Thread by @lisa_iannattone

Ok guys, it’s time for me to tell you about something very enlightening that I read in a book recently:

75% of people would rather being knowingly wrong and blend in, than be right and stand out. And there’s a well known psychology experiment that proved it. 🧵

The book is ‘Atomic Habits’ and has nothing to do with masks or avoiding neurotropic viruses, but there was a section explaining that if we want to change our habits, we should hang out with people that have the habits we wish to adopt. Bc humans are wired to do as the pack does.

Needing to be part of “the pack” is key here. For much of human history, being accepted by the pack or tribe was *essential* for survival. A lone human would not have survived very long. As the saying goes: The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. 🐺

It’s not just humans either. A study found that if a chimp that had learned an effective way to crack open nuts as a part of one group, then changed to a group that had a less effective strategy, the chimp would adopt the less effective method so they could blend in.

Anyway, back to humans. A psychologist in the 50s designed an experiment where a subject was put in a room with a group of actors (not knowing they were actors) and shown a card with a line and a second card with a series of lines and asked to match their line to the similar one.

First there would be a few rounds where everyone agreed on the right answer. But then a couple of actors would start to choose the wrong answer. If it was just 1-2 actors doing this, it wouldn’t change the subject’s choice.

But if the majority of the other people in the room chose a wrong answer, and everyone seemed to be in agreement, the vast majority of subjects would eventually deliver answers that *they knew were wrong*. They ran this experiment many times, many ways. 75% of people would crack.

The normal behavior of the tribe overpowers the desired behavior of the individual.

The push to “end the pandemic” through behavioral manipulation has relied heavily on this aspect human psychology. The human survival instinct to blend in with the tribe was very successfully weaponized to get people to act against their own interests.

That’s why we get surveys where >50% of people are in favor of masking but <20% actually do it. That’s why PH often uses mandates to change behavior. And also why we won’t have any as long as the decider class decides that we are to pretend covid is a cold and carry on.

These videos are wild.

https://twitter.com/tigresseleanor/status/1642958332607471619

Just wild. Humans will just sit there in a smoke filled room and risk death if that’s what everyone else is doing.

https://twitter.com/MarieSnyder27/status/1642945792666116102