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The two points of contact theory

Here’s a hypothesis: It only takes two points of contact for people to validate a reference.

If I tell you Flogging Molly is the best live band ever, you’d nod your head politely but pay me no mind. But if on the same day, or same week, another aquiantance of yours, one completely indepenent from me, mentions Flogging molly, you will instantly validate both sources. I think we assume that random, unsolicited references that correlate with each other must be true. And we only need two of them to place our confidence in recommendations.

So I think the word of mouth effect is really about two points of contact. The first time we hear about something it’s not far from noise, but the second time, especially if the sources are diverse enough, we’re ready to take action. Should we hear a third mention of whatever it is, we’d probably say “Oh. Flogging molly. Yes, I’ve heard lots of good things about them.” Even though we’ve only had two previous points of contact, possibly from sources we’ve never relied on before.

I’m looking to see if anyone has ever studied how people make recommendations and how often they’re based on small amounts of second hand data from third party sources. I’m familiar with The madness of crowds but this two points of contact idea is about more pedestrian things.