Asch Conformity Experiment,Fake News and People's Views

This is about groupthink,society and disinformation.

First,have a quick watch of this video.
The video shows how social forces influence one's decision making,to the point that the subject will knowingly make an irrational decision.
As you can see the video is older which means this is nothing new.



How many times have you seen a poll telling others what ___% of other people think what?
Why should that even matter???
As you can see by the video,it matters because there needs to be an outside influence to tug on your insecurities of not being "in the group"
Your independent thought makes you look fat and unattractive.

I was reading something yesterday and it kept bringing me back to some things that I couldn't stop thinking about and also reminded me of this expirement...the state of society today,as well as politics.

This is what I was reading and joked to myself about how it kind of would explain all the craziness.

Groupthink occurs when people’s desire to maintain group loyalty becomes more important than making the best choices. People often find it hard to think and act independently in group situations. According to psychologist Irving Janis, groupthink is “a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment that results from in-group pressures.” Group members often suffer overconfidence and hold an unquestioned belief in the group’s competence and morality. Dissent by group members may be discouraged and even lead to expulsion from the group. Because people often want to avoid these punishments, they remain silent. This creates the illusion of agreement or unanimity in the group.

ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu...

It started to make sense as to why we see so many polls in the "news"
__% of people think this or think that (or whatever it is they are pushing at the time) so don't be the unpopular one.

In my opinion,when people get "informed" by watching the "news",they are keeping the charade going by acknowledging their existence in the first place.
After shutting the TV and allowing what they saw to occupy space in their brains,they might fail to realize that the thoughts in their head are no longer independent and are coming from an outside influence.
"If everyone else thinks that...maybe I am wrong?"

The disinformation coming from all angles is hard to discern and makes everything confusing.
So confusing to the point that,to make any sense out of anything....you almost have to choose to be ignorant and stick your fingers in your ears.

This brings me back to the video as an example.
If the test subject wanted to make real sense out of anything,he would have to tell everyone at the table to be quiet or tune them out,so he can think and make a rational decision.
His insecurities were played and it reminded me of how the news gets rolled out.
In the noise we call the "news",insecurities get played all the time.

So and so is a womanizer so if you like him,you hate all women.
So and so had a grandfather who once stole a sheep...if you like this guy,you are against criminal justice and like crime.
Its noise tugging on insecurities which sways their true opinions out of fear.

In that video,if the guy tuned everyone out....his decisions would make more sense.
Since he didn't...he took the road of"if you wanna be part of the group,you have to willingly be stupid" and he did.

If the test subject didn't acknowledge the others existence...the test would have been simple and his answers would have been correct.

If news creates points of views,with spin and falsehoods....why would we trust our own opinions if we can't even trust the environment we got them in???
In that expirement,if the guy knew he was around people who don't exactly tell the truth,he wouldn't have went along with it in the first place.

If it is fair to say that the guy ended up looking like a fool.

The problem is we are being led by fools and since we follow,we end up looking like the bigger fool.

I guess sometimes denying ignorance means ignoring it as well.

Remember this next time you watch the noose. (sic)

What are your thoughts ats...does this explain the craziness??

a reply to: DrumsRfun

No one is manipulated without their permission AND cooperation. If you choose to follow the crowd rather than choose what is right and proper, that is your choice. If you choose being liked over being right, that is your choice. Even if you defer to another because you think that person is wiser or more experienced or whatever, it's still your choice.

a reply to: Boadicea

No one is manipulated without their permission

What about the Gulf of Tonkin??
Manipulation is what got people into the Vietnam war....without knowing the truth.
People were manipulated and based their opinions on lies so their choice was flawed from the beginning.

So,no...not their choice,its manipulation.
Fake news!!

Online polls are definitive of a written answer, though.

The likelihood of following the flock are less.

Trolling them, is more, however.

a reply to: DrumsRfun

What about the Gulf of Tonkin??
Manipulation is what got people into the Vietnam war....without knowing the truth.
People were manipulated and based their opinions on lies so their choice was flawed from the beginning.

