A post everyone can agree with
by Andrea Lam
When I was in middle school, my teachers would sometimes have us vote--by a show of hands--on what we thought was the answer to a problem. At times we'd vote with our heads up and our eyes open, and at other times we'd vote with our heads down on our desks and our eyes closed. When we voted with our eyes closed, I personally always felt a little silly, sitting at my desk with my books in front of me, my eyes squinched shut and my hand in the air, but I never felt any pressure to pick an answer besides the one upon which I had decided. This method of voting was anonymous--or at least as anonymous as it got in sixth grade. But it was an entirely different story when we voted with our eyes open. Then we could see each other, and thus see who picked what answer. Often a just a few hands would go up at first, then a few more, and after a furtive look or two, even more. I remember on more than one occasion looking around the room and, after seeing many of my fellow classmates raising their hands with apparent confidence in the truth of their decision, changing my mind and raising my hand as well. I didn't want to get labeled as the kid who voted the wrong way, because everyone else must have been right--right?
A recent article in The New York Times deals with this issue of peer- (or authority-) pressure-induced decision-making. Titled , it deals with the idea of "informational cascades" and how they affect even the most intelligent groups of people. An informational cascade is basically what happens when one or two people publically guess one way and everyone else follows, each one "[assuming] that the rest can't all be wrong." Because of this tendency, many people who originally believed the "other" way will generally change their minds, even if the group's final "decision" ends up being incorrect.
The article gives the example of the anti-fatty-food theory put forth by Ancel Keys in the early 1950s--a theory which, though fallaciously developed and insufficiently evidenced, became quickly accepted over the course of the decade, grew in popularity in the 1970s, and peaked in 1980 with its incorporation into the FDA's food pyramid.
This reminds me somewhat of a good many widespread "facts" these days, including the bizarrely persistent idea that humans use only ten percent of their brains. I, quite frankly, have no clue where this "theory" comes from, and unfortunately, neither does anyone else I've asked (source amnesia at work?). Somehow, however, it still manages to crop up in informal speech, films, and television. Perhaps this was a valid idea at some point in time, but it's long since been debunked, and informational cascade seems to be the only reason why it's still seriously referenced in the present day.
