Why Do We Follow Social Norms? Group Conformity in Sociology | Groupism

1,848 views Wait, is this logic right? • Jun 28, 2023

Slog Reference: Groupism1: Conformity

Description

What is social conformity? Why do we tend to follow some arbitrary social rules without knowing their origins or if they're good for us? The answer may lie in a psychological or social theory, called group conformity. Let's try to understand what is group conformity. What is groupism in the workplace? Why do we follow social norms? What is group behaviour conformity? What is social conformity? The group conformity experiment and more on group conformity.

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Preference Falsification Theory: https://youtu.be/Pwh90BkWRt8
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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:55 The experiment
04:22 Reasoning
07:06 Real world examples
09:55 Exceptions
10:19 Politics
12:56 Should you conform?
14:23 The problem

#futureIQ #conformity

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Groupism1: Conformity

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Transcript

- 74 of the people gave the wrong answer because everybody before them was giving the wrong answer there is an odia proverb three people can prove a goat to be a dog that sounds like English but go ahead do you think it can scientifically be true it can't because good can't be a dog right so let me ask this question I'll rephrase okay um I mean the original proverb is trying to say that if a majority lies the minority cannot do anything about it right that's not what I want to talk about I want to talk about if the majority is mistaken can that actually change the and can the minority also then uh you know end up in

0m 48s these mistakes yeah that's interesting I don't know and I don't think so right in general you would assume that your beliefs yeah are not going to change just because the majority is wrong right especially I mean you see a goat you see a goat I have been swimming against the current poor I don't even know yes but that's probably not true right so I want to talk about this concept of group Conformity okay uh let's look at a famous experiment called The Ash Conformity experiment done by a researcher called Ash so in this experiment uh the subjects were shown two cards one card had a single line uh of a certain length the second card had

1m 35s three different lines one was shorter than the first line one was longer than the first line and one was the same size as the card I mean line from the first card right and then each candidate was simply asked which line in the second card is the same length as the line in the first card this is a distinct difference but there was a very clear uh difference okay and seems like you know everybody will get this answer correct yeah I mean if there is a distinct difference if I can see which of the lines is the closest matching I'll of course yeah so in the experiment what was the right answer correct yeah there

2m 10s was a clear answer but the clever part was this that there was only one person who was a subject of the experiment all the other people who were asked the question were actually I mean uh placed there by the experimenter and they were given instructions to clearly give the wrong answer oh right oh now oh now the word proverb makes sense so because they were giving the wrong answer so let's see let's see what so let's see a video of this example right I mean basically one one but that's the wrong answer two one good guy once again the correct answer is two three okay three it is obviously wrong three three did he really do that

3m 24s I mean you might be tempted to think that that was one week willed person yeah and it was stupid of him to do that yeah especially after reading the first answer correctly 74 of the people gave the wrong answer because everybody before them was giving the wrong answer okay that was the four yeah that was not I mean in one experiment it went up that high but in General on an average at least one third of the people gave the wrong answer in a situation where that answer was just clearly clearly wrong but everybody in the group was giving that answer and they couldn't bring themselves they convinced themselves that the answer was uh the other one I

4m 11s can't even begin to tell you on how many levels this is worrying it is worrying it is worrying that's why this episode we should be worried right yeah we should absolutely be worried right so look I mean in fact this is too obvious yeah right uh but um imagine a situation where it is not that obvious right there is a little bit of a gray uh area yeah I was I was just thinking probably uh maybe he thought the lines were too close and he was misinterpreting them or something I'm trying to reason from his perspective and I still can't there is no reason it is just you know your brain system one right wants to conform to the group why why

4m 55s because in the African Savanna where our brain evolved right if you were not part of the group you died of hunger okay you had to be part of the group and usually that means that if a group believes something you better believe that otherwise you are going to get kicked out right so now your system one really really wants to be part of the group system to clearly see that that's the wrong answer tell me in system one which is your instinctive emotional brain that has evolved you know millions of years ago versus system two which is your front end of the brain the modern thinking rational brain which evolved maybe 100 000 years ago right

5m 40s which one wins system one of course system one wins yeah and in case you're wondering what system one versus system two is we did an entire episode on it we should which you should definitely go and check out please do go and check out and B this also explains a lot of the things that we've been recently seeing especially throughout the pandemic when there were so many arguments about masks about vaccines about I don't even know where to begin yes so I mean again in this situation do you think system two feels bad that it was overridden by System One I think it should feel bad so the way it works is that system two

6m 20s cannot afford to see feel that it is wrong right so system two just changes everything around to make system one true right system two just comes up with reasons on the Fly for why this is true right smash Goosebumps we think we are very rational people we think we do everything according to logic but the problem is that our system one takes instinctual decisions and system two then comes up with logical sounding reasons after the fact so we retcon it we retcon it right there's lots of I mean so this particular experiment has been replicated many many times this is not one of those experiments which didn't work out later on right it has been

7m 07s replicated many times in many different settings and society and more importantly I mean any political leader or any senior business leader knows in their heart that this is true in fact they use it they use it yes I mean if you want to get something done if you want to con uh you know get people to believe in something right what you do is first get influential people to just repeat it over and over again right there are two things one is that if everybody in your group is saying something you I mean initially you will force yourself to say it even though you don't believe it repeat it enough times and people will you start believing it also Naveen

