(no subject)

[kingandy]

Found this link via the Pagga weblog:

Proper mindfuck.

On a related note, Mum was recently telling me about studies that have been done regarding consensual truths. If you get fifteen people and line them up, and ask fifteen other people which is the tallest, only fourteen of them are "plants" and give the (blatantly) wrong answer, the fifteenth person has something like a 70% chance of following the herd and giving the wrong answer also. This is true in both Eastern and Western societies, though for different reasons - in the West, we don't want to be shown up; we're frightened of being wrong, so we will conform with the consensus. In the East, however, they will be reluctant to show everybody else up by picking the right answer, and will thus hide their superior intellect under a laurel and conform with the consensus.

Comments

conforming

[pkgem.livejournal.com]

That is interesting. Belonging to a Western society, I'm well aware of the self-doubt that can occur when you disagree with everyone else around you. However, it is interesting to see that Eastern cultures do not suffer from this same self-doubt (in this example) but are so polite that they have a high percentage of not wanting to show their fellows to be ignorant fools. I wonder what would happen iif you mixed the two sample groups?