Chilling! Insights from the Asch Conformity Experiment widely praised and applied to change the public view on scientific topics

A study in a Nature journal and others advocate for “consensus messaging” as the “authority of science”

Story at a Glance:

• A new study, published in Nature Human Behaviour and elaborated on in Nature, boasts about a novel method to get people to change their beliefs about a controversial topic.

• The intervention, portrayed as scientific consensus messaging, is really the famous Asch conformity experiment in disguise.

• The researchers find their intervention is also able to increase worry – which had been one of the study goals. 

• They seem disappointed their treatment did not result in people readily accepting certain public actions.

• To improve the efficacy and durability, they suggest an approach akin to religious proselytizing.

On 06 September 2024, Nature ran an article titled, “How to change people’s minds about climate change: what the science says,” giving tribute to a recent publication in Nature Human Behaviour. The short summary reads as

“How to persuade a climate sceptic

“Scientists agree that human-caused climate change is real. A study across 27 countries suggests that giving that message of consensus to people makes them more likely to agree. And to really nudge people’s thinking, emerging research suggests asking them about their own experiences and connecting them to locally relevant climate information, says climate-communication researcher Matthew Goldberg.”

To be clear. We are currently experiencing the worst types of weather extremes. At the point of writing, areas in Austria are underwater and have been declared a state of emergency. It’s all so very much different than ever before. To me, the topic of climate change is a complex one. Critical questions need to be asked: What/Who is causing it? What are the data? Who publishes those data? What are the potential conflicts of interest of those who drive the man-made climate narrative? What is meant by “man-made?” Are there any whistle-blowers and what are they saying? Are there any abnormalities that are not being explained by the official narrative?

Lots of questions. In this post, I do not want to go into these. See my previous articles (here and here) on it, or others by TKP, CHD, and elsewhere, to get a feel for what’s at stake.

For now, let’s put the topic itself on the parking lot and only concentrate on the study itself. In the following, I will replace the targeted topic (man-made climate change or crisis, etc.) with “[xyz]” to depict what I am additionally concerned about. It’s not the specific topic per se, but the overall study design, and how it was being done and further promoted.

In this sense, the Nature article begins with  “How to change people’s minds about [xyz]: what the science says.” The short answer? “Telling people about the consensus among scientists can help, study finds.”

In the Name of Science

I find this rather appalling. Since when has it been the role of science to convince the public of “a truth” and to even “change their conviction?” Has science not traditionally been a combined search for truth, not unlike the four blind men trying to grasp the blind elephant? It used to be through joint efforts that progress was made.

It has only been in recent years that we have been bombarded with slogans like “scientific consensus.” Now, upon hearing something like this, it makes me run in the opposite direction as fast as I can. I think it was first Dr Ryan Cole who first nailed it when he said:

“All scientists agree when you censor those who don’t.”

If it’s an agreement, then it is not science. Never has been and never will be. That we already know. It’s HOW this fabricated consensus is used, this is the even bigger problem. Nature continues (emphasis throughout mine):

“Telling people that scientists almost unanimously agree that [xyz] can help to nudge their thinking in that direction.”

Here you have it. The goal is to “nudge” people to accept only one narrative. Previously, it used to be called brainwashing and propaganda. Now, this “nudging” is portrayed as the responsibility and untapped ability of science:

“The fact that some ... shifted their views is a ‘testament to the universal cultural authority of science’,”

Well, in reality, it has nothing to do with “the authority of science.” It’s all about well-known psychological manipulations.

“How you deliver [xyz] messaging matters, in terms of changing minds, researchers are finding.... Many studies have found that informing people of the scientific consensus on [xyz] change can shift their attitude.”

Disagree. It is not anything that researchers are finding now. When we look into how “the messaging” was done, we will recognize it as an old psychological trick.

The “intervention,” now described as “scientific consensus messaging,” is the Asch conformity experiment in disguise

Nature gives a short summary of the experimental study by Geiger and coauthors published in Nature Human Behaviour. 

“They shared an online survey through social media and e-mail newsletters, and then analyzed 10,527 responses from people across 27 countries. Respondents estimated the proportion of [xyz] scientists who they think agree that [xyz] exists. They then ranked how confident they were in their estimates and shared their own opinions. Afterward, the researchers showed the participants several facts, including that 97% of [xyz] scientists agree that [xyz] is real, and then re-polled them.”

The main points are:

• The researchers exploited the desire of people to fit in.

• They first got them to articulate their opinion/response to certain challenge questions.

• They made sure participants thought they could own and justify their views and opinions.

• But then, they were confronted with a shocking message — that the consensus among so-called experts was such and such.

• When participants were re-polled, they responded in a manner to conform. Many updated their previous opinions to align with the alleged “norm.”

