The thin line to innovation...
Thu, 23rd October 2008 - 06:56 PM   |   672 views   |  comments

Life is on the roll. It's tough but not bad. I am adjusting in the new city; to be honest things are way too different and strange. On the good side, I am learning something new - almost every other day.

There's this interesting bit that I came across during a discussion session.

People believe innovators and idealists are those who think out of the box. That might well be true but not always. However, they also have a strong tendency to think exactly like you do; but with a difference. What is different with them has roots in human psychology. As a matter of fact innovators aren't different; we are. Majority of us come under an effect known as "Social Pressure over Perception". So to say, simply, we are limited not by the capabilities of our own mind but by what majority of the people think around us.

We can think big, however, we lack the vision to remain focused on our perception despite of what others believe and think. This is something innovators are good at. That is why they innovate.

It's complex and complicated to explain however I found an experiment that can (to some extent) describe the phenomenon:

Imagine yourself in the following situation: You sign up for apsychology experiment, and on a specified date you and seven otherswhom you think are also subjects arrive and are seated at a table in asmall room. You don't know it at the time, but the others are actuallyassociates of the experimenter, and their behavior has been carefullyscripted. You're the only real subject.

The experimenter arrives and tells you that the study in which you areabout to participate concerns people's visual judgments. She placestwo cards before you. The card on the left contains one vertical line.The card on the right displays three lines of varying length.

A Test of Perception:
Which line in Card B is the same length as theline in Card A. A series of experiments by Solomon Asch, testing theeffects of social pressure on individual perceptions, showed that somepeople in some situations will go against the evidence of their ownsenses if the people around them seem to perceive something different.

The experimenter asks all of you, one at a time, to choose which ofthe three lines on the right card matches the length of the line onthe left card. The task is repeated several times with different
cards. On some occasions the other "subjects" unanimously choose thewrong line. It is clear to you that they are wrong, but they have allgiven the same answer.

What would you do? Would you go along with the majority opinion, orwould you "stick to your guns" and trust your own eyes?

In 1951 social psychologist Solomon Asch devised this experiment toexamine the extent to which pressure from other people could affectone's perceptions ^[1].

Some of the subjects indicated afterward that they assumed the rest of the people were correct and that their own perceptions were wrong. Others knew they were correct but didn't want to be different from the rest of the group. Some even insisted they saw the line lengths as the majority claimed to see them.

Asch concluded that it is difficult to maintain that you see something when no one else does. Pressure from other people can make you see almost anything.

^[1] Asch, S. 1958. "Effects of group pressure on the modification and distortion."
In E. E. Maccoby, T. M. Newcomb, & E. L. Hartley (Eds.), Readings in Social Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.

Source: "Social Pressure and Perception." 123HelpMe.com. 23 Oct 2008

The Bottom Line:

The ironic fact of life is, we ourselves aren't even aware about when we are a victim of this phenomenon and nevertheless it limits our perceptive power. Most of the times we do it unknowingly, rest of the times we do it deliberately. Hence the very famous quote "Don't let anybody tell you you can't do something" indirectly holds its true essence.