Why Do We Follow the Crowd?

Imagine this.

You're sitting in a room with ten people.

Someone asks a ridiculously simple question:

Which line is longer?

You look at the image. The answer is obviously B.

Then the first person says:

"A."

The second person also says A.

Then the third.

Fourth.

Fifth.

Everyone in the room is saying A.

Now it's your turn.

You know the answer is B.

But suddenly you're not quite as confident anymore.

Wait... am I missing something?

Would you still say B?

Seriously, think about it before continuing.

If 10 people around you confidently gave an answer you believed was wrong, would you disagree with all of them?

Most of us like to imagine we would.

Psychology suggests otherwise.

And this tendency goes far beyond answering questions in a room.

It affects what we wear, what we believe, what careers we choose, what products we buy, what we consider successful, and sometimes even what we think is morally acceptable.

This is conformity.

And whether we realize it or not, we're doing it all the time.

The Asch Conformity Experiments

The example above is based on one of the most famous experiments in psychology.

In the 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch conducted experiments where participants were shown a line and asked to identify which of three other lines matched its length.

The task was intentionally easy.

But there was a catch.

Most people in the room weren't actually participants. They were working with the researchers.

They would deliberately give the same obviously incorrect answer.

The real participant would hear everyone else confidently say the wrong answer before having to answer themselves.

And something fascinating happened.

People sometimes went along with the group.

Not because the problem was difficult.

Not because they couldn't see the lines.

But because everyone else was saying something different.

That is an incredibly powerful thing to understand about humans.

You don't need to physically force someone to change their behavior.

Sometimes you just need to surround them with enough people behaving differently.

But Why?

Why would an intelligent human being knowingly give the wrong answer just because everyone else did?

Because for most of human history, being accepted by the group wasn't merely nice.

It was survival.

Imagine being a human thousands of years ago.

You're living in a tribe of maybe 50 or 100 people.

Food comes from the tribe.

Protection comes from the tribe.

Knowledge comes from the tribe.

Your potential partner probably comes from the tribe.

If everyone in your tribe suddenly decides:

"Tejas is dangerous. Throw him out."

You're in serious trouble.

There are no supermarkets.

No hospitals.

No police.

No apartment you can rent.

You're alone in the wilderness.

Humans who were extremely bad at maintaining social relationships probably had a significant disadvantage.

So our brains became extraordinarily sensitive to social acceptance.

We want to belong.

We don't like being rejected.

We don't like being laughed at.

We don't like being the only person in the room with a different opinion.

Thousands of years later, the environment has changed enormously.

But the brain hasn't completely forgotten.

There Are Actually Two Different Reasons We Conform

Suppose you're travelling somewhere you've never been before.

You arrive at a train station.

You have absolutely no idea where the exit is.

You notice 30 people walking toward the same staircase.

What do you do?

You probably follow them.

And that's completely rational.

This is sometimes called informational social influence.

You're basically thinking:

"They probably know something I don't."

The crowd becomes information.

Restaurants use this effect accidentally all the time.

You see two restaurants next to each other.

Restaurant A is almost empty.

Restaurant B has a queue outside.

Without knowing anything else, which one seems better?

Probably B.

Your brain immediately thinks:

There must be a reason everyone wants to eat there.

This shortcut is useful.

The problem appears when we use the same shortcut where the crowd doesn't actually know any more than we do.

There's another form of conformity too.

You know the group is wrong.

You just don't want to stand out.

That's normative social influence.

You aren't thinking:

"They must be correct."

You're thinking:

"I don't want them to think I'm weird."

That difference matters enormously.

You've Probably Experienced This

Imagine you're watching a movie with five friends.

You absolutely hated it.

Credits roll.

Your friend immediately says:

"Bro, that was incredible."

Someone else says:

"10/10."

Another person starts talking about how brilliant the ending was.

Then somebody asks you:

"What did you think?"

Would you confidently say:

"That was terrible."

Maybe.

But there's also a good chance you'll soften it.

"Yeah, it was pretty good. I didn't love the ending though."

Your opinion just moved slightly toward the group.

Now reverse the situation.

You liked the movie.

Everyone else starts destroying it.

Suddenly you find yourself noticing flaws you hadn't even considered.

Sometimes conformity changes what we say.

More interestingly, sometimes it starts changing what we think.

Fashion Is Basically Organized Conformity

Imagine walking through a city wearing clothes considered perfectly fashionable in 1650.

People would stare at you.

But why?

There is nothing objectively correct about jeans.

There is nothing biologically superior about sneakers.

Society collectively agrees that certain clothes look normal.

Then we participate in that agreement.

Fashion constantly demonstrates something strange about humans:

We want to be different, but usually only within an acceptable range of different.

We want the unique shoes.

But they should still look like shoes people recognize.

We want the unusual haircut.