Long before “consensus messaging,” the famous Asch conformity experiments did the very same. The goal of these groundbreaking studies had been to see “if and how individuals yielded to or defied a majority group and the effect of such influences on beliefs and opinions.” These, and related experiments all demonstrated the same: “to shift the preferences of adult subjects towards majority or expert opinion.” The experiments and results have become the basis of modern psychology. A short summary is as follows:

Source: https://age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/asch_conformity.html

“In 1951 social psychologist Solomon Asch devised this experiment to examine the extent to which pressure from other people could affect one's perceptions. In total, about one third of the subjects who were placed in this situation went along with the clearly erroneous majority.

“Asch showed bars like those in the Figure to college students in groups of 8 to 10. He told them he was studying visual perception and that their task was to decide which of the bars on the right was the same length as the one on the left. As you can see, the task is simple, and the correct answer is obvious. Asch asked the students to give their answers aloud. He repeated the procedure with 18 sets of bars. Only one student in each group was a real subject. All the others were confederates who had been instructed to give two correct answers and then some incorrect answers on the remaining 'staged' trials. Asch arranged for the real subject to be the next-to-the-last person in each group to announce his answer so that he would hear most of the confederate’s incorrect responses before giving his own. Would he go along with the crowd? ....

“To Asch's surprise, 37 of the 50 subjects conformed themselves to the 'obviously erroneous' answers given by the other group members at least once, and 14 of them conformed on more than 6 of the 'staged' trials. When faced with a unanimous wrong answer by the other group members, the mean subject conformed on 4 of the 'staged' trials.

“Asch was disturbed by these results: "The tendency to conformity in our society is so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black. ...

“Why did most subjects conform so readily? When they were interviewed after the experiment, most of them said that they did not really believe their conforming answers, but had gone along with the group for fear of being ridiculed or thought "peculiar." A few of them said that they really did believe the group's answers were correct.”

The findings troubled Asch. Strangely, however, neither the paper by Geiger in Nature Human Behaviour nor its summary in Nature mentions the analogy of the intervention to the Asch experiment.

Now: Beyond Asch- the goal is to durably change people’s thinking, beliefs, emotions, and behavior

The willingness of people to follow along and not be an outsider has more practically been confirmed since the pandemic years. It seems a common human trait. Yet, the study by Geiger and colleagues now takes it to a different level.

They promote such “scientific consensus messaging” as a potent “intervention.” Indeed, in their paper, it is depicted as follows:

• The “gap between the actual and the perceived scientific consensus ... could be reduced with consensus messaging interventions.”

• The intervention is akin to a treatment – the goal is not merely to “communicate” a scientific topic (as depicted in their title), but actually to change people’s perceptions.

• The change is meant to not merely be at the abstract level (to change “misperceptions”). One of the key goals was to get people to change their beliefs. In addition, the authors had also hoped that the intervention would cause them to “worry” more about the topic under consideration. And finally, they had hoped the intervention would change people’s ideology, so that, for instance, they would support specific “public action.”

Contrary to the claim made, scientific consensus messaging is not “an effective, non-polarizing tool for changing misperceptions”

Geiger and colleagues, in their article, emphasize

“As people across the ideological and trust spectrums still update their estimates, consensus messaging represents a non-polarizing tool useful for reaching a social consensus on [xyz] across different audiences.”

This claim is unsupported and seems incorrect because of the following:

• The huge drop-out rate during the study: participants were recruited using snowballing, mailing lists, social media, and Prolific (only in Canada and Mexico). Yet, while initially, 21,462 individuals clicked on the link, only 11,702 participants completed the study, and, after further data exclusions (detailed in the paper), only 10,527 participants remained for the analysis. What happened to the rest? If this is such a non-polarizing tool, why such a big drop-out rate?

• The authors emphasize that most dropped out after seeing the informed consent but before learning that the study topic was climate change. However, in their materials section, in the context of describing the “informed consent” part, they also mention that “all participants saw a brief description of climate change as a news topic.” It is not clear if this happened before they were informed that the study was about this topic as well. If that was the case, it could explain that some sensed what was coming and did not want to be involved. If so, it would undermine the author’s conclusion that their “intervention” is non-polarizing.

• How can you call something non-polarizing if it ignores a significant proportion of subject matter experts? The “intervention” highlights the point that 97% of topic experts agree. What about the remaining 3%? Do you not want to know what their views are, and why?

• Note that one of the study aims, to increase public support for specific actions, was not realized by the “intervention.” If people feel strongly about the topic, would they not be more inclined to support actions that are aligned with their beliefs? But perhaps, their perceptions were not deeply altered, after all.

• Interestingly, the “scientific consensus messaging intervention” was effective in getting people worried about this topic. In other words, the “treatment” instilled negative emotions rather than a sense of agency or anything else that would be empowering. Can it, therefore, not be concluded that this intervention created some internal polarization or division, and if so, that such inner conflicts would then also spill over to the society at large?

What does scientific consensus messaging have to do with science?

The Nature article, summarizing the study, concludes that (as before, emphasis added)

“What’s clear from this study and others, however, is that [xyz]-communication strategies have become more sophisticated as researchers have learnt what works.”

The authors put it this way.

