Humans follow the crowd, even when it’s wrong (Leeb)
July 22nd, 2008 | Published in Psychology, Truth, Quotes | 2 Comments
In one of this famous experiments, Asch assembled a dozen or so Swarthmore students and announced that they were taking part in an experiment on visual perception. He showed them three line segments, and asked each one in turn which line was the longest. It was an easy task—the correct answer was obvious.
However, Asch had secretly instructed all but the last person, who was the real result of the subject of the experiment, to say that the medium-length line was the longest. The aim was to see whether the subject would rely on his or her own judgment, or go along with the group.
As it turns out, 70 percent of the subjects caved in to group pressure and said that the medium-length line was the longest. The conclusion was that most human beings, under conditions that are hardly severe, will follow the crowd, even when the crowd is clearly wrong.
—Stephen Leeb, The Coming Economic Collapse (2006), p. 40
July 22nd, 2008 at 2:14 pm (#)
I disagree with the wording of that conclusion. It should be, “…even when the crowd clearly conflicts with their own judgement.” If, for example, they had asked “What is 2+2?” and the group had said “Five,” I don’t think many test subjects would have agreed. In that hypothetical, the group is clearly wrong, but here, their judgement of the lines’ lengths simply does not agree with the test subjects’ own.
Either way, an interesting experiment. I apologize for my uneloquence.
July 24th, 2008 at 9:24 am (#)
… Apple people!