Imagine a scenario where all of your friends are jumping off a cliff. If everyone jumps, do you jump as well?
We know that the correct answer is supposed to be: "No, never!" "I am an independent thinker, and other people have no influence over me." But the truthful answer is, yeah, maybe you do jump. Everyone thinks they're the exception here. But we cannot suppress our human desire to fit in.
Humans are social creatures, and our brain seems to be built to follow what other people are doing.
When everyone else is participating in something, we tend to think it's the smart thing to do.
Back in the day, when we were hunter gatherers, if we saw our entire tribe heading east, we would have to follow if we wanted to survive.
We didn't necessarily have to know why we were going in that direction, we just trusted the judgement of others.
So yeah, if everyone was jumping off a cliff, there's a high chance you would follow. You wouldn't want to be the only one that didn't jump.
I remember back when I was still a kid in school. There was a day when some of the students wanted to skip the last hour of class.
Personally I didn't really want to do it because I liked the subject, but everyone else quickly jumped on the bandwagon. So what did I do?
I skipped the class as well. Not because I wanted to, but because all of my friends and everyone in the class were doing it.
