http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHom ... index.htmlExcerpts from the link:
"When we find ourselves in groups we inevitably find ourselves in the minority occasionally. Generally speaking, we will feel a little uncomfortable with that situation, which explains why we generally seek out groups with interests similar to our own. Imagine, though, that you are in a group where you are sure you are right and everyone else is wrong. Would you yield to group pressure and go along with everyone else?
In Asch's experiments, a group of people were seated around a table. Of these all but one were actually the experimenters confederates. The group was shown a display of vertical lines of different lengths and were asked to say which of the lines was the same length as another standard line.
One after another, the members of the group announced their decision. The confederates had been asked to give the incorrect response. The subject sat in the next to last seat so that all but one had given their obviously incorrect answer before s/he gave hers/his. Even though the correct answer was always obvious, the average subject conformed to the group response on 32% of the trials and 74% of the subjects conformed at least once.
On the face of it, an astonishing result. The correct answer was entirely obvious. Subjects had to override the very clear evidence of their own senses to give an answer conforming to the others'. Why did they do it? When interviewed afterwards, subjects all said that they had been influenced by the pressure from the rest of the group. This, on the face of it, may appear to be an example of 'groupthink'.
Many said that they did not want to appear silly. That ties in with Rom Harré's claim that one of our secondary needs is a need for 'social respect', which includes the need to avoid looking ridiculous in front of others, the need to avoid criticism from others. That need would be likely to motivate us to seek compromise with others.
There have been other experiments which have tended to confirm Asch's results by and large. Crutchfield's lengthier and more complex experiments seem to confirm a correlation between high intelligence and other personality traits and low conformity."
groupthink - the phenomenon whereby members of a group will not wish to risk any danger to group cohesion by expressing 'deviant' opinions. The decision of Kennedy to invade Cuba is often given as an example. Many of his advisers actually disagreed with his decision, but were unwilling to express deviant views. More recently Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative ('Star Wars') seems to have developed in a similar way."
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This experiment (Asch) seems to suggest that we could have been told that black is white or most any outrageous falsehood at the Seed (or other peer-pressure based program) and a large proportion of us would have gone along with the group and agreed. If our need to conform is so basic that most of us will agree with the group even when this contradicts our own senses, those types of programs could indeed be used to sway thinking in any way chosen by the group leaders. I would guess that the effect would be even greater on younger adolescents or children.
Note too that the Asch experiment involved a one-time judgment, not an ongoing series of contradictory information on a daily (10 or 12 hours per day) basis. It's hard to imagine the power of such a concerted effort over months or years. Oh wait. I don't have to imagine it! :silly:
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