{"id":28296,"date":"2014-07-02T18:00:57","date_gmt":"2014-07-02T08:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/?p=28296"},"modified":"2014-07-02T18:00:57","modified_gmt":"2014-07-02T08:00:57","slug":"new-economics-not-much-will-change-at-the-current-rate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/billmitchell.org\/blog\/?p=28296","title":{"rendered":"New economics – not much will change at the current rate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tMy upcoming book about Europe is tentatively called ‘European Groupthink: denial on a grand scale’. I have covered the concept of Groupthink before but I have been thinking about this in relation to the economics curriculum, given our textbook is entering its final stages of completion. When I was at the iNET conference in Toronto in early April, there was much to-do about the so-called ‘exciting’ new developments in economics curricula being sponsored by iNET at their Oxford University centre (CORE). Forgive me for being the ‘wet blanket’ but the more I spoke to people at the conference the more I realised that the neo-liberals were reinventing themselves as ‘progressive’ or ‘heterodox’ and hi-jacking the reform process. I mentioned this to one of the iNET Board members who I shared a flight with back to San Francisco. He seemed taken aback. My expectation is that very little of substance will change in this new approach to economics. It will dispense with the most evil aspects of the current dominant framework but will remain sufficiently engaged with it that we will not see a truly progressive teaching approach emerge that can deal with evidence and real world facts. People are scared to break out of the ‘group’.
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\nI have been reading the work of – Solomon Asch<\/a> recently. He was an Polish-American psychologist in the 1950s, who pioneered work in prestige suggestion, conformity whereby the group pressure radically alters the way individuals act.<\/p>\n

His research program was influenced by his experience during World War II where propaganda was used to get people to believe in things that would be alien to them without the intervention.<\/p>\n

This also fed into his so-called ‘conformity experiments’, which he conducted at Swarthmore College in the US in 1951. 50 Male students participated in a ‘vision test’. Each group had 8 participants, 7 ‘confederates’ and a ‘naive’ person.<\/p>\n

The confederates were part of the experimental team and had been trained to answer the questions in specific ways including outright lying. The ‘naive’ person in each experiment was blithe to that reality and assumed they were all in the room on an equal basis.<\/p>\n

The ‘vision test’ took the form of a graphic being put up on a board (see an example below), which comprised a ‘reference’ line (left hand single) line and three ‘comparison’ lines, marked A, B and C. The participants then had to openly state which of the comparison lines matched the target line. The group was organised so that the ‘naive’ participant answered last.<\/p>\n

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Asch conducted 18 trials (different graphics were shown) and the ‘confederates’ gave the incorrect response (lied) in 12 of the trials (which Asch called the ‘critical’ trials). The hypothesis being examined was whether the ‘naive’ participant would under the pressure of group dynamics conform to the overwhelming view that was being presented before they had a chance to answer.<\/p>\n

The following graphic is taken from his original article and describes the parameters of the 18 Trials. <\/p>\n

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Source: Asch, S.E. (1951) ‘Effects of group pressure on the modification and distortion of judgments’, in H. Guetzkow (ed.), Groups, leadership and men<\/em>, Pittsburgh, PA, Carnegie Press, 177-190.<\/p>\n

He concluded that the “quantitative results are clear and unambiguous … There was a marked movement towards the majority”. 32 per cent of the participants conformed to the obviously incorrect response that the majority gave at the critical trials. 75 per cent of the ‘naive’ participants conformed at least once and only 25 per cent never conformed.<\/p>\n

There was a control group, which had no insiders among the participants, and in those trials less than 1 per cent gave the wrong answer.<\/p>\n

Here is a recreation of the test:<\/p>\n