• Question: how does a person get persuaded so well ?

    Asked by elliotbatt to Damien, Rachael, Simon, Suzi, Tim on 20 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Hi @elliotbatt
      I’m not sure I fully understand your question – do you mean why can people persuade other people to do things?

      Generally if you want to get someone to do what you want, you have to take on a position of responsibility. Some quite scary experiments were done in the past where they found that a scientist, if they looked ‘in control’ enough, could make someone administer electric shocks to another participant (they weren’t really, but they thought they were) until they thought they had really hurt the person.

      When they were asked why they did it, they said ‘the experimenter told me to’.

      This was a pretty scary and surprising result, and showed that people are easily persuaded by someone being ‘in charge’ and telling them what to do. Because of this experiment scientists are always really careful now not to persuade people to do things they don’t want to, as it is not ethical, and would be bad for science.

      I hope this answers your question, if I’ve misunderstood it let me know.

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