News -01-15-09 Why So Many Think Alike (CNN News) "Decades of research show people tend to go along with the majority view, even if that view is objectively incorrect. Now, scientists are supporting those theories with brain images." 01-09 02-12-09 Study: We Mistake Confidence for Competence (Time.com) "If you have ever suspected that your boss isn't actually good enough at what he or she does to deserve the job in the first place, a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that you might be right." "Repeatedly, the ones who emerged as leaders and were rated the highest in competence were not the ones who offered the greatest number of correct answers. Nor were they the ones whose SAT scores suggested they'd even be able to. What they did do was offer the most answers — period." " 'Dominant individuals behaved in ways that made them appear competent,' the researchers write, 'above and beyond their actual competence.' Troublingly, group members seemed only too willing to follow these underqualified bosses. An overwhelming 94% of the time, the teams used the first answer anyone shouted out — often giving only perfunctory consideration to others that were offered." 02-09 Papers Group Conformity and "Doing Wrong" (SocialPC.com) "Ash designed an experiment where there could be absolutely no doubt about whether subjects would be conforming or not and it was absolutely clear what they were conforming to. He wanted to be able to put an individual under various amounts of group pressure that he could control and manipulate and measure their willingness to conform to the groups response to something that was clearly wrong. Ash conducted what are now described as classic experiments in conformity." "Each naive therefore had 7 opportunities to conform to something they could see to be wrong. One third of the naives conformed on all 7 occasions. About three quarters of them conformed on at least one occasion. Only about one fifth refused to conform at all. Just to be certain that the result was due to the influence of the confederates responses and not to the difficulty of the task Ash used a control group. Each control subject was asked to make a judgement individually - there were no pressures at all. Over 90% gave correct responses." 01-06 Limits of Conformity and Obedience (BBC News - Saleh) " 'The results raise the possibility that ... American democratic society cannot be counted on to insulate its citizens from brutality and inhumane treatment at the direction of malevolent authority. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of [sic] http://www.lermanet2.com/cos/motivate.html so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority. If in this study an anonymous experimenter could substantially command adults to subdue a fifty-year-old man, and force on him painful [and potentially lethal] electric shocks against his protests, one can only wonder what government, with its vastly greater authority and prestige, can command of its subjects.' " 01-06 The Science of Evil (ABC News) "Most of us have struggled to understand how seemingly ordinary people can sometimes do morally questionable things." "In 1961, social psychologist Stanley Milgram asked those same questions. That was the year Nazi Adolf Eichmann, on trial for his war crimes, denied responsibility for his actions by saying he was simply doing what his superiors told him to do." " 'Primetime' wanted to know if ordinary people today would still follow orders, even if they believed their actions were causing someone else pain. Would as many follow the seemingly dangerous and painful orders as in the original experiment?" 01-07

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