Doing things without questioning why

[T.C.]

A man notices that his wife always cuts a couple inches off each end of a joint of meat before seasoning it and putting it in the oven. When he asks her why she does that, she says it's what her Mom always did.

A couple of days later, she sees her mum and asks her why she cuts the ends off of a roast and her mother says it's because that's what her mother always did.

So then the woman goes to visit her grandmother and asks her why she always cuts the ends off her roasts, and the grandmother replies, "Because that's the only way it will fit in the roasting tin."

 

[PerfectCircle]

This reminds me of experiment with monkeys:

An experimenter puts 5 monkeys in a large cage. High up at the top of the cage, well beyond the reach of the monkeys, is a bunch of bananas. Underneath the bananas is a ladder.
The monkeys immediately spot the bananas and one begins to climb the ladder. As he does, however, the experimenter sprays him with a stream of cold water. Then, he proceeds to spray each of the other monkeys.
The monkey on the ladder scrambles off. And all 5 sit for a time on the floor, wet, cold, and bewildered. Soon, though, the temptation of the bananas is too great, and another monkey begins to climb the ladder. Again, the experimenter sprays the ambitious monkey with cold water and all the other monkeys as well. When a third monkey tries to climb the ladder, the other monkeys, wanting to avoid the cold spray, pull him off the ladder and beat him.
Now one monkey is removed and a new monkey is introduced to the cage. Spotting the bananas, he naively begins to climb the ladder. The other monkeys pull him off and beat him.
Here’s where it gets interesting. The experimenter removes a second one of the original monkeys from the cage and replaces him with a new monkey. Again, the new monkey begins to climb the ladder and, again, the other monkeys pull him off and beat him – including the monkey who had never been sprayed.


If you prefer reading directly from website, here is the link:
http://johnstepper.com/2013/10/26/the-five-monkeys-experiment-with-a-new-lesson/

 

[aimarok]

Similar experiments were completed on humans with the same result. Most of the participants begin to obey some special order of things without questioning it after being trained by the group. Although there is a small part of humans who question the order and do not obey it without an explanation. So most of the human population didn't evolve much from the monkeys :)

 

[kapepua]

A man notices that his wife always cuts a couple inches off each end of a joint of meat before seasoning it and putting it in the oven. When he asks her why she does that, she says it's what her Mom always did.

A couple of days later, she sees her mum and asks her why she cuts the ends off of a roast and her mother says it's because that's what her mother always did.

So then the woman goes to visit her grandmother and asks her why she always cuts the ends off her roasts, and the grandmother replies, "Because that's the only way it will fit in the roasting tin."

 

[kapepua]

I remember hearing that story once - must have been on television and a pastor was using to make a related point to his congregation. lol

Limitations

 

[Ant22]

This reminds me of a youtube video about a social experiment conducted via a hidden camera. It can be seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEhSk71gUCQ

It features a woman who came to her appointment and noticed all other patients waiting to be seen were standing up whenever they heard a beeping sound. It didn't take her too long to actually stand up too, simply because everyone else was.

The most surprising part for me was when they took all other patients away and she was the only one left in the room. SHe still stood up at the sound of the beep!

 

[Drazen]

This reminds me of a youtube video about a social experiment conducted via a hidden camera. It can be seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEhSk71gUCQ

It features a woman who came to her appointment and noticed all other patients waiting to be seen were standing up whenever they heard a beeping sound. It didn't take her too long to actually stand up too, simply because everyone else was.

The most surprising part for me was when they took all other patients away and she was the only one left in the room. SHe still stood up at the sound of the beep!

Yeah, I remember that one, there was a discussion about it here: https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,42374.0.html

I sometimes ask my dad why he does some things the way he does, and his response is often "Because!". He doesn't know why, he's just being doing it repeatedly through his life because someone of his friends or relatives told him that they do it in that particular way, without him understanding why, and he sticks with it even now, even when there is a better solution for some things. I guess he doesn't want to 'risk' and make a mistake.

