Crowds, Art, and Psychology

Last Saturday evening, my friend Lindsey and I attended the Dallas CityArts Festival, an annual outdoor celebration of visual and performing arts in downtown Dallas. We joined the throngs of people gathered along several city blocks in 100-degree heat to browse artists' booths, listen to music of varying genres, watch dances from different cultures, enjoy free admission to the local (air-conditioned!) art museums, and eat bratwurst and snow cones. Both Lindsey and I are artistic souls (she graduated with a degree in art; I was an art major for two semesters), and events like this thrill us to no end.

Although Lindsey and I arrived after the museums had already closed for the evening (much to our dismay), we thoroughly enjoyed looking at artwork by local painters, sculptors, photographers, and jewelry-makers. However, the plight of these artists saddened me somewhat. Here they were, sitting in stifling heat for the better part of three days, lost in the never-ending row of booths belonging to their fellow artists, watching as hundreds of people surveyed their work without so much as a word to the creators, and hoping - mostly in vain - that someone might actually love some of their work enough to BUY it.

Alas, it seemed that most of the patrons of the Dallas CityArts Festival were more interested in looking at art rather than buying it.

Despite my "artophilia", I myself, having only recently graduated from college, was certainly not in a position to fulfill the artists' hopes of selling their several-hundred-dollar artwork.

However, I experienced a curious psychological phenomenon as I wandered in and out of artists' booths: when I encountered a booth in which empty spaces and discarded price tags betrayed evidence that someone had actually purchased artwork there, I was much more eager to visit that booth and study the work therein. I was also more willing to investigate whether the artist had inexpensive prints or notecards that I might be interested in purchasing. If someone else had loved a piece enough to actually spend money and take it home, perhaps the artist's work was good enough that I, too, would like it and even want to buy it.

Researcher Robert Cialdini calls this psychological phenomenon "Social Proof" - the idea that we take cues from what people around us do. If others act a certain way, we assume that it is reasonable to act in the same fashion. This is especially true when we encounter new situations in which we are unsure of how to act.

If "Social Proof" affects us so much, maybe the artists at art festivals could use this principle to their advantage. A psychology-savvy artist looking to sell his work could set up his booth and hang his paintings around the tent, but intentionally leave one or two painting-sized empty spaces where a person would expect to see a piece of artwork. Then he could watch and see if more people than normal enter the booth interested in viewing and purchasing the art.

Would this have worked for the artists at the Dallas CityArts Festival? I don't know. But it wouldn't have hurt for them to give it a try.