In order to make quite sure that the discussion and not the seeing of
the vote is responsible for the marked improvement in the case of men,
I carried on some further experiments in which the voting alone was
involved. To bring this mental process to strongest expression, I went
far beyond the small circle which was needed for the informal exchange
of opinion, and operated instead with my large class of psychological
students in Harvard. I have there four hundred and sixty students, and
accordingly had to use much larger cards with large dots. I showed to
them any two cards twice. There was an interval of twenty seconds
between the first and the second exposures, and each time they looked
at the cards for three seconds. In one half of the experiments that
interval was not filled at all; in the other half a quick show of
hands was arranged so that every one could see how many on the first
impression judged the upper card as having more or an equal number or
fewer dots than the lower. After the second exposure every one had to
write down his final result. The pairs of cards which were exposed
when the show of hands was made were the same as those which were
shown without any one knowing how the other men judged. We calculated
the results on the basis of four hundred reports. They showed that the
total number of right judgments in the cases without showing hands was
60 per cent. correct; in those with show of hands about 65 per cent. A
hundred and twenty men had turned from the right to the wrong—that
is, had more incorrect judgments when they saw how the other men voted
than when they were left to themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account