A team of psychologists carried out an experiment to test how people handle group pressure. They put volunteers in groups of ten and told them to raise their hands when the researcher pointed to the longest line on three separate charts. However, one person in each group didn’t know that the other nine had already been told to vote for the second-longest line. On each occasion nine people voted for the wrong line while the stooge glanced around, frowned in confusion, and almost all of the time voted with the group. Time after time, the self-conscious stooges would sit there saying a short line is longer than a long line, simply because they lacked the courage to be different.
It reminds us that truth is not necessarily the same thing as majority opinion, and neither is moral courage.