“Consensus information is a form of a descriptive norm, and norms have been shown to be more predictive of support for [xyz] policy in collectivistic cultures compared to individualistic ones....Further considering that scientific consensus messages are an expert norm”

By their admission, the intervention is to replace individualistic beliefs, or the fact of individualism altogether, with norms. Disturbingly, this is done in the name of science. Yet, what is such a consensus norm, or the norm established by experts? I have heard of scientific polling, red-teaming, and Delphi methods. These all try to find out what most scientists think about a certain topic. But nowhere have I previously heard the term “expert norm.”

The study particularly also found for whom scientific consensus messaging worked best.

“Crucially, scientific consensus messages are most effective among people who were less familiar with the message and had less accurate initial consensus perceptions, including those with lower trust in [xyz] scientists and right-leaning political ideologies.”

This is also in line with the original Asch experiment. These “outsiders” seem to have realized how different they were from the “norm.” The fact that this also included those who had lower trust in the experts or those labeled ‘right-leaning political ideologies’ once again strongly suggests that this is a common psychological phenomenon and has nothing to do with the content itself. Overall, people just want to belong!

The study also employed a second messaging intervention based on the “updated consensus” that “88% of climate scientists agree that climate change constitutes a crisis.” Interestingly, this “treatment” was found to be “equally effective” as the first one that only stated that “97% of climate scientists agree that human-caused climate change is happening,” but “provided no extra value.”

From the original Asch experiments, this is to be expected.  Then, researchers found that as soon as a few gave the correct answer, the spell was broken and trial participants were more likely to trust their own eyes and report the correct answer. Here, the authors find the same, emphasizing that

“given that even small perceived dissent among environmental scientists can undermine message effectiveness15,59,60, the tested scientific agreement (88%) might not be high enough, and consequently convincing enough, to further shift belief in climate change as a crisis, worry and support for public action.”

Note that they avoid mentioning the similarity to the Asch experiments also in this regard.

If the “consensus messaging” alone does not work, resort to evangelizing techniques (aka, personal storytelling)

To the researchers, the concern is that consensus messaging does not always lead to a lasting shift in perspective. But they have a suggestion of how to overcome this. As described by Nature,

“For an enduring shift .... the message needs to be personally relevant.”

At first, this seems difficult to understand. If you do not think that an issue such as climate change is real, then how do you use the fact that it is personally relevant? In this case, how could such an “intervention” change people’s minds?

The answer is shocking:

“one top strategy is to ‘get out of talking-point fact land’ by exchanging personal stories...The next step is to listen carefully and “connect the dots” between a person’s experience and local [xyz] information, Goldberg says. ... This strategy is based on a landmark study5 in which canvassers went door-to-door and had ten-minute conversations....”

This reminds me very much of some religious groups going door to door telling “personal stories” and trying to make converts. No judgment here on those groups! I am much more familiar with all this than my readers would care to know. Many, perhaps almost all of these religious zealots, do this from a deep state of conviction. But what does proselytizing have to do with convincing people of a purported scientific fact?

Apparently, to convince people of scientific findings, this no longer relies on science. Again, we see the utilization of another level that directly exploits emotions and psychology, rather than teaching clear unbiased science.

Conclusion

What we have seen in recent years is not merely a push for one narrative related to one topic alone. It is not about specific topics, even if some of those are portrayed as exceptional. The paper by Geiger and colleagues analyzes the issue of climate change. However, their paper makes it clear. The agenda is much bigger.

It is about psychological manipulations, using insights that have long been known from the Asch study but also those that have been driving religious fanaticism and wars. Underlying both is the desire of many to belong – to a group of individuals, a sect, or society at large.

Geiger and colleagues carefully hide the fact they exploit just that. Supported by many others, the goal is clear. It is not to instill only one view about a controversial topic. The aim is to capture people at a much deeper level to change their beliefs and emotions. In particular, a stated goal of their intervention is to increase worry. Another goal is to get people to change their behavior and support certain public interventions.

Image source: doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02777-9 and https://age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/asch_conformity.html

Whilst part of this is done in the name of using scientific “norms,” the actual treatment starts with an Asch experiment in disguise. If that is not enough, steps akin to religious evangelizing are recommended.

Innovation and scientific progress have only been possible because a few outsiders broke through the norm. As far back as I can remember, thinking outside the box was promoted as one of the highest attributes in academia. Everyone who has done so knows how humbling it is to step out into the unknown, daring something new. The search for truth and wisdom has propelled generations of inventors and true scientists, urging them into uncharted waters. Away from the crowds of people, in the solitude of their souls, the greatest have shown forth not only the light of genius in terms of discovery. Wisdom has often called in the desert, begging for sincerity, honesty, and bravery to follow the still small voice.

Amidst the global darkness to brainwash the masses and engage in psychological manipulation, all it takes is the light of one small candle. This is what gives me hope. Many of us know the silent voice. We know its power and strength. We cannot but hear it, follow it, and prevail.