then they would be better off simply providing an answer calibrated to please whoever they most desired to avoid disapproval from
No they wouldn’t. Ambiguity is their ally. Both answers elicit negative responses, and they can avoid that from most people by not saying anything, so why shouldn’t they shut up?
EDIT: In case it’s not clear, I consider this tactic borderline Dark Arts (please note who originally said that ambiguity-ally line in HPMOR!), a purely political weapon with no role in conversations trying to be rational. I wouldn’t criticize its use as a defense against some political nitwit who’s trying to hurt you in front of an inexperienced audience; I would be unhappy with first-use of it as a primary political strategy.
In that case, I would expect them to reverse their rejection in the case of sufficient peer pressure, but this is frequently not the case.
Now I really do want to systematically test how people rejecting the dilemma respond to peer pressure. I’ve spent a great deal of time watching others deal with this particular dilemma , but my experience isn’t systematically gathered or well documented.
In retrospect, I should have held off on making this post until gathering that data; I wrote it up more in frustration at dealing with the same situation again than out of a desire to be informative, and I feel like I should probably have taken a karma hit for that.
I’d be interested in a trolley version of the Asch conformity experiment: line up a bunch of confederates and have them each give an answer, one way or another, and act respectfully to each other. Then see how the dodge rate of the real participant changes.
Then you could set it up so that one confederate tries to dodge, but is talked out of it. Etc.
My prediction (~80% confidence) is, given one subject and six confederates and a typical Asch setup, if all confederates give the non-safe answer (e.g., they say “I’d throw one person under the train” or whatever), you’ll see a 40-60% increase in the subject’s likelihood of doing the same compared to the case where they all dodge.
If one confederate dodges and is chastised for it, I really don’t know what to expect. If I had to guess, I’d guess that standard Asch rules apply and the effect of the local group’s pressure goes out the window, and you get a 0-10% increase over the all-dodge case. But my confidence is low… call it 20%.
What I’d really be interested in is whether, after going through such a setup, subjects’ answers to similar questions in confidential form change.
If one confederate dodges and is chastised for it, I really don’t know what to expect. If I had to guess, I’d guess that standard Asch rules apply and the effect of the local group’s pressure goes out the window
That’s not the normal Asch setup- the dissenter isn’t ridiculed for it; the subject feels free to dissent because they’ve seen someone else dissent and ‘get away with it’. I would expect that the chastistement variation on any Asch test would produce even more, rather than less, conformity.
Yeah, I can see why you say that, and you might be right, but I’m not entirely sure. I’ve never seen the results of an Asch study where the dissenter is chastised. And this particular example is even weirder, because the thing they’re being chastised for—dodging the question—is itself something that we hypothesize is the result of group conformity effects. So… I dunno. As I say, my confidence in this case is low.
I would expect them to reverse their rejection in the case of sufficient peer pressure,
Unless, of course, they’re willing to put up with some short-term hassling to avoid long-term problems. Given that either answer could be taken out of context and used against them by all the people currently applying that pressure, there’s no point (short of, say, locking them in a room and depriving them of sleep for an extended period of time, which is really a whole different kettle of fish) where answering the question becomes preferable.
No they wouldn’t. Ambiguity is their ally. Both answers elicit negative responses, and they can avoid that from most people by not saying anything, so why shouldn’t they shut up?
EDIT: In case it’s not clear, I consider this tactic borderline Dark Arts (please note who originally said that ambiguity-ally line in HPMOR!), a purely political weapon with no role in conversations trying to be rational. I wouldn’t criticize its use as a defense against some political nitwit who’s trying to hurt you in front of an inexperienced audience; I would be unhappy with first-use of it as a primary political strategy.
In that case, I would expect them to reverse their rejection in the case of sufficient peer pressure, but this is frequently not the case.
Now I really do want to systematically test how people rejecting the dilemma respond to peer pressure. I’ve spent a great deal of time watching others deal with this particular dilemma , but my experience isn’t systematically gathered or well documented.
In retrospect, I should have held off on making this post until gathering that data; I wrote it up more in frustration at dealing with the same situation again than out of a desire to be informative, and I feel like I should probably have taken a karma hit for that.
I’d be interested in a trolley version of the Asch conformity experiment: line up a bunch of confederates and have them each give an answer, one way or another, and act respectfully to each other. Then see how the dodge rate of the real participant changes.
Then you could set it up so that one confederate tries to dodge, but is talked out of it. Etc.
I would too.
My prediction (~80% confidence) is, given one subject and six confederates and a typical Asch setup, if all confederates give the non-safe answer (e.g., they say “I’d throw one person under the train” or whatever), you’ll see a 40-60% increase in the subject’s likelihood of doing the same compared to the case where they all dodge.
If one confederate dodges and is chastised for it, I really don’t know what to expect. If I had to guess, I’d guess that standard Asch rules apply and the effect of the local group’s pressure goes out the window, and you get a 0-10% increase over the all-dodge case. But my confidence is low… call it 20%.
What I’d really be interested in is whether, after going through such a setup, subjects’ answers to similar questions in confidential form change.
That’s not the normal Asch setup- the dissenter isn’t ridiculed for it; the subject feels free to dissent because they’ve seen someone else dissent and ‘get away with it’. I would expect that the chastistement variation on any Asch test would produce even more, rather than less, conformity.
Yeah, I can see why you say that, and you might be right, but I’m not entirely sure. I’ve never seen the results of an Asch study where the dissenter is chastised. And this particular example is even weirder, because the thing they’re being chastised for—dodging the question—is itself something that we hypothesize is the result of group conformity effects. So… I dunno. As I say, my confidence in this case is low.
Unless, of course, they’re willing to put up with some short-term hassling to avoid long-term problems. Given that either answer could be taken out of context and used against them by all the people currently applying that pressure, there’s no point (short of, say, locking them in a room and depriving them of sleep for an extended period of time, which is really a whole different kettle of fish) where answering the question becomes preferable.