialty” and “Chef’s Recommendation, but sales of those dishes didn’t increase. Then they used “Most Popular.” This was immediately … (See complete article below.)

For background information about these articles and for suggestions for how to use them with your students, see  • Introducing “Short, High-Interest Readings”  Also, I’ll be adding more of these articles in the right-hand column: ESL Reading> Short, High Interest Articles for Extensive Readings

Here is the eighth article. You can download the article for your students by clicking on the link at the end. Also included are three optional exercises: True-False Questions; Paraphrasing Exercise; Reflection Exercise.

         How We are Influenced by What Other People Think

Rudy and three of his friends were trying to decide where they should go for their next vacation together, but they couldn’t agree. The other three had suggested either California, New York, or Colorado, but Rudy recommended Florida. For several days, they talked about the cost of traveling to these places, the price of hotels and things to do. Rudy wasn’t having any luck convincing them to choose Florida, but then he remembered an interesting story about a restaurant menu. This story gave him an idea about how to convince the others to agree with him.

In Beijing, China, managers of group of restaurants asked researchers to help them increase the sales of certain dishes on their menus. They didn’t want the increase in sales to cost them more money. For example, they didn’t want to lower the price, or use more expensive ingredients or hire new experienced chefs. They just wanted to change the label next to the dishes on the menu. They tried labels like “Restaurant Specialty” and “Chef’s Recommendation, but sales of those dishes didn’t increase. Then they used “Most Popular.” This was immediately …

This was immediately successful. In fact, sales for each of those dishes increased 15-20%. Customers chose them because many other customers chose them.

Rudy decided to use this strategy to convince his friends that they should vacation in Florida. He found an article from a respectable research company on the internet titled, “Top Student Travel Destinations In The U.S.” Ater showing them that Orlando, Florida was the most popular, his friends happily agreed to go there.

Social Psychologists call this social proof. If we want to convince people that a product or idea is good, we don’t have to explain all the details that make something good.  We only have to show them that many other people think that it’s good.

There can be a problem with social proof. We can be tricked into thinking something is very popular. For example, a nightclub owner might make people wait in long lines outside the club even though there is plenty of room inside. Then other people will see these long lines and think that the nightclub is very popular and will want to go too.

At the front counter of some restaurant and coffee shops, we can often see tip jars. Employees will often put money in the jars so customers will think that other customers have left tips, so they should too.

This approach helped the man, Sylvan Goldman, who invented shopping carts become a multi-millionaire. In 1934, he bought several grocery stores. In those days, customers used hand-held baskets to carry the products that they wanted to buy. Goldman noticed that the customers stopped buying things after their baskets became too heavy, so he invented the shopping cart. However, because the carts looked so unfamiliar, customers wouldn’t use them. So, Goldman hung signs explaining how to use them and put the carts in different places around his store, but customers still didn’t use them. Finally, he decided to do something unusual: he hired shoppers to use the carts. Soon other customers saw the carts were popular and started to also use them.  

Here is the link to the article and exercises that you can use with your students: Influenced by other people ARTICLE_EXERCISES

David Kehe
Faculty Emeritus

*About the free-download materials. During my 40 years of teaching ESL, I have had many colleagues who were very generous with their time, advice and materials. These downloads are my way of paying it forward.