Social proof is a powerful tool in the pickup artists’ lexicon of skills and is also known as informational social influence.

It’s basically a psychological factor that happens when people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior in an ambiguous social situation. People unnaturally make the assumption that the majority possesses more knowledge as a collective, and deem the behavior of others as appropriate or better informed.

Layman’s terms: An unfamiliar person, when first entering a group or situation, requires a lot of effort by the group to be assessed accurately. Given a short amount of time and motivation for conscious thought, people will often evaluate others based on how the larger majority behave towards them.

For example, suppose you see a man in the company of three hot women, or at least associated with them, then his social value and attractiveness will be perceived as greater.

The implication in this case would be “He must be of high social value in some way since all those girls seem to really like him”.

Now, what if you saw the same man rejected by many women? You’d most likely judge his social value in a negative light. The implication in this case is then “All these girls keep rejecting this chode, there must be a good reason why they don’t like him”.

In the non-PUA world, a person who’s been unemployed for a while may have a more difficult time finding a new job - even if highly skilled and qualified. Potential employers wrongly attribute the lack of employment to the applicant rather than the situation. This causes the potential employers to look much closer for flaws and negative characteristics which may be deemed more “congruent” with or explain the person’s failure, so as to discount the poor guy’s positive virtues.

On the flip-side, any person who’s considered to be in high demand - for example a CEO - may get many attractive job opportunities and can as a result demand a higher wage - even if his/her overall performance track record has been weak.

When people appear successful, potential employers or mates who evaluate them tend to search more intensively for virtues or positive characteristics that are “congruent” with or explain the person’s apparent success, and to ignore or underestimate the person’s faults.

Positive social proof can cast a halo-like effect as other attributes are viewed to be more positive than they actually are. Additionally, the person’s attributes may be viewed with a positive framing bias.

For example, a person with negative social proof might be viewed as arrogant and pushy, whereas someone with positive social proof will be admired for being bold and confident, even if their behavior is the same in both instances.