# data[].attributes.headline
Listen to the first 15 minutes of the podcast.

# data[].attributes.subject
Listen to the first 15 minutes of the podcast.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In 1784, the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote down his hope for his age and all those that followed. In a famous essay titled " Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?," he urged men and women to think for themselves instead of relying on the minds of kings, priests, and other "self-appointed guardians of the multitude." Although critical in tone, Kant's views were optimistic: It's not an inability to think clearly and feel deeply that prevents the common person from embracing his or her autonomy, he argued, but rather a matter of overcoming laziness and cowardice. As an official motto for the Enlightenment, Kant offered the following: "Have the courage to use your own understanding."

In modern times, the challenge of thinking for one's self persists. Except now, it seems, pressure to conform comes less and less from the guardians of the multitude than it does the masses themselves.

Researchers based in England, the United States, and France recently came out with a study suggesting that a natural inclination to be a member of the in-crowd can leave animals overly dependent on the organisms surrounding them. Using mathematical models to observe how a group of animals in nature collectively process new information, the team discovered that individuals were heavily reliant on conforming to the decisions of those around them, even when those decisions were less than optimal in the context of a changing environment.

Kant urged men and women to think for themselves instead of relying on the minds of kings, priests, and other "self-appointed guardians of the multitude."

Although this particular study focused on animal behavior-and it's important to remember that the leap between animal to human should not be made lightly- academic research in the fields of economics, psychology, sociology, and political science demonstrates that we, the rational animal, have a tendency to fall into similar thought patterns.

"Copying what other individuals do can be useful in many situations, such as what kind of phone to buy, or, for animals, which way to move or whether a situation is dangerous," said lead author Colin Torney of the University of Exeter in a statement. "However, the challenge is in evaluating personal beliefs when they contradict what others are doing. We showed that evolution will lead individuals to overuse social information, and copy others too much than they should."

Today, more than ever, social information gets exchanged through social media. Fresh data from the Pew Research Center, for example, shows an increase in users between 2013 and 2014 on sites such as Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest. (User rates for Facebook-by far the most popular social media platform-remained steady over this period.) The market research firm eMarketer predicts that by 2016 around 5.4 million more Americans will join the nearly 180 million U.S. users already on social media. This is presumably why 70 percent of marketers plan to increase their advertising budgets for social media in the coming year, according to recent survey results published by Adweek. It's where all the action's heading.

While Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube all provide great opportunities for us to express our local tastes, unique styles, and nuanced views of the world, we too often don't. Herd mentality rules. Last August, for instance, the Pew Research Center released a report titled " Social Media and the 'Spiral of Silence.'" Citing research from the Journal of Communication back in 1974-which suggests most people would rather not express their personal views on policy if that means going against the crowd and potentially alienating friends, family, and co-workers-Pew researchers found the same sentiment holds true online. Focusing on Edward Snowden's decision to reveal that the NSA is tracking the phone and email records of both suspicious and non-suspicious people alike-a highly divisive issue-Pew survey results indicated that people are less willing to discuss the Snowden/NSA affair on social media than they are in person. Furthermore, those unwilling to discuss the affair face-to-face don't consider social media as an alternative platform to share their opinions either. Despite proponents of Web 2.0 claiming that diverse discussions on politics and life are on their way, they just haven't arrived quite yet.

"As we ramp up the volume and velocity of online connections, we start to expect faster answers," wrote Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT and the author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, in a 2012 New York Times opinion piece. "To get these, we ask one another simpler questions; we dumb down our communications, even on the most important matters. It is as though we have all put ourselves on cable news."

Then, there's the outrage of the day, which more often than not seems to result from mob mentality gone wild online. It's a cathartic kind of anger that many seem keen to take part in. Those brave enough to speak out against the status quo, such as the video game critic Anita Sarkeesian, must also be strong enough to withstand a torrent of vitriol.

While Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube all provide great opportunities for us to express our local tastes, unique styles, and nuanced views of the world, we too often don't. Herd mentality rules.

