My Social Experiment

I tried a little experiment this week with my students.  I told two of the more popular, influential kids (one boy, one girl) to each try to come in to one of my classes and behave perfectly.  I told them that I was almost certain the class would follow.  I was right.  That was the calmest and best that class has ever behaved. 

So, I told them to try the opposite in the next class.  Behave badly (their normal behavior would suffiice!)  Interupt me, make noises, all the normal things.  This idea of course was fine with them.  The class followed them closely on the behaving well, they followed them exactly on the bad behavior.  The boy came in galloping like a horse and 2 seconds later another boy in the class was galloping around, mirroring his exact behavior.  The girl started making noises and was immediately copied by another girl in the class.  They got loud and the others chimed in.  It was uncanny how closely the others in the class followed their behavior. 

I tried to draw a few conclusions for the class from this experiment.  Among them were the fact that God gave us all different personalities.  Some are leaders and they bear a huge responsibility to lead well.  Others are followers and they must be very careful of which voices they listen to.  There was a 3rd class of students that neither led nor followed but kept their behavior consistent throughout both experiments.  There were very few of them though. 

I would love to replicate this experiment on adults and see if peer pressure, or social influence, or herd mentality or whatever you'd like to call it still exists past age 14.  I have a suspicion it does, more than most of us would like to admit.  I don't know if that will be possible though, adults generally don't listen to me, I'm more of a follower myself :-)