larc	Social Influence Part I, II
	Hello brothers and sisters Lately, there has been a lot of discussion, re: who is to blame, the organization, the elders, the individual, or all of the above. I believe that all of the above were trapped in a bad system. I would like to present some findings from Social Psychology to illustrate the influences that make is very difficult for the individual to express free will, as we understand it. The research will be presented from the most ambiguous of situations to the most structured. Sherif He used a perceptual phenomena to show how vulnerable we are to the influence of others, the autokinetic effect. This phenomena occurs when a person is placed in a totally dark room and a tiny dot of light is shown on a wall. After awhile the tiny light appears to the person to be moving around. It moves in a random fashion and moves differently for different people. Now, if you have two people sit in a room and report out loud, how much movement there is, an amazing thing happens. Their answers become similiar. Feedback from a random event causes people to start to agree with each other. Agreement on a random event. Isn't that something? Implications: Take something as ambiguous as the Bible, especially the prophecy books and you find people agreeing on the most ambiguous of information there is. So now, we have different groups who agree on this fuzzy stuff and they argue with others who have a different belief of this fuzzy stuff. It is like arguing over what is the right perception of a Rorschach Inkblot. Guess what. There is no correct answer. Your answer tells more about you than it does about the blot. That is why it is a useful test. Next time, Soloman Asch and what the length of lines tells us about conformity, followed by Zimbardo, and prison riot on a college campus.
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