The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, September, 1913: Vol. LXXXVI, No. 5Various
General
The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, September, 1913: Vol. LXXXVI, No. 5
Various
Periodicals
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 exposure, 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 sixty per cent. correct, in those with show of hands
about sixty-five 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. It
is true that those who turned from worse to better by seeing the vote
of the others were in a slight majority, bringing the total vote five
per cent. upward; but this difference is so small that it could just
as well be explained by the mere fact that this act of public voting
reinforced the attention and improved a little the total vote through
this stimulation of the social consciousness. It is not surprising that
the mere seeing of the votes in such cases has so small an effect,
incomparable with that of a real discussion in which new vistas are
opened, inasmuch as in forty per cent. of the cases the majority was
evidently on the wrong side from the start. Those who are swept away
by the majority would, therefore, in forty per cent. of the cases
be carried to the wrong side. I went still further, and examined by
psychological methods the degree of suggestibility of those four
hundred participants in the experiment, and the results showed that the
fifty most suggestible men profited from the seeing of the vote of the
majority no more than the fifty least suggestible ones. In both cases
there was an increase of about five per cent. correct judgments. I also
drew from this the conclusion that the show of hands was ineffective as
a direct influence toward correctness, and that it had only the slight
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