Asch’s Conformity Experiment: Can You Withstand (COVID) Groupthink? | Sprouts

Solomon Asch's conformity experiment showed a few things, among which:

1. 77% of people tend to conform to the group and knowingly lie. This is especially true among groups of women and homogeneous peer groups.
2. If participants had only one ally, the effect of peer pressure decreased substantially.

Specific ways in which this is relevant in the 'COVID era':

- People wear face masks, because it's regarded as socially desirable, because it makes you a 'good person'.
- People get vaxxed themselves and have their children vaxxed, because others do so too, because it's socially desirable to protect others and the health care system, even though the facts show the opposite to be true.
- People reflexively attack dissenters as conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, quacks, etc., because others do too.

Sprouts says, "If three people say something obviously wrong and there is no one to disagree with them, many of us agree with the wrong answer and start lying due to our deeply human desire to fit in."

Solomon Asch said in 1955, "The tendency to conformity in our society is so strong, that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to go white-black. This is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our education and about the values that guide our conduct." These words are still as true in 2022 as they were in 1955.

When you observe people's behavior, their actual main priority is to keep from getting attacked/excommunicated. Their priority is NOT to do what is right and true.

Prof. Mattias Desmet always says that it is crucial to keep speaking out to keep disrupting the mass formation. This has a strong relationship with the mentioned importance of knowing you have at least one ally.

We've seen a boatload of conformity and groupthink over the past 2 years, especially since all the dissenters (called 'allies' in Asch's experiment) were ruthlessly attacked, intimidated and censored.

The majority of people with something to lose in the short term, chose to self-censor. They chose to do what was safe and easy, instead what was right and true. In doing so, they were complicit in crimes against humanity. When the whole scam becomes common knowledge, they'll say: "We didn't know" and "We were just following orders". If they didn't know, it's because they didn't want to know.

We've had a pandemic of conformity, cowardice, sloth and stupidity.

All these people conformed to publicly admire the emperor's beautiful cloths, even when it was obvious the emperor wasn't wearing any. Like in George Orwell's book '1984', they all conformed to say that 2 + 2 equals 5.

Comedian Jim Breuer mocked the COVID cockatoos who all "followed the science" (which is code for 'the group' and 'the authorities'):
https://rumble.com/vxuzv7-trust-the-science-jim-breuer-pokes-fun-at-covid-cockatoos-.html

DESCRIPTION BY SPROUTS

In the 1950s the psychologist Solomon Asch devised a study to investigate whether peer pressure can be strong enough to change our perception, and make us believe in things that are not true. To do so, he set up a clever experiment on conformity that raises questions about our ability to think freely.

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COLLABORATORS
Script: Jonas Koblin
Artist: Pascal Gaggelli
Voice: Matt Abbott
Coloring: Nalin
Editing: Peera Lertsukittipongsa
Production: Selina Bador
Sound Design: Miguel Ojeda

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DIG DEEPER with these top videos games and resources
Could a random individual be psychologically coerced into the killing of another person? Watch Darren Brown’s The Push, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5340856/
Learn about the bandwagon effect. The bandwagon effect is the term used to describe the tendency for people to adopt certain behaviors, styles, or attitudes simply because others are doing so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwagon_effect

SOURCES
Asch, S. E. (1955). Opinions and Social Pressure. Scientific American, 193(5), 31–35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24943779
Solomon Asch - wikipedia
Solomon-Asch Conformity Experiment - site.google.com
Nicholson, N., Cole, S.G., & Rocklin, T.R. (1985). Conformity in the Asch situation: A comparison between contemporary British and US university students. British Journal of Social Psychology, 24, 59-63.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Conformity-in-the-Asch-situation%3A-A-comparison-and-Nicholson-Cole/01bc83c396ae0c5a3da935b5257c75af16d45e71
Mori K, Arai M. No need to fake it: reproduction of the Asch experiment without confederates. Int J Psychol. 2010 Oct 1;45(5):390-7. doi: 10.1080/00207591003774485. PMID: 22044061.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22044061/
Bandwagon Effect - wikipedia
Asch conformity experiments - wikipedia

CLASSROOM EXERCISE
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CHAPTER
00:00 Can you solve this?
00:20 The true story
00:57 Solomon Asch
01:30 Asch's Conformity Experiment
03:11 Experiment conclusion
04:23 Solomon Asch's quote
04:45 What do you think?
05:12 Patron credits
05:20 Ending

#conformity #asch #peerpressure #sproutsschools #psychology #sproutslearning

SOURCE: https://rumble.com/v1beh1o-aschs-conformity-experiment-can-you-withstand-groupthink.html