Groups and Social Interaction 3: Respect Your Perceptions, Tip Your Hat to Them, but Do Not Overrate Them

Hello again, dear readers of the Bilim ve Ütopya portal. As April was a month of conferences, talks, and meetings for me, we took a short break from our articles, but now we are back together. We can pick up where we left off.

In our previous article on the portal, titled “Our perception of reality may not be real,” we emphasized that the process by which signals from the outside world reach our brains and become conscious understanding through electrical and chemical pathways may not reflect external reality as we know it with complete accuracy [1]. Now we will discuss the central reason for writing this series: the effects of being a “group” and of culture on our perception.

From an evolutionary perspective, one of humans’ most important abilities and characteristics compared with other species is living and organizing themselves in groups [2]. We owe our current cultural sophistication and modern capabilities entirely to our ability to work as a team. After all, we cannot fly as high as birds, stay underwater as long as fish, or run as fast as a cheetah. Yet our capacity for “language,” our theory-of-mind abilities (including the ability to gossip), and our social skills have enabled us to build ships and aircraft, conduct space exploration, and, unfortunately, create weapons capable of causing mass death at the push of a button—a capability no other organism possesses… All of this is possible because of our social abilities and group skills. It is well established that cultural (linguistic) evolution is far, far ahead of our biological evolution. However, even without our advanced abilities today, these social and group-related characteristics are themselves a product of our biological evolution. Thus, group psychology, roles within groups, and the codes governing how group norms are established are deeply ingrained in us, and we still live by these codes even in today’s modern world. This is a good place to share a few insights arising from all this. I do not know whether you are aware of it, but what do you think of the following observation?

People are inclined to follow the practices and adopt the ideas that prevail within their group [3].

Let me make this statement a little more speculative. But it will still be true:

People are inclined to follow the practices and adopt the ideas that prevail within their group, even when they are wrong and irrational.

Here comes a slightly more speculative statement, but one that is still true:

People are inclined to follow the practices and adopt the ideas that prevail within their group, even when they already know they are wrong and irrational.

This is because we are social mammals, and being in harmony with group norms is profoundly important to our lives. We are wired with the drive to fit in with the group in order to survive. People feel safe when they are in contact with other people, look into their eyes, and play and socialize with others. Mammals isolated from others may experience impairments in various mental abilities [4]. Returning to the group’s influence on norms, culture is also the group’s unwritten code. Today, we know that, alongside historical background, the group leader’s rhetoric is an important component of group norms.

Thus, our thoughts and emotions are directly influenced by the culture, group, and leader we live with and are exposed to. Beyond our thoughts and emotions, even our “perceptions” are affected in this way. Returning here to Muzaffer Sherif, whose work is the foundational reading for this series, let us try to describe the autokinetic experiment from his classic book, which explains this finding, now demonstrated by many other studies [5]. First, let us introduce the autokinetic effect:

“The light was presented to the participant by opening a suitable shutter controlled by the experimenter. The participant was five meters from the light and was seated at a table with a telegraph key on it. The following instructions were given in writing: When it is completely dark, I will give you the READY signal, and you will point to the spot of light. After a short time, the light will begin to move. Press the button as soon as you see the light. After a few seconds, the light will disappear. Tell me the distance the light has traveled. Try to make your estimates as accurately as possible. These instructions outline the general procedure the participant would follow. Shortly after the light appeared, when the participant pressed the button, the adjustment device made a faint but audible ticking sound, indicating that the participant had perceived autokinetic movement. In all trials, the time elapsed after the participant pressed the button to indicate that they had begun to see movement was two seconds. The light was physically stationary throughout the entire period and was never moved during the trials. After the light disappeared, the participant reported the distance it had moved, based on their experience. The conditions producing autokinetic effects provide a complete experimental setting for testing our hypothesis. We can readily produce the autokinetic effect. In total darkness, such as in an unlit enclosed room or outdoors on a cloudy night with no other lights visible, a single small light can create the illusion of moving in every direction. If you repeatedly point out the spot of light to someone, particularly if they do not know the distance between themselves and the light, they may see it in a different location in the room each time. Producing the autokinetic effect experimentally is, without exception, very natural and very easy, provided the person does not use means to disrupt the effect.”

The experiment based on the autokinetic effect:

First stage: participants were taken individually into a pitch-dark room, and a light was shown at set intervals from the same point. They were asked in which direction and over what distances the light moved. Each participant reported a direction and varying distances (such as 3, 5, or 15 cm), but eventually established a standard distance of their own (between 6 and 8 cm). The important point here is that the light never moved.

Second stage: participants were taken into the room in groups and asked to state their judgments aloud. Once the first participant expressed an opinion, judgments began to change, and they developed a shared group standard. It is worth noting here that in groups without an established leader, the first person to speak may emerge as a potential leader.

Third stage: participants were again taken into rooms individually and asked for their opinions. This time, they reported the light’s direction and distance according to the standard they had developed as a group (in the second stage).

• In stage 1, an individual standard develops.
• In stage 2, a group standard develops.
• In stage 3, the individual uses the group standard.

Although the light is stationary, participants who experience it as moving because of the autokinetic illusion are asked how far it moved and give their answers verbally. As the experiment was repeated, the answers were found to converge progressively. The group tends to establish a norm even for an illusory perception! The results of Asch’s conformity experiments, a different version of this experiment, were even more troubling. Let us continue discussing these in our next article.

For now, in short:

Respect your perceptions and tip your hat to them, but do not overrate them:)

Huddy, L., Sears, D. O., & Levy, J. S. (Eds.). (2013). The Oxford handbook of political psychology. Oxford University Press.

Şerif, M. (1985). Sosyal kuralların psikolojisi. Alan Yayıncılık.

---

This article was first published on the web portal of Bilim ve Ütopya magazine on May 5, 2019. As the portal has been discontinued, I am republishing the text here.