But perhaps not unusual enough that everyone on the street turns around.

We want individuality without social exile.

Social Media Makes This Even Stronger

Now take the human desire to follow social signals and add numbers.

Likes.

Views.

Followers.

Retweets.

Upvotes.

Comments.

Suppose you see two posts.

One has 7 likes.

The other has 84,000 likes.

Before you've even properly evaluated the content, your brain has already received information:

84,000 people approved of this.

That's social proof.

And it can influence how you interpret what you're seeing.

The internet also creates feedback loops.

Someone posts an opinion.

People agree.

The algorithm sees engagement and distributes it further.

More people see everyone agreeing.

Some conclude that this must be the dominant opinion.

They repeat it.

The algorithm sees even more engagement.

Eventually something can feel like:

"Everyone thinks this."

When it might actually mean:

"The system repeatedly showed me people who think this."

Those are very different statements.

Careers Are Full of Conformity

Ask a classroom full of children what they want to become.

You'll hear all kinds of answers.

Astronaut.

Pilot.

Artist.

Scientist.

Footballer.

Doctor.

YouTuber.

Game developer.

Then everyone grows up.

Suddenly the acceptable options become much narrower.

Engineering.

Medicine.

MBA.

Government job.

Corporate job.

Whatever happens to be considered respectable or safe in that person's environment.

This doesn't mean those careers are bad.

The interesting question is:

How many people independently chose them?

Imagine everyone you know believes success means:

College → Job → Promotion → Marriage → House → Retirement

You might follow exactly that path.

Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with it.

The problem is never that the crowd chose something.

The problem is choosing something only because the crowd chose it.

There's a massive difference between:

"I considered the alternatives and this life genuinely suits me."

and:

"This is what people do."

Money Has Its Own Crowds

Financial markets might be one of the clearest examples.

An asset starts increasing in price.

People notice.

More people buy.

The price rises further.

News spreads.

People see others making money.

Now someone who previously had zero interest starts thinking:

"Maybe I should buy too."

Not necessarily because they studied the asset.

Because everyone else appears to be getting rich.

Then comes one of the most powerful emotions in markets:

FOMO.

Fear of missing out.

You aren't just evaluating an investment anymore.

You're watching everyone else apparently move ahead without you.

The crowd itself becomes part of the reason you buy.

This can contribute to bubbles.

And the exact same mechanism can work in reverse.

Prices fall.

People panic.

Others see people panicking.

They panic too.

Everyone runs toward the exit simultaneously.

Humans don't suddenly stop being social animals when they open a trading app.

Restaurants Understand This

You've probably seen restaurants deliberately create visible queues.

Nightclubs sometimes do something similar.

A queue communicates:

"People want to be here."

Imagine seeing a completely empty nightclub at 11 PM.

Even if you know absolutely nothing about it, something feels wrong.

Why is nobody here?

Now imagine the club next door has 70 people waiting outside.

Your brain interprets popularity as information.

This is why companies put things like:

"Trusted by 50,000 businesses."

Or:

"1 million customers."

Or:

"Most popular."

They're reducing uncertainty through social proof.

If thousands of other people made this decision and survived, making the same decision feels safer.

Laughter Is Contagious for the Same Reason

Ever watched a comedy alone and barely laughed?

Then watched the same thing with friends and laughed much harder?

Humans constantly read emotional information from other humans.

Someone starts laughing.

Other people start laughing.

Sometimes people don't even know what they're laughing about yet.

The group tells your brain:

Something funny is happening.

This is partly why sitcoms historically used laugh tracks.

Hearing laughter can influence how the scene feels.

We don't experience the world completely independently.

We experience part of it through other people.

Conformity Can Become Dangerous

So far, most examples have been harmless.

Clothes.

Restaurants.

Movies.

But conformity has a darker side.

Imagine you're in a company meeting.

Your boss proposes something obviously stupid.

Ten people are sitting around the table.

The boss asks:

"Any concerns?"

You have several.

But nobody else raises their hand.

Now your brain has to calculate something beyond the actual idea.

Will I look difficult?

Will my boss dislike me?

Will everyone think I'm stupid?

Maybe everyone else understands something I don't.

So you stay quiet.

The next person has exactly the same thoughts.

They stay quiet too.

Eventually everyone leaves the meeting believing:

"Apparently everyone supported that."

Except almost nobody did.

This is one way pluralistic ignorance can happen.

A group can maintain a belief or behavior even when many individuals privately disagree with it.

Everyone is looking at everyone else for information.

But everyone else is doing exactly the same thing.

Imagine This Classroom

A teacher explains something.

You don't understand it.

The teacher asks:

"Everyone understood?"

You look around.

Nobody raises their hand.

So you don't raise yours either.

But perhaps five other students also didn't understand.

They're looking around too.

Nobody wants to be the stupid one.

So six confused people sit silently because each person assumes the other five understood.