 

[Ant22]

Hi drazen, thanks for the link! I'm sorry for posting an already existing material! No matter how much I read through the forum there's still tons left for me to go through

And yeah, I can relate to your post about your dad too. But this kind of attitude goes into beliefs, not just behaviours. I mean, within the last couple of days only I heard that fluoride is good for your teeth and milk is very healthy as it has lots of calcium. When I responded with: "How do you know? Did you check it? Would you mind sending me some info on this so I can verify this for myself?" I heard "everyone knows this" as a response. In both cases

 

[Beau]

Hi drazen, thanks for the link! I'm sorry for posting an already existing material! No matter how much I read through the forum there's still tons left for me to go through

And yeah, I can relate to your post about your dad too. But this kind of attitude goes into beliefs, not just behaviours. I mean, within the last couple of days only I heard that fluoride is good for your teeth and milk is very healthy as it has lots of calcium. When I responded with: "How do you know? Did you check it? Would you mind sending me some info on this so I can verify this for myself?" I heard "everyone knows this" as a response. In both cases

Yeah. In both cases the work of Bob Altmeyer detailing "Authoritarian Followers" is extremely helpful in understanding the psychology of a great number of people. He detailed that the two main features of the psychological profile are the degree of submission to the perceived authorities, and an aggressiveness directed at individuals opposing this perceived authority. There's also the following from the excellent SOTT Focus Hypocrisy of the Authoritarians:

The authoritarian mind doesn't simply adjust reality to its beliefs; subconsciously, it also adjusts ITSELF to the most apparent currents of the objective reality around it. Because of this, the authoritarians are conformists and conventional thinkers. This has been shown repeatedly in research, notably by Milgram. Following his thought, conformity can be linked to respect for the power of authority, including that of consensus. Robert Altmeyer made another profound observation. Since authoritarians have no genuine internal convictions, they simply lack basic individuality and sense of identity:

[..] I also discovered that if you ask subjects to rank the importance of various values in life, authoritarian followers place "being normal" substantially higher than most people do. It's almost as though they want to disappear as individuals into the vast vat of Ordinaries. [..]

They are quite capable of adhering to the beliefs emphasized by their in-groups when these conflict with what is held by society as a whole. Nevertheless, they do get tugged by what they think everybody else is saying and doing. [..]

Another extract from the above SOTT Focus also puts it starkly clear just why people react to truth the way they do:

It appears that authoritarian followers have only internal value, or rather an instinct: they view the world in terms of "us" (the good and virtuous "in-group" where they themselves belong) and "them" (the evil "out-group", on which negative stereotypes are projected). In a sense, they operate straight out of their reptilian brain, which is concerned with basic goals: survival, establishing home territory, and social dominance. This agrees with the ideas of psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski, who linked the inability to develop an "authentic hierarchy of values" to a low level of emotional development.

To create and maintain a cohesive picture of "us" vs "them", the authoritarian personality is constantly molding the facts into its beliefs of what reality should be. This is highly subjective thinking.

 

[Ant22]

This is awesome, thank you Beau! I've been looking into the Milgram study during the past hour so more material around this topic comes really handy.

I read Political Poerology earlier this year and I came across the Right Wing Authoritarianism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism) whilst reading through the Vegetarian Stance thread before.

 

[Beau]

There's also the excellent article Moral Endo-skeletons and Exo-skeletons: A Perspective on America's Cultural Divide and Current Crisis which helps clarify things as well.

 

[Ant22]

There's also the excellent article Moral Endo-skeletons and Exo-skeletons: A Perspective on America's Cultural Divide and Current Crisis which helps clarify things as well.

Beau, this was such a useful link you posted! The Moral Endo-skeletons and Exo-skeletons are a really clear explanation of the concept and I must say it came really timely too. I recently heard someone say: "without religion we'd all change into animals". That phrase really got stuck in my mind because I don't think I could disagree any more than I do! And then i read through the SOTT article. Epiphany really.

Interesting and insightful reading. Thank you again.