People in Crowds Pick Leaders...just like Sheep.

[Athenian200]

In a crowd, I tend to follow one or two people that I already know/trust. If there's no one in the crowd that I know or trust who thinks I should follow them, I usually just try to remember what my destination was, and ignore/shove past the crowd. I'm also likely to check and see if the crowd's purpose has anything to do with me.

So I do allow myself to be led by people I know, but not by strangers or people who don't have legitimate authority. What does that mean?

About the evacuation route... I did once spend half a school semester walking all the way around a building because I didn't realize that when I got out of the class the exit was right behind where I was facing. I only realized it one day because I stopped to pick up a dime. But once I realized it was there, I did change my route, although a couple times during the first week I took the old one if I got tired or distracted. After which it sunk in.

So, am I just weird?

 

[6sticks]

This really isn't new finding though... more like expanding on the old. Or rather the very very old studies. Candid camera!
Elevator Candid, Must See... Video - Metacafe

Reminds me of this.

I like the old guy at the beginning.

 

[Mycroft]

This all seems a little simplistic to me.
Even forum dynamics HERE at MBTIc are far more complex than all this.
Even people looking for leadership don't necessarily follow blindly.

Discuss.

If somebody else is taking things in the direction I'd like to see them taken in and is prepared to undertake the associated cat-herding, I'm perfectly content to follow.

"Followers" are in it for their own ends.

 

[nightning]

This all seems a little simplistic to me.
Even forum dynamics HERE at MBTIc are far more complex than all this.
Even people looking for leadership don't necessarily follow blindly.

Discuss.

I missed Jennifer's comment... Bad Se!

If somebody else is taking things in the direction I'd like to see them taken in and is prepared to undertake the associated cat-herding, I'm perfectly content to follow.

"Followers" are in it for their own ends.

I do that too. If they're getting things going in the general direction that I like, then I'll just tag along and only bring things up if they started drifting from where I wanted to head to. Call it laziness... Like a flock of geese migrating in V formation. It takes less energy doing something as a group then to forge on alone.

But this doesn't apply to what's going on in the experiment. There's no reason why people should be walking around in a line. It's purposeless. Just a very ambiguous situation artificially setup to demonstrate that you can get people to act sheep-like. It hardly pertains to how we interact in real life... A very artificial experiment.

 

[Wandering]

people often follow me even though i either do not know or havent decided where im going

Happens to me too. Very strange feeling

However, in this case it doesn't seem to be that big of a deal, because most of the participants didn't have a goal other than walking around randomly.

Yep. Like others have said, I'll choose to follow if it doesn't matter which route I take, or if the group is already going where I want to go anyway. Why make things needlessly more complicated?

I want to know how bad our tendency is when we're presented with a situation where we have a clear goal that can be figured out (albeit perhaps requiring a little effort). Give some of the people instructions to follow a plan that will ultimately fail (although it is not immediately obvious that it will do so) and see whether people follow them or figure out their own plan.

That's when I find myself stopping in my tracks, usually. "Er, this doesn't look like it will work..." I'm then torn between not wanting to stand out, not wanting to look like a fool if it turns out I criticised what was in reality a well thought-out plan, and not wanting to head to disaster because I refused to trust my gut instinct. Not a pleasant situation to be in.

 

[LostInNerSpace]

People in crowds behave just like sheep, scientists claim, by blindly following one or two people who seem to know where they are going.

I've been saying this for a long time. People think INTPs are weird because we are highly indivualistic, and those people are comparing us to the crowd. They think and behave with the crowd, and when they compare us to the crowd they see someone who does not fit.