Contagious Why Things Catch On

Journal of Consumer Research
2, 206–15. For evidence of social influence in paying
taxes, see Thaler, Richard (2012), “Watching Behavior Before Writing the Rules,” 
New York
Times
, July 12, retrieved from 
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/business/behavioral-science-
can-help-guide-policy-economic-view.html
.
people are more likely to laugh:
 For evidence about social influence in laughter, see Provine, R. R.
(1992), “Contagious Laughter: Laughter Is a Sufficient Stimulus for Laughs and Smiles,” 
Bulletin of
the Psychonomic Society
30, 1–4.
“social proof”:
Cialdini, Robert B. (2001), 
Influence: Science and Practice
(Needham Heights,
Mass.: Allyn & Bacon).
when she looked at hundreds of kidney donations:
The findings from Juanjuan’s clever paper, as
well as assorted statistics about kidney failure and donation, can be found at Zhang, Juanjuan
(2010), “The Sound of Silence: Observational Learning in the U.S. Kidney Market,” 
Marketing
Science
29, no. 2, 315–35.
Koreen Johannessen started:
 Interview with Koreen Johannessen on June 21, 2012.
college students . . . report drinking alcohol:
For some statistics about college students’ binge
drinking, see Weschler, Henry, and Toben F. Nelson (2008), “What We Have Learned from the
Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study: Focusing Attention on College Student
Alcohol Consumption and the Environmental Conditions That Promote It,” 
Journal of Studies on
Alcohol and Drugs
69, 481–90. Also see Hingson, Ralph, Timothy Heeren, Michael Winter, and
Henry Wechsler (2005), “Magnitude of Alcohol-Related Mortality and Morbidity Among U.S.
College Students Ages 18–24: Changes from 1998 to 2001,” 
Annual Review of Public Health
, 26,
259–79, and 
http://www.alcohol101plus.org/downloads/collegestudents.pdf
.
how they felt about drinking:
Psychologists use the term “pluralistic ignorance” to talk about this
issue. Pluralistic ignorance refers to a case where most people in a group privately reject a norm
(such as drinking a lot) but incorrectly assume that others accept it, in part because they can see
others’ behavior but not their thoughts. For a broader discussion, see Prentice, Deborah A., and
Dale T. Miller (1993), “Pluralistic Ignorance and Alcohol Use on Campus: Some Consequences of
Misperceiving the Social Norm,” 
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
64, no. 2, 243–
56.
A restaurant might be extremely popular:
This is why the maître d’ will often seat the first few
arrivals near the window at the front of the restaurant. As a funny side note, there is a place in New
York City that I always assumed was extremely popular because it has benches outside that were
always full. I assumed that the people sitting on them were waiting to eat. Only later did I realize
that they may have been sitting there because it was a convenient place to rest for a few minutes.
1.5 million car sales:
 For the full story on our automobile research, see McShane, Blakely, Eric T.

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Bradlow, and Jonah Berger (2012), “Visual Influence and Social Groups,” 
Journal of Marketing
Research
, (forthcoming). Also see Grinblatt, M., M. Keloharrju, and S. Ikaheimo (2008), “Social
Influence and Consumption: Evidence from the Automobile Purchases of Neighbors,” 
The Review
of Economics and Statistics
90, no. 4, 735–53.
The easier something is to see:
For evidence about how public visibility affects word of mouth, see
Berger, Jonah, and Eric Schwartz (2011), “What Drives Immediate and Ongoing Word of Mouth?”