How Influenced by others are you?

Interesting story on Dateline NBC tonight. The title of the show was "What Were You Thinking" and it was all about a few social experiments that tried to prove that most people will follow a crowd, despite feeling that it may be risky or not the right thing to do.

http://insidedateline.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/04/23/2233419.aspx

Here are a couple of their experiments: The first one (on the link above) was that they tried to convince an entire 5th grade class that their teacher had ESP. They showed the class and their teacher a video where a guy on the video was thinking about a kitchen utensil. The teacher appeared to guess correctly every single time, because when the moderator clicked on the corner of the "play" button for the reveal video it corresponded to the answer the teacher gave. The ENTIRE class was convinced she had ESP!

Another experiment consisted of a room full of people, only one of whom didn't know what was going on, filling out an application. Smoke began to fill a room from under a door and the people who were in on the experiment remained totally calm and didn't do anything but continue to fill out their forms. Although most of the subjects, victims, whatever you want to call them, became visibly disturbed by the room filling with smoke, they didn't do anything because everyone else appeared unconcerned.

Yet another one, and a little more disturbing, was one where a guy was hooked up to an electric probe in another room and he had to answer questions. When he got the answers wrong, the "unknowing subject" had to flip a switch to administer electric shocks, each one getting a little stronger for each wrong answer. There was a moderator in the room with the subject who continued to encourage the "shocker" to keep going, despite increasingly agonizing screams from the other room. (The guy in the room was never being shocked, just acting like it.) At some point as the subject increased the voltage up to 200, then 300, then 350 then 450 volts (regular house current is 120 volts), the guy being shocked quit responding to questions and the shocks, making the subject think that he or she was really hurting the guy in the other room; yet they continued. Only one person stopped the shock treatment saying that they refused to hurt someone any more than they already had.

Studies show that we are incredibly social beings and will go along with a crowd, despite our best defense that we make decisions individually. Sigmund Freud first theorized about it and called it "Crowd Psychology". Carl Jung called it "Collective Unconscious". A laymen's term that I've heard is "Mob Mentality" and although this collective thinking can bring about big social change, it also is very dangerous because individuals become unaware of the true nature of his or her actions. When you look at what is actually happening, it is not the crowd that is making a decision, it's really a few like-minded individuals or one person who is the leader who ultimately convinces others that his idea is worth supporting.

Standing out from a crowd is difficult when everyone else seems to be doing something different from you. It takes courage and strength to stand on your own against the majority. Most people want to fit in and follow the crowd; after all there is power in numbers.

However, here's some advice: I ask you that every decision you make be made with some thought, despite what others may do, or think. Don't just go along with the crowd. Stand on your own. If your decision is consistent with the crowd, then you can always say that you made the best decision for yourself, not what everyone else wanted you to do. If your decision doesn't go with the crowd, so be it. That doesn't mean you can skip Changing of the Chairs this week! Some of the best decision-makers in our history have stuck to their beliefs despite overwhelming opinions to the contrary. Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei come to mind.

For this blog week, I would like you to describe two things: a moment in school (or in video production) where you went along with the crowd or with someone else even though you knew it wasn't the best thing to do.

Then, describe a moment in school or in video production where you stood up to the common opinion and expressed yourself even though it may not have been the popular decision. When you went against the grain, so to speak.

And, still.....NO you can't skip Changing of the Chairs!