Today's NY Times Science section reports on (reg. req'd, no RSS of this article) a fascinating study based on Solomon Asch's classic 50s research on social conformity. Asch found that people change opinions based upon those of others. This isn't such big news. People pressure one another into watching "Desperate Housewives" or listening to Billy Joe Shavers all the time. But the "opinions" in Asch's study were perceptual in nature: "is this line the same length as that line?" Three out of four subjects changed their opinion about that question to coincide with those of experimenter cohorts giving the wrong answer.
Today's report of an extension of the study goes further. MRI studies of subjects performing the same task showed that those who "changed their mind" actually did a something else, they "changed their world." In those cases in which subjects switched opinions, the MRIs showed the "processing" work was taking place in that part of the brain that manages perceptual images. When the subjects did not change their opinions, a portion of the brain associated with emotion was most active. The researchers' conclusions?
The implications of the study's findings are huge, Dr. Berns said.
In many areas of society - elections, for example, or jury trials - the accepted way to resolve conflicts between an individual and a group is to invoke the "rule of the majority." There is a sound reason for this: A majority represents the collective wisdom of many people, rather than the judgment of a single person.
But the superiority of the group can disappear when the group exerts pressure on individuals, Dr. Berns said.
The unpleasantness of standing alone can make a majority opinion seem more appealing than sticking to one's own beliefs.
The findings echo Jim Surowiecki's in The Wisdom of Crowds. Crowds come to highly accurate conclusions when the individuals make judgments independent of one another. When they influence one another's thinking too closely, he said, "groupthink" becomes a significant danger.
The research then comes to an interesting conclusion:
If other people's views can actually affect how someone perceives the external world, then truth itself is called into question.
There is no way out of this problem, Dr. Ariely said.
"Truth as subjective social reality" rather than "truth as objective conformity with the outside world." This is a long-standing problem in philosophy and psychology. As usual, when we try to take lived human experience out of the equation and adopt models that equate people with machines, we run into trouble.
But we're so much more comfortable when we've removed from the equation "subjectivity," with all its messy roots, influences and consequences.
More to follow.