People adopt change when relatable models demonstrate it succeeds

Evidence

The first principle enlists the power of social modeling for personal and social change. Characters in the dramas include models exhibiting beneficial, dysfunctional, or transitional patterns of behavior. By dramatizing alternative behaviors and their effects on the characters’ lives, the dramas help people make informed choices in their own lives. Viewers and listeners are especially likely to draw inspiration from, and identify with, transitional models who overcome adverse life circumstances like their own. Seeing people similar to themselves succeed through sustained effort increases observers’ belief that they, too, can improve their lives. The greater the assumed similarity, the more persuasive the model’s successes and failures (Bandura, 1986). Modeling influences do more than build people’s belief in their own capabilities. Through their behavior and expressed ways of thinking, competent models transmit knowledge and teach observers effective skills and strategies for managing environmental demands. Acquisition of better means increases perceived self-efficacy. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2822

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2822
• XREF: connects to: Successful online content creators become instructional models for aspiring imitators — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 40; State labeling of performances enables force and creates models for future action. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 296; People increasingly rely on copying successful others as problems grow harder or more uncertain — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 155