It's almost comedic.

But adults do versions of this constantly.

The Crowd Isn't Stupid

This is important.

The lesson shouldn't be:

"Everyone is a sheep except me."

That attitude is itself stupid.

Crowds can be incredibly useful.

If you're travelling and hundreds of people suddenly start running away from something, following them might be an excellent idea.

If thousands of independent reviewers say a restaurant is terrible, that's useful information.

If nearly every expert in a technical field agrees on something after decades of research, rejecting it simply because you want to be a contrarian doesn't make you an independent thinker.

Contrarianism is not the opposite of conformity.

Blindly disagreeing with the crowd still means the crowd controls your opinion.

If everyone says A and you automatically say B because you want to be different, you're still allowing everyone else to determine your answer.

Real independent thinking is harder.

It means asking:

What would I believe if I didn't know what everyone else believed?

That's a much better question.

Try This Experiment on Yourself

The next time you encounter a controversial question, don't immediately open Twitter, Reddit, YouTube or the comments.

Think first.

Write down what you believe.

Write down why.

Then look at everyone else's opinions.

Now compare.

You'll start noticing something fascinating.

Sometimes your opinion changes because someone gives you genuinely better information.

Good.

That's learning.

But sometimes you'll feel your confidence changing simply because you discovered that your opinion is unpopular.

That's conformity knocking on the door.

And noticing it doesn't mean you have to resist it.

It simply means you should investigate.

Ask Yourself Where Your Beliefs Came From

Here's a more uncomfortable exercise.

Pick five things you strongly believe.

Maybe about:

Money.

Relationships.

Career.

Success.

Education.

Religion.

Politics.

Lifestyle.

Then ask:

Why do I believe this?

And don't stop at the first answer.

Suppose your answer is:

"A stable job is the safest path."

Why?

"Because having stable income is important."

Why do you believe a traditional job is the best way to obtain that stability?

Maybe there's excellent reasoning behind it.

Or eventually you might reach:

"Because that's what everyone around me always told me."

That doesn't automatically make the belief wrong.

But now you finally know where it came from.

There's an enormous difference between inheriting an idea and examining it.

Here's Another Question

Imagine nobody could see your life.

No Instagram.

No LinkedIn.

No relatives comparing you with their children.

No classmates watching.

No neighbours.

No status.

Nobody knows your salary.

Nobody knows your job title.

Nobody knows what car you drive.

Nobody knows whether you own a house.

Nobody knows where you travelled.

Would you still want the same life you're currently trying to build?

That's a difficult question.

Because some of our goals aren't really about enjoying something.

They're about being seen enjoying it.

Some purchases are partly signals.

Some careers are partly signals.

Some lifestyles are partly signals.

Remove the audience and suddenly certain desires become much less interesting.

But You Can't Escape Conformity Completely

Nor should you try.

Humans are social creatures.

Language itself requires conformity.

If I randomly decide that the word "table" means "elephant," I'm not an independent thinker.

I'm just making communication impossible.

Driving requires conformity.

Social etiquette requires conformity.

Laws require conformity.

Cooperation requires shared expectations.

Civilization itself depends on humans agreeing to follow thousands of common rules.

So the goal isn't:

Never conform.

The goal is:

Know when you're conforming.

There are times when following the crowd is efficient.

There are times when following the crowd is polite.

There are times when following the crowd is necessary.

And there are times when following the crowd can cause you to spend decades living a life you never actually chose.

Learning to distinguish between those situations matters.

The Crowd Should Be Evidence, Not Proof

If 10,000 people believe something, pay attention.

They might know something you don't.

But don't stop thinking.

Ask:

Why do they believe it?

Did these people reach the conclusion independently?

Are they copying one another?

What evidence exists?

What incentives are involved?

What would make this belief wrong?

What did I believe before I knew the popular opinion?

That last question is especially powerful.

Because once you know what everyone else thinks, it's surprisingly difficult to reconstruct what you would have thought independently.

One Final Experiment

Imagine you're standing with 100 people.

Everyone starts walking north.

You don't know why.

What do you do?

Following them initially makes sense.

Maybe they know where they're going.

But eventually you should probably ask:

Where are we going?

And perhaps even more importantly:

Is that where I want to go?

That's basically conformity in one image.

Following people isn't necessarily foolish.

Following people without ever asking where they're going is.

So I'll leave you with a few questions.

How many of your opinions are actually yours?

How many of your goals did you consciously choose?

How many things do you consider "normal" simply because everyone around you does them?

When was the last time you publicly disagreed with everyone in a room?

And the hardest one:

If everyone around you suddenly started living completely differently, how much of your own life would change?

Maybe independence isn't about refusing to follow the crowd.

Maybe it's simply having the courage to occasionally stop walking, look around, and ask:

"Wait. Why are we all going this way?"