During my senior year of high school, I took my mom’s Sociology class. It was a dual credit course, and I was trying to wrack up as many college hours as possible before I graduated. Now, other than the little bit of awkwardness of being the son of the teacher, I had a lot fun in the class and learned a lot.
One of the lessons is one I will never forget. We were talking about the actual quantitative effect that peer pressure can have on the individual and how this can easily lead to mob mentality. To illustrate her point, my mom asked ten students to step outside of the classroom for a moment. When they were gone, she drew four lines on the chalkboard. They were all relatively the same size, but third line down was obviously longer than the others. She turned to us and informed us that she had given instructions to all but one of the students outside to pick the top line no matter what she asked of them.
When the ten people came back into the room, she asked each one to point out the longest line of chalk on the board. One after another, nine of the students came up, studied the board, and picked the top line as the longest. Now, Justin, the last student to come up, had not been given any instruction from Mom. He was supposed to come up and pick the longest line based on his observation of the four marks. But when it came his turn, he was so afraid to pick anything contrary to the other students’ choices that he went against his better judgment and chose the top line as well.
His need to fit in with the world around him had overruled his basic logic.
