The Smoke Filled Room

[Now Playing: Jessie J - Who you are]




You may or may not have heard, of an experiment known as "The Smoke Filled Room Study"
In the late 1960s and early 70s John Darley and Bibb Latane conducted an experiment in which volunteers would be told to wait in a room.

 after a while smoke would come in through a vent or under a door and their reactions would be documented.
What's interesting is that when alone, the subjects would immediately go out into the hallway to report it.
However the experiment was modified to have 2 or 3 actors in the room, these accomplices of Darley and Latane would act as if nothing was happening, they were only allowed to look at the smoke and shrug their shoulders as if to disregard it. This resulted in the subjects reacting in the same way!

They'd fan the smoke out of their face, cough and splutter, but 9 out of 10 times, subjects did NOT report the smoke to anyone for the full 6 minutes of the experiment.

This wonder of the human psyche is known as the theory of pluralistic ignorance: "because everyone else is behaving normally, everything must be ok."

Now before we load our "nah mate not me" shotguns, lets take a minute to consider our own human nature and how this could actually apply to our own lives.

Imagine there are 2 people near and dear to you, but you can only save one.... construct the parameters however you want to in your mind, but focus on the point that only one can be saved,

Lets call these people "Acceptance" and "Integrity"

In the same way, in many situations you can choose to be true to yourself, and kill the likelihood of your acceptance, or die to part of yourself for the sake of being one of the crowd,

in the minds of every subject in that experiment, they could have potentially endangered their own lives by sitting in a room slowly filling with smoke, but for the sake of being one of the crowd, not standing out and "feeling normal" they sat in it.

Whats more interesting is that it suggests humans gage their normality by the lives of others.
but when you think about it, isn't this just a vicious cycle, as everyone looks to everyone to be lead?

Think about every instance in your life where you've been in a clique or a social group, yet your find yourselves asking each other the questions:
"what should we do?",
"should we go?",
"I'll only do it if you will.."
"come with me"

Don't get me wrong by no means am i voiding the opinions of those other than ourselves, I'm merely highlighting that there seems to be an unhealthy reliance on others to define who we are.

Its interesting, this life is like a smoke filled room in itself for the fact that we can only see so far in front of us, so we walk with two hands out in front for the hope we dont trip over something, so we look to each other in the hope they'll trip first so we know where not to walk, but as a result, no one wants to lead and everyone is afraid to fall down,
not just because you might hurt yourself, but because we know that everyone else is watching.

SP.