7m 54s just explain the whole culture of celebrity endorsements in that one little explain it's it's not just celebrity endorsements right let us take an example of a business right where you want to hire a candidate okay okay yeah and there are four people interviewing that candidate yes now company one has a system where you know each person interviews that candidate separately then all four of them sit together and they discuss the first one says what they thought of the candidate then the second the third and the fourth okay fair enough make sense company two has a different system where the first person who saw the candidate immediately at the end of the interview sends out a mail to

8m 35s all other interviewers saying this is what I thought now you guys take over from here and second person does it and that person also sends out the mail and so on right so each person is building on top of the previous previous assessments and the third is where all four independently assess the person and then no even before collating they have to write down their Impressions and scores on the individual uh attributes after it is written down then they get together and discuss okay which do you think is going to get better candidates uh I would think number three would get better candidates because they are assessing independently but I'm thinking that's not what happens it is it is in

9m 22s fact you're right which is by the way you just realize that you already in your heart know that this group Conformity thing is true right because what's happening in the first two cases especially in case number two is that the first interviewers impressions pretty much will color the impressions of the others they will ask questions from that point of view and the interviews I mean pretty much only the first interviewer is taking the decision more or less I am 100 sure there is some person on the other side of the screen and yes that happened yes that happened to me write about it write about it of course this is not always hundred percent true okay like we said I mean

10m 00s there are 25 percent of the people even in the ash experiment who just refused right and there are people like that so if one of the four was like that then they would have uh you know changed the whole situation makes sense yeah yeah okay that explains the uh leaders in business part but you also mentioned political leaders well political leaders uh also do the same thing see I mean if you have been on Twitter recently you know that whenever some controversial thing happens right from both sides of the political Spectrum you end up seeing like a hundred tweets which are identical to each other why are there hundred tweets clearly one person wrote those and sent

10m 45s it out to 100 people and asked them to post it why because they are going trying to create a group Conformity scenario right so but there is a much this is like serious right in Nazi Germany why did the entire country go along with something so horrible and so ridiculous it's group Conformity most people actually disagreed with that right but you know just generally over time it became that initially they were afraid to speak out then after a while they were like oh looks like this is okay everybody is okay with this I am also okay with this but if they were afraid to pray to speak out they were forced to not speak or

11m 27s something or is it just that that same kind of peer pressure that we saw in the video well it's a little bit of both right sometimes uh you also know that uh if you say some things against the majority there can be consequences right so some people uh keep quiet because they're afraid of the consequences but there's a whole Chunk in the middle who actually they can't handle the dissonance in their brain right their system one wants to conform system two says this is clearly wrong and then the only resolution of that is that system one comes up with convoluted reasons to believe what uh system one wants but in the case of Nazi Germany

12m 10s that led to such uh dangerous beliefs and such dangerous redcorning that wow but look at Society right now no matter where you are on the political Spectrum if you look at your opposition you will see this Behavior happening right people have convinced themselves of things which as far as you are concerned are just quite horrible yeah right of course it's not happening on your side of the political Spectrum in the afternoon no I get what you're saying I get what you're saying both sides of the spectrum are convinced that the other side is horrible and that uh our side or whatever side we believe in is absolutely and pure and what not yeah uh but okay I get it group Conformity is

12m 55s bad uh so should everybody start thinking independently is that the answer I mean that's the only side so that's not true right one of the things that we should always keep in mind is that if our brain has evolved to be a certain way right it has happened over millions of years so there is a very good reason for it to be like that right totally we should not lose track of that fact simple thing is that in most cases group Conformity is a good thing uh right uh so one is that groups need to work together to achieve things which the individuals couldn't do themselves but if you have ever worked in the uh you know Association of your

13m 44s Society of or your apartment complex you will know that it is impossible to get even small groups to agree to trivial things right um there is a more involved version of this called coordination problem which is one of the most important problems in all of human life right we will do an episode on that I mean but if you if you're watching this by the time we have done an episode you will find a link to it in the description show notes so um group Conformity is one of the solutions to the coordination problem right it will allow you the group to reach a decision and for everybody to agree on that decision and everybody to get

14m 25s things done otherwise you will constantly all be pulling in opposite directions and nothing will get done right that is one thing and and a group Conformity also is a thing that suppresses people's evil and immoral desires like pretty much everybody has those except in some cases clearly because yesterday but most of the time yeah right it works out in the right direction I'm guessing uh this this entire thing about group confirmities like a tool it depends on Whose hands it falls into and how they choose to use it I would put it slightly differently all right if things happen naturally yeah it usually works out for the good right but when somebody especially clever pics users that is a tool and weaponizes

15m 20s it that's when things usually go wrong right let us all hope that Naveen never decides to become evil because if he does the amount of information he carries inside that brain of his I would be the people one important thing I want to point out here is that you know just having knowledge of these things isn't as important I mean the people who misuse it often might not even know they are doing this they are instinctive users of such weaponized uh sacredness right weaponized maliciousness weaponized knowledge weaponized everything yes um in fact uh this whole concept of groups uh of human beings is so important and so Central to everything we do in life that we have you know for

16m 12s a series of four or five episodes lined up each one looking at different aspects of what I'm calling groupism uh so look out for those episodes this is part one see this is why you should stay beyond the end of the episode because you get information even after the episode has ended okay thank you thank you thank you for watching till the end if you liked this episode check out these others you might like them also and please share with your friends I'm sure they will also like these thank you