So,no...not their choice,its manipulation.

People always have a choice as to whether they will "believe" what they're being told or not. And in virtually any given similar situation, there will be people who believe and people who don't.

When we were told that we had to invade Iraq because of their WMDs, plenty of folks didn't believe it... and we even had the RECEIPTS for the WMDs that we had provided... but folks still didn't "believe".

If the manipulators are oh-so-powerful, then why are there differing opinions? If this manipulation is so effective, then why doesn't EVERYONE believe exactly the same thing?

ETA: For what it's worth, I'm sure many of the biggest manipulators of fact are quite happy for the public to believe that they cannot do any better... that they cannot think and reason for themselves... and are quite happy that folks won't even try for that very reason.
How is that even possible???

originally posted by: DrumsRfun
a reply to: Boadicea

No one is manipulated without their permission

What about the Gulf of Tonkin??
Manipulation is what got people into the Vietnam war....without knowing the truth.
People were manipulated and based their opinions on lies so their choice was flawed from the beginning.

So,no...not their choice,its manipulation.
Fake news!!

Actually this also applies to the US and WWII also, the public was against war so Pearl Harbour had to happen in order to get the support, this is fact

a reply to: DrumsRfun

I don't think that the ''dividing'' line between the ''individual'' and the ''group'' is as heavily drawn as many people want to believe. My own experience of group-began before there was really a ''me'' to object to what information was being taken in by my baby self to say ''no'' to. Basically I am a product of my parent's group-think, my extended families ''group -think'' and that of the community environment in which I was raised prior to me really having any say about what I was coming to believe to be true. I would be willing to bet that anyone who has the slightest ability to examine their own individual lives will have to recognize that this is the case with all of us.

Group-think is nothing new. What is new is this notion of the individual. Even as much as I see myself as an individual I have to, as an individual, recognize that the very foundations of this ''thinking organism which I consider myself to be has it's foundation roots in the ''group'' of people around me before a ''me'' even began to develop and hence much of who I think myself to be is there, likely on a permanent basis, unless I struggle against those neuro-pathways established before I had a choice to reject or accept them.

If we look at the example of myself and extrapolate it out over a couple of hundred thousand years of mental development of the human race we can get a better idea of just how controlling group think can be.

I believed in Santa Claus. It was only as I grew older that I began to consider the flaws, the inconsistencies and impossibilities of the Santa Claus story. It was a struggle partly because I still WANTED to believe in Santa but also because everyone else around me believed or were still promoting the myth.

If a baby born a hundred thousand years ago was born and developed in the same manner as my example then we can see how that group-think pervades. As those babies grew and developed from sucklings to toddlers to children they were constantly within the environment of their families and tribes which followed the rule of group-think. In those times group-think was a basic necessity for the survival of the tribe, the group. If an individual part of the tribe wandered off it would likely mean death for that individual. I could also undermine the coherency of the defense systems developed over long periods of time as a survival trait.

We as individuals do not shuck off the patterned neuro conditioning of thousands of years nor do we as a society shuck off the constraints of that conditioning over night.

The distinction here that I am attempting to make is that there is ''group-think'' that is the basis for all human survival on this planet and ''group-think'' that is used as a tool by those who would prey upon this condition of human existence for their own selfish agendas.

Skip to ATS. Would anyone care to comment on the ''group think'' nature of the flag and star system? How many stars are handed out merely because the group already seems to have sanctioned any particular thread.

a reply to: DrumsRfun

OH, I forgtot Drums, excellent thread and topic and well presented with that old video. And as the thread has received only a handful of stars I will star it, not as an example of my own -group thinkishness'' but because I freely choose to do so.
But come to think about it, might it not be so that I only star it because my own group thinkishness urges me toward believing that I should give applause rather than just being happy for what I read and walking away smiling?