Peer Pressure Might Have an Expiration Date

New York Magazine:

Anyone who keeps an eye on psychological research will quickly internalize a key point: Group influence matters. In many cases, what our peers are doing and saying can actually override our own opinions and better judgement. A new study published in Psychological Science provides a pretty cool example, and suggests — at least within the specific confines of one lab experiment — that there’s something like a peer-pressure expiration date.

A trio of researchers from Chinese universities had subjects rate the attractiveness of 280 female faces. After each rating, they were shown the average rating the rest of the experimental group gave the face, which researchers contrived to only match the subject’s 25 percent of the time. The rest, it was up to three points different on the eight-point attractiveness scale.

Read the whole story: New York Magazine