Cialdini raamat
seen to disguise or vary the claque, who often sat in the same seats, performance
after performance, year after year, led by a chif de claque two decades into his posi-
tion. Even the monetary transactions were not hidden from the public. Indeed, one
hundred years after the birth of claquing, a reader of the London Musical Times
could scan the advertised rates of the Italian claqueurs (see Figure 4.3). Whether in
the world of Rigoletto or TV sit-corns, then, audiences have been successfully ma-
nipulated by those who use social evidence, even when that evidence has been
openly falsified.
What Sauton and Porcher realized about the mechanical way that we abide by
the principle of social proof is understood as well by a variety of today's profiteers.
They see no need to hide the manufactured nature of the social evidence they pro-
vide-witness the amateurish quality of the average TV laugh track. They seem al-
most smug in the recognition of our predicament: Either we must allow them to
annaabi.ee 
