The first people to speak will influence you.

The first people to speak will influence you.

Imagine once more that you are awaiting your turn to speak. This time it is not to give your general recommendation of the best course of action, but to give your firm judgement on something. It might be the price you think a product should be sold for, or how long the Tories will claim that austerity is needed, or whether the price of pork bellies will go up or down next week.

You think the answer is “A”, and that is what you are going to say when it is your turn.

The first person says “B”.

The next person agrees, “B”.

And so on. Everyone before you has said “B”.

What do you say?

I have written before about reputational cascades, where you don’t say what you really feel because you don’t want to risk the bad opinion of the others in your group. However, there is another kind of cascade – an “informational cascade”. This is where you begin to doubt your own judgement because of those before you giving a different answer. You don’t go along with the others out of fear of rejection this time, but because you begin to think you must have been wrong.

Solomon Asch conducted an experiment in the 1950s on whether people would conform to the majority view in this way. He showed the group one line on its own, and a group of 3 lines. With each of 18 sets like this they went around the room asking people which line of the 3 was closest to the one on its own.

Actually, only one person in the group was a real participant. The rest were stooges, who all agreed on an incorrect line in 12 of the 18 tests. 32% of the time (about one third) the real participant went along with them and also chose the (very obviously) wrong answer. About 75% of the participants went along with the wrong, majority choice at least once.

Find out more about how the mind plays tricks on you and how your memory works by reading my books, Bias Beware and Memory Matters.