A fascinating and disturbing survey illustrates just how rampant is a phenomenon called “crowd-think.” One thousand Americans were asked to assess two different education policies. Half of them were told that Plan One was Democratic and Plan Two was Republican…the other half were told the exact opposite.
Results: About three-fourths of the survey respondents favored the plan that they had been told belonged to their own political party—regardless of what that plan actually stated!
What are we—sheep?
Being able to think for ourselves is an essential element of living an emotionally healthy and well-balanced life. Life coach and Daily Health News contributor Lauren Zander weighs in on how we can free ourselves from crowd-think…
When you’re part of a group—especially a group in which each member tends to praise and reinforce the opinions and beliefs of the other members—and you’re asked to weigh in on a situation, it sometimes can be difficult to determine whether your opinion is truly your own or you’re just automatically going along with everyone else.
Crowd-think is Zander’s term for this phenomenon. Crowd-think is different from peer pressure, in which you know that something is wrong (or at least wrong for you), yet for whatever reason you still consider agreeing with it or doing it. With crowd-think, in contrast, you truly believe that an opinion is your own—even though you’ve never actually investigated the issue or thought it through from beginning to end for yourself.
You’ve basically had your opinion delivered to you—though you might not realize it.
Because of crowd-think, you even may be a zealot on an issue that you haven’t studied with any sort of independent approach. That can lead you toward attitudes and actions that ultimately might create huge problems and cause emotional anguish for you and for others.
There are two main reasons that people end up letting others in their group do their thinking for them. The first is that people naturally want to be seen in a positive light. “Everyone has a deep desire to be liked by a group—whether that group is made of family members, friends, colleagues or even folks we’ve never met who post on online forums,” Zander said. When this desire for affection is even moderately strong, it can obscure any deeper reflections that could reveal differences of opinions—differences that might lead the group to withdraw its approval of you.
Another reason you may stop thinking for yourself is that, when lots of people are stating their opinions in depth, you start to understand why they feel the way that they do. This engenders feelings of empathy, and that’s fine—unless the empathy clouds your own personal reasoning, making you believe that others’ thoughts are actually your thoughts, too.
To free yourself from crowd-think, you need to develop strategies that help you separate your own thoughts from the thoughts of others. Zander’s suggestions…
For example, suppose that you are at a staff meeting at work and your boss excitedly outlines a new sales approach. You have a momentary twinge of doubt, fearing that the approach could damage the company in the long run, but your worry subsides as the rest of your coworkers start agreeing with the boss. Don’t ignore that twinge! Instead, immediately jot down your initial reaction—it represents a thought that is completely your own.
Once you have captured your thought before it can flit away, go ahead and listen to the opinions of others. Then later in the meeting, when your boss asks you to weigh in, reread what you wrote. If your opinion has changed by that point, ask yourself whether you have a good reason for your change of heart. If you do not, take a risk and express your differing opinion.
Remember, groups achieve the most when each member is committed to discovering and expressing his or her own truth. “Negotiating in a group is based on openly expressing and defending your point of view,” Zander said. The group may ultimately decide against your approach, but winning some and losing some is all part of the collaboration process. Whether or not your opinion carries the day, you will respect yourself as a person of honesty and integrity—and so will others.
