The extent to which people can .be misled or even coerced into believing things which
are untrue can be alarming. In one experiment conducted with Amelican students it was found that a
quarter could be coerced into stating that straight lines were of identical length when one
was 25 per cent shorter than the other. This effect was achieved by priming the seven
students in the expelimental group to say that the lines were identical in length. One must
be careful not to overgeneralise about the amount of social coercion possible from the
results of a series of experiments in
time. However, if social pressure can have this effect on such obvious matters of fact,
what is the scope for social pressure on matters that are more subjective or where
people’s self-interest is involved?
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