Small World: Human Nature, Conformity, and Tornadoes

\n \n \n While visiting the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in San Diego, I had a unique cultural insight. First, watch the video to get an idea of what I am talking about. The Science Center is an extraordinarily fun place. Every exhibit demonstrates some strange scientific phenomenon, and offers an explanation for what is seen. It is both educational and enjoyable. This particular exhibit is an artificial tornado . The placard explains how the apparatus creates an environment that mimics the natural environment in which a tornado occurs. It invites observers to disrupt the tornado and watch it form up again. But the people in the video aren’t disrupting the tornado, are they? No, they’re rubbing the poles! Why? I don’t know. That’s what they were doing when I got there, and that’s what other people were doing two hours later when we left. Actually, I do know why. Because every time a new person would come to the exhibit, the people there would tell him, “You have to rub the poles to make the tornado!” And they would do it, and then the first group would leave and another group would come, and the instructions got passed on, from each subsequent group to the next. What impressed me about this was that it seemed almost as if nobody was paying attention to the instructions on the placard. I’m sure some people were, but most people simply followed the example of the people who were there before them, and the result was a continuous stream of people eager to carry on the tradition and keep rubbing the poles—without even questioning why! I don’t at all think that it is overly cynical to compare this occurrence to the way culture is formed . It is the principle of conformity, a principle which has always been necessary for human survival. Conformity establishes predictability and trust between people. It enables people to work together without having to worry excessively about what to expect from other people. It is the primary way by which people learn how to speak, how to walk, or how to act around other people. It is the primary way people learn just about anything, and it is the primary way that culture is transmitted from one person, or one generation, to the next. However, as we can see in the tornado example, it obviously has its drawbacks. Mimicking others may be the most efficient way of learning a language, but too much of a reliance on ‘social autopilot’ often leads to irrational behavior, or mob mentality. In the Navy, for example, this problem always comes up in the deck log. There are strict rules governing written entries in the deck log, and often sailors will copy the last entry rather than look up the proper format and personally investigate the data. As a result, one sailor’s mistake might result in the wrong number of mooring lines being logged for several days. But these examples are totally benign in comparison to some of the truly grim examples of conformity in human history: Slavery , genocide , human sacrifice , and on and on. When everybody else in town is a Nazi or a slave owner, the conformity reflex often overrides our consciences with the argument “Everybody else is doing it, so it must be okay.” As I said before, though, conformity in itself can be a good thing. It just needs to be checked by reason. However, for me to say that we should all try to be more careful is nearly useless… conformist behavior is human nature. As individual people, we can certainly try to reflect more on why we do things a certain way. We can try to trust our own judgment more than we trust the conformity instinct. But in the end, it is essential for us to understand this aspect of human nature, and its potential consequences. Look around you, it is not going away any time soon. Thank you, and have a great (and perhaps now more thoughtful) day! Geoffrey Donate! ...why? Bookmark this! It helps other people find it! Visit us and post your comments! http://www.caucusrace.org \n

Mevio | December 18, 2007

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