I think the most interesting question that arises from these experiments is what’s the difference in personality between people who dissent and people who conform (aside from the obvious).
At my school we did this experiment. (I, happened to be one of the people who was not in on it, and did not conform). I have no idea what evidence they had to say this but the teacher suggested that people into “maths, physics or science stuff” were less likely to conform.
I would guess that if we did a study using the usual Big Five, a single personality trait would drive most of the variance, the one called “agreeableness”. Unfortunately this is not actually one trait, we just treat it like it is; there’s no particular reason to think that conformity is correlated with empathy, for example, yet they are both considered “agreeableness”. (This is similar to the problem with the trait “Belief in a Just World”, which includes both the belief that a just world is possible and the belief that it is actual. An ideal moral person would definitely believe in the possibility; but upon observing a single starving child they would know that it is not actual. Hence should they be high, or low, in “Belief in a Just World”?)
I think the most interesting question that arises from these experiments is what’s the difference in personality between people who dissent and people who conform (aside from the obvious).
At my school we did this experiment. (I, happened to be one of the people who was not in on it, and did not conform). I have no idea what evidence they had to say this but the teacher suggested that people into “maths, physics or science stuff” were less likely to conform.
I would guess that if we did a study using the usual Big Five, a single personality trait would drive most of the variance, the one called “agreeableness”. Unfortunately this is not actually one trait, we just treat it like it is; there’s no particular reason to think that conformity is correlated with empathy, for example, yet they are both considered “agreeableness”. (This is similar to the problem with the trait “Belief in a Just World”, which includes both the belief that a just world is possible and the belief that it is actual. An ideal moral person would definitely believe in the possibility; but upon observing a single starving child they would know that it is not actual. Hence should they be high, or low, in “Belief in a Just World”?)