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The Affect of Group Minds on Behaviours
The effect of group minds on behaviors implies the general influence group minds have on individuals’ thinking and opinions. The term “group minds” refers to joint intellect with regards to a conception in sociology and philosophy. This term in science fiction is widely explained as shared awareness.
In the book ‘‘group minds’’ by Doris Lessing, she brings out the fact that many people all over the world live in groups. Some of these are social and work groups not forgetting the family and the very minute percentage of the population that is contented by living in solitude. Such people are viewed in a negative way as to be either bizarre or egocentric. Lessing (12) portrays the ideology that people opt not to live alone for a lengthy period of time rather, they tend to look for groups to belong.
A hazardous fact is not belonging to a group but rather the lack of understanding of the social laws that rule groups and those that govern people individually. Group minds tend to think alike or in a better term, people in a group are ‘like-minded’ nevertheless, the challenging aspect of it is having a clear individual mind as an affiliate of a particular group.
Doris Lessing expounds on group minds by caring out an experiment where an individual is separated from a group and he /she is not given clear instructions on the task ahead which entails the comparison of different lengths of wood that have a slight difference from each other yet the group of people are collectively asked to perform the same task.
In the outcome, the majority group will stubbornly confirm that the lengths are equal while on the other hand, the minority, that is the individual who performed the task alone, will state that the pieces of wood differ in length. However, the group will continue persisting that right is wrong and after a period of enragement and even frustration, the minority will change their stand and join the majority thus most people give in to the major opinion hence the term “obey the atmosphere”.
The affect of group minds is usually strong and many agree that the most challenging thing is to differ with one’s group in opinion. A large number agree that they often side with the majority just because it is simply, the majority, even in situations where it is wrong.
A group mind is one major underlying hypothesis that goes unnoticed in a group and members of a group not only submit to the group but they also hardly notice that they have a collective mind and never have a difference in opinion and to them, other people not belonging to their group seem insignificant.
Members of this group are so resistant to change that no debate about their postulations can be held. Only 10 percent of the total population of the world can be called natural leaders since they have independent minds and do make their own decisions by themselves without influence from majority groups. In individual thinking, a person differs and rings out that one factor that is often overlooked by a group of people and this issue of overlooking by the group is brought about by the group thinking that they are right.
According to Lessing (56), when you analyse the way a stance towards a particular book is viewed by everyone, people say the same thing whether positive or negative until there is a drift in opinion: this may be an element of some wider social drift. She gave an example of a women’s movement where a publishing house governed by women re-assess the work of women writers who have been disregarded by the community due to the ‘group thinking’ of the masses.
In some cases, a shift of the general opinion occurs due to a person standing out against the general opinion and other people join him hence creating a new ideology that subsequently becomes general. When a well respected person of the society says that something is good yet someone who isn’t known in the society thinks it is not, it is difficult to differ and better yet, it is more difficult to differ when quite a lot of people say the opposite.
The external pressure that people undergo and succumb to often comes in form of groups such as patriotism, loyalty groups, beliefs and needs. However the hardest pressure that is difficult to control is the internal one which stresses that you follow the majority. An experiment popularly known as Milgrma is used to illustrate the group thinking phenomenon whereby, people who are randomly chosen were put in one room and an opaque screen divides the room.
In the second part of the room a number of volunteers are put in and they are wired to a machine that is used to run electric shock up to a point of killing a person similar to an electric chair. That machine gives them indications on how they are to react to the electric shocks either with a grunt then groan and screams and finally with a plea to cease the experiment.
Those people who were randomly chosen and put in the first room actually thought that people in the second half of the room were connected to the electrocuting machine. They were instructed to administer shock gradually increasing and hence ignore the grunts from the other side.
Out of this sixty-two percent of them continued administering shock up to 450 volts level and at the voltage of 285 the guinea pig had already become silent after giving an excruciating scream. Those that administered the shocks had a firm belief that they had given the painful shocks at their best and they experienced a great deal of pressure though they kept on increasing the volts of electricity.
