http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Conformity+kills:+success+vs.+innovation.-a0216331961"IF EVERYONE else jumped off a cliff, would you ?" irritated parents everywhere ask when their kids argue that they should be allowed to do something just because "everyone else is doing it." A new paper in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior Evolution and Human Behavior is an interdisciplinary journal, presenting research reports and theory in which evolutionary perspectives are brought to bear on the study of human behavior. suggests that societies may engage in such self-destructive conformity when they face unexpected environmental crises.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
A model generated by Hal Whitehead Hal Whitehead is a biologist specializing in the study of the Sperm Whale (Physeter macrocephalus). Whitehead is professor at Dalhousie University. The primary field research vessel of his laboratory is the Balaena
..... Click the link for more information., a biologist at Dalhousie University, and Peter Richerson, a professor of environmental science policy at the University of California The University of California has a combined student body of more than 191,000 students, over 1,340,000 living alumni, and a combined systemwide and campus endowment of just over $7.3 billion (8th largest in the United States).
..... Click the link for more information. at Davis, suggests that people tend to conform to what are perceived as socially successful strategies when they live in stable environments. As a result, odd individuals become rarer and societies lose their ability to learn new coping skills.
Whitehead and Richerson speculate that political systems might become dominated by conformists and stifle the ability of individuals to make timely adaptations to changed circumstances. They cite the Norse communities of medieval Greenland and the Mayan civilization in Mesoamerica as possible examples of societies that collapsed because of excessive conformity. Whitehead and Richerson think their research is relevant to dealing with current global environmental problems, arguing that "the risk of population collapse may be reduced by promoting individual learning and innovation over cultural conformity."
Topic: CONFORMITY KILLS (Read 564 times)