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DoubleEagle 102 points ago +102 / -0

There have been a number of psychology experiments where the researchers will do things like place two identical objects (A & B) on a table. Then they'll have many people in a room, different ratios of controlled and uncontrolled.

Which object is bigger? With the controlled members all saying "B is bigger" and then seeing how the uncontrolled members respond.

These have been done with increasingly ridiculous situations, where it's clear the controlled members are just ridiculous, buy the group mentality still tends to win over most people.

Look how many people will say that a man, in a dress, is actually a woman. Then they'll say toxic masculinity is must end the male abuse of women, then they'll watch a man shatter a woman's skull in a pay-per-view fight and celebrate how progressive it is.

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IncredibleMrE1 69 points ago +69 / -0

Look how many people will say that a man, in a dress, is actually a woman.

Perfect example of this.

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Luminous_2a 41 points ago +41 / -0

There are FOUR lights!

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bfafpo 21 points ago +21 / -0

Best TNG episode ever.

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BritPedeMEGA 2 points ago +2 / -0

What no love for shades of grey?

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bfafpo 2 points ago +2 / -0

Nooooot so much, lol. "Inner Light" is perhaps a tie with "Chain of Command." Not that I watched a lot of Star Trek or anything.

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posedgeclk 14 points ago +14 / -0

"What I didn't put in the report was that at the end he gave me a choice – between a life of comfort or more torture. All I had to do was to say that I could see five lights when, in fact, there were only four."

"You didn't say it?"

"No! No. But I was going to. I would have told him anything. Anything at all! But more than that, I believed that I could see five lights."

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Thatnikcufguy 6 points ago +6 / -0

Star Trek TNG

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Crockett 15 points ago +15 / -0

Before those studies, we used to tell kids the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes." I think about it all the time.

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45best45 6 points ago +6 / -0

Fact check: Reliable sources say the emperors clothes are a regal masterpiece that definitely exist.

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AnomalusCitizen7375 4 points ago +4 / -0

Fact checkers appeared very quickly and began shouting very loudly when the truth started coming out.

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BritPedeMEGA 4 points ago +4 / -0

All I know is that I never heard, read or watched on the media so many damn ‘fact checks’ this, fact check that, fact check out he wazoo, until around late 2015-2016. Hmmm wonder what changed.

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HalfassDetective 7 points ago +8 / -1

Got any sources or links to the group studies? Sounds like a powerful example of group think. Would love to hear more about this

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doug2 26 points ago +26 / -0

Ya I was going to say this is a very famous (like day 2 or 3 in almost all psych 101 classes, after the Stanford prison experiment and the electric shock test) and is widely replicated. The Asch conformity study is the most famous. These three studies tell you all you need to know about totalitarianism and the nature of most people.

For those who dont know, the stanford prison experiment was a bunch of people role playing a prison. They had to stop it because the "guards" were beating the inmates after a few days. The electric shock study had participants administer shocks to another "subject" when they answered a question wrong. The second subject (the one getting the shocks) was really a researcher or recording who'd scream in agony and beg them to stop, but there would be another researcher telling the subject administering the shocks to keep going. Every time they shocked they increased the voltage. They wanted to see how far people would go when an official figure (researcher) told them to. Almost everyone kept going past the point where the "shockee" complained of heart problems and even stopped responding. It is actually terrifying.

Another interesting study, the dark room study. They put random people (girls and guys) in a locked room that was totally 100% dark.. but they had night vision cams to watch them.

In almost every group people started hooking up... random people who didn't know eachother and couldn't see eachother in a dark room full of strangers.

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IncredibleMrE1 24 points ago +24 / -0

The stanford experiment is absolute evidence why the military and cop trusters are fools. Normal people were "just following orders," imagine what a massive group of people who were specifically trained to "just follow orders" will do when (not if but WHEN) turned on us.

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doug2 13 points ago +13 / -0

Couldn't agree more. Now these people are random Joes, in fact a rule of thumb when you're talking about psychological experimentation is a lot of the subjects are college students bc they're an easy place to get participants from.

They haven't had years of "respect the chain of command!" .. "never question a superior officer!" .. etc beat into their Operating System. If normal people will follow a random researchers encouragement (they never ordered, they just said "it is imperative to the study that you continue") to the point where they're shocking the body of an unresponsive dude who complained of heart complications imagine what soldiers would do when commanded by their superior officer. It's scary.

It has also played out over and over again throughout the history of the world. People think we're somehow fundamentally different than those that came before us. I think they'll be suprised.

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keeponwinning 6 points ago +6 / -0

Any group with power over a second group, and the subordinate group has no means of self defence (like firearms), and when there is no impartial third group properly regulating the empowered first group when arming the second group would be impossible in those rare cases like a prison population.

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MamaLlama4DJT2020 1 point ago +1 / -0

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/06/18/report-1971-stanford-prison-experiment-was-fake-acted-out/

A couple years ago this came out, I think it’s super interesting because Stanford experiment still gets referenced quite frequently.

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r_engine [S] 20 points ago +20 / -0

The Asch conformity studies fit this description. Classic example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIh4MkcfJA

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deleted 4 points ago +7 / -3
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RedditIsCommunist 4 points ago +4 / -0

I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. I mean the experiments aren’t invalid but I know what you’re talking about. It’s related to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathising%E2%80%93systemising_theory (notice all the tabula rasa nonsense on there about “muh sexism”)