After the experiment many of them found it incredulous that they had the capability of such actions and some of them said that they were only following the instructions given to them. This experiment very openly and clearly shows how majority of people follow orders issued to them regardless of their degree and nature even if atrocious in order to obey the authority above them. Such an example is the German Nazis who did not question the orders given unto them.
‘Group mind’ is an element of the general human behavior. Doris Lessing points out that by a person joining a group in the name of finding people like themselves, the chances of that group changing the views and opinions of that person are usually high. She also warns that if a person does not think for himself/herself, that person is a part of a group and may end up never having the opportunity to be a standalone individual with his/her own views (Behrens and Rosen 96).
Solomon Asch, the author of “Opinions and social pressure”, carried out several experiments to demonstrate the effect of group minds in human beings. In one of the experiments, college students were asked to give their views regarding various issues and at a later date they were asked the same question but this time around they were first given the views of the authorities and majority of their peer groups on the same issues.
In the outcome, many of the students changed their views towards the direction of the opinions of the majority. This proves the extent to which group minds has affected the society as a whole. The fact that a particular group has the majority rule tends to shift views even in the event of there being no argument for other views.
People should strongly criticize the power of social pressure since an affect of group minds causes uncritical submission to members of a group. According to Asch (105), the capability of rising above group thinking and the phenomenon of group minds through independent thinking is a factor open to human beings.
In another experiment a group of about eight to nine students were put in a room for a “psychological experiment”in visual acuteness. The experiment was about giving the comparison between lengths of lines where two white cards are marked by a black line. One card had a single black line while the other had three which had varying lengths.
The students were to make a choice on which vertical line had the same length as the one that was on the first card. Initially their answers were to be given in the order in which they were seated and they gave the same matching line and in the second round they gave a common answer. However, in the third round one person differed from the rest in his answer and he looked surprised by the disagreement and on the fourth trial he still disagreed while his colleagues are unanimous on their decision.
What was duly noted was that the more he disagreed in the other trials, the more he got worried and hesitant and one occasion he paused before giving his answer and spoke in a low tone of voice or he grinned in an embarrassed manner. The experimenter had given instructions to the other members of the group to give wrong answers unanimously and the dissenter had no idea about this.
The dissenter who was also the minority had actually given the correct answer but he was opposed by a majority group that was giving the incorrect answer in unanimity. Out of 123 people put to this test, a large number of them followed the majority group due to group pressure that resulted from group minds. The minority shifted their answers to the majority which was out rightly misleading them in 36.8 percent of the varieties.
Although the individuals differed at some point, a quarter was independent and hardly agreed with the majority but at some other point some students affirmed with the majority in almost all the occasions.
This experiment conclusively shows that those students who followed the majority could not free themselves as the ordeal went on and on while the independent did not end up following the majority as the trials continued. Those that followed the majority did so because their suspicions failed to free them at the moment of making a concrete choice.
In addition, an experiment was carried out and it gave the conclusion that when an individual is subjected with only one person giving a contradictory answer to his, that individual is only influenced slightly. But as the trials continue and the opposition is increased to two people, he starts experiencing pressure and doubt on his answer.
In a case where the minority number keeps on decreasing where the members shift their answers and join the majority. So long as the minority subject has a person siding with his answer, he has invariable independence but immediately that person defects, the chances of the dissenter following the majority in the next trial increases sharply.
Philip Zimbardo in his book, “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” studied the psychological effects of a person as a prisoner or as a prison guard. He carried out the Stanford Prison study where his subjects were 24 college students who were allocated duties to be either “prisoners” or “guards” in a model of a prison situated in the Stanford Psychology Building at the cellar.
In this experiment, the volunteers knew they were participating in a study but they did not have a clue when it would begin. When they were arrested at random and taken to the prison they were in a placid state of distress. The “prisoners” underwent humiliation where they were undressed, shaved and searched and just like in an actual prison they wore uniforms, ID numbers and given an escort to the cells by the guards.