All of this contributes to an increasingly polarized nation. In another study that examined 2.2 million politically engaged Twitter users who followed at least one congressional candidate during the 2012 elections, researchers found that 90 percent of candidate tweets seen by Democrat voters came from Democrats, while 90 percent of candidate tweets seen by Republican voters came from Republicans. In this sense, social media helps create that much-talked-about echo chamber of opinion. We are currently flirting with what Cass Sunstein, a professor of law at Harvard, described in his 2001 book Republic.com: a future where you "see only what you want to see, hear only what you want to hear, read only what you want to read." It's a time of ideological isolation, in which people can arrange their lives so that all unwanted viewpoints remain at a distance, caught in a filter.

But, again, we are social creatures. Sometimes we'd rather be liked than struggle to stand up for what's right. In the 1950s, for example, the social psychologist Solomon Asch conducted his famous experiments on conformity, finding that group pressure was so powerful it could cause individuals to warp their own visual perception of a line's length-or at least admit to seeing what they didn't see for the sake of not sticking out. Indeed, research published in the journal Child Development in 2011 suggests children as young as four already have a tendency to conform to the group-even when they think the group's wrong. Recent research published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, however, indicates that if parents give their toddlers more autonomy, those toddlers will develop better cognitive skills.

Sometimes, of course, there's nothing wrong with putting our faith in others. Doctors who replace kneecaps and engineers who build bridges come to mind. And no one has the time or energy or resources to cultivate an informed opinion on everything, either. A little bit of specialization helps everybody. But the ability to stand athwart to the crowd, to swim against the flow, to think for one's self, is, and always will be, a virtue. It's badly needed when ideas go stale, and the mob is marching toward a cliff.

Kant wrote his famous Enlightenment essay in a different time. The American Revolution had just occurred, and the French Revolution was yet to come. But his point remains relevant. We should still remain vigilant, always fighting against the temptations of laziness and cowardice to think like everybody else.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Though more information is available now than ever before, the herd continues to beckon.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The same brain circuits that are activated by eating chocolate and winning money are activated when teenagers see large numbers of "likes" on their own photos or the photos of peers in a social network, according to a first-of-its-kind UCLA study that scanned teens' brains while using social media.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Adolescence is a perilous time of life. It's a time of heightened risk taking-reckless driving, risky sex, excessive drug and alcohol use. For decades the prevalent view-the common wisdom of parenting manuals-was that teenagers feel invulnerable, immortal. They simply perceive less peril in dicey situations, and believe they have much more control than they actually do. In short, they underestimate life's very real risks and dangers.

But scientists who study adolescent decision making now dispute this common parenting wisdom. Teenagers do indeed underestimate risk-sometimes-but at other times they overestimate how risky and harmful a situation is. So the actual risk taking cannot be simply explained by a diminished perception of risk.

So what does explain it? Well, one risk factor is almost certainly the influence of other people-especially other teenagers. When teens are with their friends, compared to when they are alone, they are much more likely to do things like use drugs, shoplift, and drive dangerously. And they spend a lot of time with their peers-far more than with their families. What's more, teenagers very much want to be accepted. They fear rejection. All of this would seem to implicate peer pressure and conformity in adolescent risk taking.

Yet surprisingly, the role of such social influence in adolescence is not well understood. That's why psychological scientist Lisa Knoll and colleagues, of the University College London's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, have been exploring social influence and risk perception in teenagers. Specifically, they wanted to see if social conformity varies depending on who is doing the influencing. Are teenagers' perceptions of risk influenced by others' perceptions? And if so, who are the most influential people in teenagers' lives, and does such social influence diminish over time?

Knoll and her colleagues studied the development of social influence on risk perception from late childhood into adulthood. They recruited volunteers who ranged from 8 to 59 years old, including children, young teens (12 to 14 years old), adolescents, young adults, and adults. All of these volunteers were asked to examine various risky scenarios having to do with health and safety-cycling without a helmet, for example, or crossing a street while texting. They rated each scenario's risk from low to high.

Once they had made their initial risk ratings, the volunteers were shown the ratings of others-either adults or teenagers. These ratings were actually fabricated for the purpose of the study, the idea being that the volunteers would see how other people perceived the same situations. They then examined and rated the same risk scenarios a second time. The scientists wanted to see who, under whose influence, altered their perception in order to conform.

The results, reported in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, were clear and provocative. People in every age group were influenced by others' perceptions, changing their own ratings to be more like those of others. Even mature adults demonstrated a need to conform, though social influence did diminish from childhood through adulthood.

