Ideal conformists
The elevator experiment confirmed the results of earlier experiments and showed once again that the need to behave in the same way as others is the strongest motivator of human behavior. But watching the discouraged passengers revealed another important detail: There is a social group that is most susceptible to conformist behavior.
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This group is young men who are among a large number of other people. That is, almost all visitors to football matches. Therefore, it is not surprising that after the game, neat decent boys cannot explain what came over them. They simply followed one of the basic urges of Homo sapiens, which allowed our ancestors to survive in conditions when it was possible to resist the harsh world only together.
Study guide
The elevator experiment was originally conceived as entertainment — it was shown in one of the episodes of the American reality show Candid Camera. But the result of the joke was so revealing that the video, which captures the doubts and hesitations of passengers, was included in the psychology curricula of many universities.