It was difficult for the prisoners to show any individual personalities due to the changes they had undergone which had brought isolation to them. The psychologists in this experiment did not issue any instructions to the guards on how to treat the prisoners all they were to do was to maintain order in the replica prison. The volunteer prisoners portrayed signs of shock and uneasiness and they ridiculed the guards as they tried to reclaim their individualism (Zimbardo 123).
The guards formulated a tactic to fight back so as to maintain order and discipline to the disobedient prisoners who had rebelled. The prisoners who had started the rebellion were stripped and put in a solitary confinement by the guards while those that had no involvement in the riots were given the privilege of laying in their bed, bathing and food while their colleagues lacked those three things.
But after sometime even those prisoners that obeyed were also subjected to punishment to a point where visiting the toilet was an advantage to that particular prisoner.
At this point the prisoners thought themselves to be actual criminals and both themselves and the guards took to their roles and acted way beyond their jurisdiction of what was expected and thought of them hence leading to psychological suffering.
Many prisoners had been emotionally disturbed and five of them were removed from the study earlier on when it was concluded that a third of the guards portrayed vicious trends.
After the experiment, the volunteers, that is, both the guards and prisoners were assembled into the same room for assessment so as to put across their feelings to each other and evaluations were drawn to the Milgram experiment. Due to the distress the participants underwent, the study ended within 6 days as opposed to the planned two weeks.
The aim of this experiment was to test the philosophy that personality characters of prisoners and guards were swiftly the key to understanding offensive prison circumstances. The experiment was terminated by Zimbardo when Christina Maslach who was conducting interviews opposed the horrendous conditions of the prison. Out of more than fifty people who had seen the prison, he noted that only one of them had raised the issue of its ethics and that one person was Christina Maslach.
In the excerpt from Ian MeEwan’s novel, ‘Atonement’, he states the German Luftwaffe had raided soldiers who were retreating and those on the beaches without the Royal Air Force(RAF) responding to this hence, they followed orders and followed the majority. This shows the affect of group mind in the military.
Atonement is a British film that revolves around romance, suspense and war and it is generally described as “redemptive and astounding”. In the film, Turner tried to maintain order on the movement that was before him a thing that he almost succeeded. A short man who worked with Royal Air Force (RAF) was cornered by the crowd and received a beating from some members of the crowd. The man was a minority while the crowd had the majority rule.
The crowd laughed at the man as he was kicked and no one questioned them. A sense of individual responsibility eroded the crowd as they circled around the short man as the members of the crowd got reckless and irresponsible. Turner took the assumption that he could not do anything to help the man because if he did so, he would be risking getting lynched by the mob. The factual threat that had occurred to Turner was the ‘righteous state of mind’ of the mob.
As a man decided to whip the short man, Mace tricked the crowd to thinking that he was going to drown the man an idea that the crowd was so excited about. In this, the minority which was comprised of Nettle ,Turner ,Mace and the wounded man ended up winning through their wise thinking whereby, instead of trying to stop the crowd they coerced it since the multitude had “group minds” (MeEwan 89).
Conclusion
Group minds on behaviors greatly affect human behavior and regardless of human beings having sufficient information about themselves, they do not use it to develop their lives. This aspect greatly influences the actions of a group whereby whatever the group has decided as a whole cannot be questioned and each and every member of the group does not have the power to think individually.
It is therefore appropriate and correct to state that group minds negatively impacts the lives of those belonging to a particular group. On the contrary, individual thinking enhances progression in people’s lives and it defeats the illusion behind democracy where people have the capacity to assess situations before following a group and its views.
Works Cited
Asch, Solomon. Opinions and social pressure. Prentice Hall Inc., 1955. Print.
Behrens, Laurence and Rosen, Leonard. Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. New York: Longman Pub Group, 1996. Print.
Lessing, Doris. Group minds. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2001. Print.
MeEwan, Ian. Atonement. New York: Nan A. Talese, 2002. Print.
Zimbardo, Philip. Stanford prison experiment: A simulation study of the psychology of imprisonment. Philip G. Zimbardo, Inc., 1972. Print.
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