Tito Brasolin

Link: You are a conformist (that is, you are human) | Psychology Today

In my class I sometimes do the following demonstration: I ask two student volunteers to step outside. I tell the remaining students in the class that their task is to avoid all contact and interaction with the volunteers. I promise them points on the next test if they succeed. I then instruct the two waiting outside that their task is to do all they can to engage the class members in any sort of interaction. I then usher them back inside. After they spend several painful minutes failing to elicit any response from their peers, I declare the demonstration over. I ask the two volunteers how they felt. Terrible, they say. Embarrassed, rejected. Then I ask the remaining students to guess the demonstration's purpose. They usually guess it was designed to show the difficulties of being an outsider, a social reject. But the point is actually the opposite: to show how easy and automatic it is to conform.

"None of you refused to follow my instructions," I say. "You just spent 10 minutes treating two innocent fellow students miserably and none of you stood up and said: ‘Shove your quiz points. I'm not going to treat my peers badly for no reason.'"

Astuto. E illuminante.

Milgram Experiment

Milgram Experiment from Natalie Hill on Vimeo.