goodenomics™

The evidence

Conformity: when everyone else gives the wrong answer

The answer is in front of your eyes. Everyone else in the room has just said something different, one after another, and now it is your turn.

A scene from The Reconstruction, the journey where the game asks this question.
A scene from the game, as it is drawn: one handwritten line at a time.

Conformity

Going along with a unanimous group’s answer even when your own eyes tell you it is wrong.

What the study found

In Asch’s line-matching experiments, male college students facing a unanimous wrong majority went along on about a third of critical trials: 37% in the 1956 report on 123 students, against almost no errors when judging alone. In the 1951 report on 50 students, a quarter never went along, so about three in four did at least once.

Source: Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied 70(9, Whole No. 416), 1-70. doi.org/10.1037/h0093718

How to read this

These are the answers of particular people, asked in a particular way, at a particular time. A share of people is not a verdict: it tells you what they answered, not what is right.

Where the game asks it

The Reconstruction (When should you obey?), The Review (What would change your mind?). The game’s versions with family, age, consent and combined pressures are new comparisons written for it. They are not copies of the experiments, and no population percentages are claimed for them.

Play The Reconstruction Free. No account. Your place is saved on your device.

More evidence