Pluralistic Ignorance!

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. – Saul Bellow, author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

The story is often told that the Blackfeet Indian tribe discovered ingenious ways to hunt, but none more interesting than when hunting buffalo. The tribe devised a way to manipulate the single mindedness of the herd to drive them into a pis’kun. Simply put the medicine man would wear a buffalo headdress and the members of the tribe would form a V as they hid behind rocks and bushes. After attracting the attention of the herd, the medicine man would begin to move down the chute continuing to arouse the curiosity of the buffalo until the herd would begin to run. At this point, all the hidden tribe members would jump from their concealed sites and frighten the herd further into the chute. Unfortunately for the buffalo at the end of the corral was the pis’kun, a large precipice loaded with jagged rocks. Stampeding forward with their heads down, the buffalo developed a single minded reliance based on social proof, foolishly propelling themselves towards their untimely end. What’s even more amazing is the fact that the corrals were often made of materials that the buffalo could have easily decimated with their collective strength but never did.

In more recent history, you may have seen the terrifying video of a man being hit by a speeding car in Hartford CT. Caught on video it appears that nobody is willing to actually run to the man’s aid. The next day the national news media decried the woes of our callous society…how could this happen? Have we become that detached from each other? The fact is that this has nothing to do with today’s society, rather everything to do with human behavior given a set of circumstances. Because we like to look poised and in control, avoiding embarrassment at all costs, we will tend to look for social proof when we are confronted with a situation that is unfamiliar. Given that proof, we might even conclude to take the inappropriate action…thus the explanation of bystander inaction during a crisis.

Don’t think for a minute that you are immune to this phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance. Have you ever watched a television show and found yourself laughing at a joke that wasn’t very funny…pay attention to the “canned laughter” that the television producers refuse to live without. This technique actually finds its roots in the 1800s in opera houses, where people were hired to applaud at certain points in a performance and established a phenomenon called “claquing.” So the motivation here is to BEWARE! I have warned you all not to become part of the herd just because it seemed liked the right thing to do even when it leads to your own peril. Use your own mind, think! Does it really matter what everyone else thinks? Why am I in this relationship…because everyone else says this person is good for me? Why did I take this job…because being an artist was not socially acceptable? I could never be successful in this bad economy…because that’s what the national media is telling me so it must be true!! Come on really, how did you feel for the buffalo? Here they are a massive, powerful animal capable of freeing themselves easily, yet compelled forward by pluralistic ignorance! So the point is to look up when you’re in the crowd and take a realistic view…the best part of it all is that you have a chance to be a leader and not one of the SHEOPLE!! So the next time you read the story of a real life hero, remind yourself that it’s simply someone who bucked the trend of the crowd and stood up for what simply made sense!

Tags: Motivation, Self Improvement