Continued... Why Selling TOC is Difficult?

Please review below psychological study of Asch Conformity Experiment, dated in 1955.

Asch tried to determine a subject’s attitude under peer pressure. Subject is unaware of what is going on around and has been told that this is a test for  vision (eye health). Subject did not know the other 7 people in the test is a “confedaration” to manipulate him towards a definetely wrong answer. Question has been repeated 18 times in different versions of above picture: Which line is identical in length with the sample? In first 3 trials everybody was objective so was the subject. Then confederation acted upon a selected wrong answer on purpose for next 12 questions. Subject was located at the end...

Among 123 subjects and out of 12 trials range interesting results have been obtained:

• 75% answered at least one question wrong as led by confederation.
• 5% answered all 12 questions wrong as led by confederation.
• Only 25% answered all questions right without being led by confederation.

Asch repeated the test with 750 individual subject as a control group and only 3 of them answered wrong! Asch interviewed with 123 subjects after revealing the truth to them about the reasons of their behaviour:

• “I did not want to be look like an idiot”
• “Obviously majority has some insight about truth that I am currently unaware”
• “I was unaware that I promted wrong, I did not think, just beleive in the majority”

Asch reports 3 different biases:

• Perception bias: Very rare. Subject do believe in “the majority is right”
• Conclusion bias: Very common. Subject does not sure about his view and hence joins the majority.
• Activity bias: Rare. Subject does understand and conclude properly but does not want to be alienated by the majority and hence responds like them. 

The mankind history is full of cases which majority is trying to kill individual different views: Galileo, Socrates, prophets,… More interestingly people who find ancient conservative majority  as ridiculous feel consistent when they resist to something in their times.


Alienation by majority is a way of punishing innovators. Mass education system is a good mean to provide mediocrity. Alienation is also a strong mechanism to anchor at status que even for companies and countries. This is a sure way to sustain underdevelopment.


Consider paradigm shift. Status que means staying in the current paradigm. Peer pressure is obvious through education, experience, satisfaction with current results and hence alienation attitude towards all innovative alternatives is quite common. Please refer to my previous post  about Dunning-Kruger Effect.


These two studies lead us to Layers of Resistance and Thinking Process by TOC.