Warranting Principle

What it is

The idea that observers give more weight to information about a person that other people produced than to what the person says about themselves, because other people's information is harder to manipulate. Sonja Utz used it in a 2010 study of how a profile, the number of friends and the type of friends shape impressions on social network sites.

It sits close to Personal Branding and Social Proof in the wider body of research, and is best taken as one idea among several rather than a stand-alone rule.

In effect

In Utz's 2010 study, information from other people had only a weak effect on judgements of popularity, a stronger effect on judgements of communal orientation, and was the only kind that affected perceived social attractiveness. Our reading is that recommendations written by colleagues play the same role on a professional profile, which is a practical inference and not a tested result.

What it does not say

The finding comes from the studies named on this page and describes a pattern in those samples. It does not show that the pattern holds for every person, product or market, and it does not tell a brand what to do on its own. It is one input to a decision, to be weighed with other evidence.

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