Recent experiments and research at the Weizmann Institute by Prof. Yadin Dudai and his students may show why we are susceptible to group pressure.
Here’s a quick summary. They first showed a documentary film to a group, then asked them recall questions about the film three days later. They also asked them how confident they were in their answers.
Next, they asked them back to the lab to ostensibly undergo an MRI. While under the MRI, they again asked them recall questions, but gave them a “lifeline” of answers that the rest of the test group had supposedly given. Planted among these helpful answers were false answers to questions the subjects previously answered correctly. You can guess the result. The test subjects now changed their answers to these questions giving the wrong answer 70% of the time in order to conform to the group.
The question at the root of the experiment was to determine if the subjects had just given into peer pressure, or whether there was something actually happening in their brains. Repeating the test again, the subjects were told the lifeline answers they were given were not those of their fellows, but randomly generated answers. Yet over half of them stuck with their new (falsified memories) answers.
For the false memories, the results of the MRI showed a strong coactivation between two areas of the brain; the hippocampus (involved in long term memory formation) and the amygdala (influencing the emotions and social interaction). The amygdale is the lizard brain my daughter used to when thinking about her tattoo. It may also be required to approve certain types of memories and act as an approval stamp.
The tendency to give into group pressure may have had a survival component in evolution. When the leopard is approaching a group of baboons, you don’t have time to ask why your fellow baboon is jumping into the tree. We are no longer baboons (only literally speaking), but we still have the synapses between the lizard brain and the hippocampus and forebrain. So what do you do when everyone around the conference table nods in agreement to an idea that no one individually would agree to?
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Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
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