Dr. Todd Rose

I'm excited to dig in.

Collective illusion is groupthink, but you're wrong about the group.

So let me unpack that just a little bit.

It formally is a phenomenon where most people in a group go along with something they don't privately agree with simply because they incorrectly think that most other people agree with it.

So one of the most sticky collective illusions of all that's been around for multiple decades that we've tracked is this binge drinking in college.

So kids leave home, they go to a new place.

They're like, what does it mean to be a college student here?

Yep.

And they all think that most kids binge drink.

And so they go to a party and they end up binge drinking when in reality, in private, we know as a matter of fact, most college kids are deeply skeptical about binge drinking.

They know it's bad, but it's what they feel like they need to do to belong, to be a college student.

Wow.

And it turns out was what we can talk about later.

No amount of trying to tell them how bad drinking is works.

In fact, it propagates the illusion.

Yeah.

Why would all the administration put all these posters up telling us about the dangers of binge drinking if people weren't binge drinking?

And so it ends up fueling the illusion.

And so what you need is to have social proof where you have popular kids, other people just being like, I don't binge drink.

Why would I binge drink?