A psychological phenomenon where individuals prioritize aligning their opinions with those of the group leaders or the majority, often at the expense of critical thinking. Individuals often choose conformity and cohesion over critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints.
Notes
- Examples: The social experiments when the whole room is made out of actors and one uniformed women is doing whatever everybody else are doing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8BkzvP19v4
- Examples: A lot of missed shifts in are stemming from group think. Like Three pointers basketball revolution. Shooting three pointers in basketball. Whole basketball changed during Steph Curry career. It is weird because it was known earlier that even though 3-pointer harder to score it has a high enough success rate that it will bring more points if the whole team prioritized it as a strategySimple shifts & view quakes
- Individuals very rarely see this dynamic in themselves. They think thoughts are their own even though they are determined by what the group thinks
- Related: Ash conformity experimentsHierarchy bias 🎨
In Two Psychologist Four Beers Show talks about comparing humans with other apes: it’s not memory, it’s imitationJoseph Henrich
It is also an illusion. Most think thoughts are their own even though they are determine by what the group thinks