Friday, May 7, 2010
Group Stuff
This week in class we talked about how a person will usually "go with crowd" and do what everyone else is doing. This is called "group-polarization," and an example given was a random person agreeing with someone in a room of people giving wrong answers on purpose during a test. When they all gave their answers, that person agreed with them just so he wouldn't sound different and look stupid, even though he may have known the correct answer. I know I have done this before, actually in a similar experiment we did during class a while back. I didn't want to look like an idiot so I said what everyone else saying--no confidence. So now looking at this information, I realize that I need to be more independent in thinking, and rely on my own intuition, and not follow the crowd.
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I think we are all guilty of group polarization at times. Someone in a group of friends could say something about another friend, and soon the conversation would escalade to expressions of complete hatred of that friend. I think this is how a lot of bullying happens in schools (not to mention how Hitler was nearly successful in wiping out almost an entire religious population).
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