2014年10月16日星期四

We All Affect Each Other

Once we had the social media analytic class, professor told us that she would ask a question in the class and wanted us to answer 'C is the answer' to cooperate with her when few students hadn't arrived at the classroom. The question was very simple which is to compare the length of three lines to the reference line and find the same one as the reference. Although it is obviously that line B had the same length, we all said that C was the correct answer as professor told us. Then professor asked the students who reached classroom later about their answer. They looked confused and didn't know what's wrong with all of us. Then some of them started to change their mind to meet our answer while others still thought B is the most likely line but doubted about themselves's perception. This is a very interesting quiz to show the phenomenon that people all affect each other. People are scared to be weird, so popular opinions influence our own cognitions seriously. Popular trends vary from year to year, people pursue them because they come from famous experts in each fields. It is safe and easy to be same. There is a common sense that the more people claim the higher probability to be truth. We have to hold similar cognition to insure getting along with others well. It seems that the simplest way to adapt to society is being similar to  main stream.

9 条评论:

  1. Being similar to main stream sometimes may also do harm to individual or family.A rumor comes that the radiation may influence the salt and people rush into the market
    to buy plenty of salt just because others are doing the same thing.

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    1. But at least it will not occur some big problems. Even some bad things for example which break rules happens, there has a sentence in Chinese says"法不责众".

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  2. That's why people trust the reviews / comments from online shops. We all trend to believe the majority. However, we cannot just blindly believe what the others said. We should try to analysis those information and find some evidences to support it first.

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    1. You are right since a new job which is to write positive comments on products has come out, the praise for goods is not all real now. orz

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  3. Hi, Shuyu! I also wrote about this experience in my blog! I think the result is interesting but reasonable and the special teaching method is worth to be wrote down.

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    1. Haha~ I will visit your blogger and leave my comments on it too. I also really appreciate the teaching method of professor, interesting and visualized.

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  4. I still remember the story at that night,LOL, quite insteresting. I think the professor wanted to show us what The Effect of Sheep Flock is, or in other words, the herd behavior. Fortunately, our classmates do not follow other students to answer the wrong answer.

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    1. But they do had some hesitation~ I think people who have self confidence would believe their feelings and insist on it more firmly.

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  5. Although I do not like to follow the herd, actually I am still affected by others. The reasons are I don't want to be a weird guy or I want to reduce troubles or somethings else.

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