But here's the real surprise: The scientists had predicted that teenagers would be more influenced by other teenagers rather than by adults. That was not the case: The older teenagers were influenced equally by adults and their same-age peers. Indeed, only the youngest teenagers were more strongly influenced by their peers. This suggests, the scientists say, that the years between childhood and adolescence may be a crucial period in the development of risk perception. Young teens are challenging the experience and authority of adults and looking instead to the other teens whose opinion they value.
Follow Wray Herbert's reporting on psychological science in The Huffington Post and on Twitter at @wrayherbert.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Adolescence is a perilous time of life. It's a time of heightened risk taking-reckless driving, risky sex, excessive drug and alcohol use. For decades the prevalent view-the common wisdom of parenting manuals-was that teenagers feel invulnerable, immortal. They simply perceive less peril in dicey situations, and believe they have much more control than they actually do.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Inside the secret life of the teenage brain - Science Weekly podcast

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hannah Devlin speaks to neuroscientist Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore about her groundbreaking research into the adolescent brain

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As the creator of " The Twilight Zone " television series of the late 1950s and '60s, Rod Serling wrote several stories about the human experience of being pressured to conform to so-called societal norms. Two of the episodes from that series are particularly relevant today because they deal with the problems of being different in a world that professes tolerance yet stresses conformity.

In 2010, we would like to believe that being different is good and wholesome, that we should and would somehow celebrate our differences. But we're as narrow-minded and as intolerant today as the characters in those episodes of over 40 years ago. Not much has changed, and that is tragic.

In one "Twilight Zone" classic, "Number 12 Looks Just Like You," a young girl in a futuristic world rails against being pressured by her family and friends to look and think just like everyone else. The powers-that-be in society have created a strange coming-of-age process called the "Transformation." To facilitate the process, there are specific models of both the ideal male and female forms from which people can choose. You go through the transformation and you become the aforementioned ideal individual.

Though the young woman makes a valid point about liking who she is and the way she looks, at the end of the episode she gives in to the pressure and has the "Transformation." She ends up looking, as well as thinking, like everyone else in her society.

In "Eye of the Beholder," which was written by Serling himself, a woman willingly has plastic surgery procedure after procedure in order to conform to the ideal of beauty by which she is surrounded. Each surgery is a failure. Before her last surgery she is told that if she cannot be made to look like the rest of society, she will be banished to a ghetto where "people like her" are made to live.

What we find out at the end of the story when her bandages are removed is that she is a stunningly beautiful woman. Seeing this, we believe that the last surgery was a phenomenal success, but we're wrong. The "normal ideal" she is trying to achieve is to look like the human pig-faced creatures around her. Her own beauty is considered repulsive. Rod Serling wrote this as a great modern morality play on the value of individuality and the dangers of wanting to conform to one ideal of beauty.

The desire to have the perfect image is one way that we try to conform to what society says is normal. One would think that plastic surgery (which is still major surgery, make no mistake about that) has become as commonplace today as having your teeth cleaned. Diets galore and "nutritional" cleanses are available to help us fit the size that society says we should be. What we do to our bodies borders on torture, starvation and mutilation simply to fit in.

There is something very dangerous about total conformity. We don't celebrate who we already are because, according to statistics, we want to be like everyone else!

Conformity doesn't only concern our bodies and faces; it is also present in our life choices. Our society is not tolerant of the person who chooses a lifestyle that is not considered the norm. During the past month the news was filled with the tragic story of how being different cost one young man his life. He was gay, and because of his life choice he endured savage and public humiliation at the hands of his roommate's sick idea of a joke. The "joke" led the young man to commit suicide.

Society, whoever and whatever it is, is forever scrutinizing us and unforgiving of differences. Individuality comes in many different forms, shapes, sizes, and choices. To be intolerant of one person's differences is to be intolerant of anything with which we don't agree or readily understand. That's not only sad but extremely dangerous.

The criteria for obesity shouldn't be measured by someone who weighs 15 pounds more than another person, a sexual preference shouldn't make you an easy target for someone else's rage, and being different shouldn't make you strange or suspect. The worst societies thrived on communal conformity because it was a simple form of mind control. You were made to feel that there was something wrong with you if you didn't think, look like, or act the same as others.

Conformity, real conformity, has a price. You lose something priceless and precious when you are forced to be like everyone else. The plain fact is this: We're not like everyone else; we're as individual as our fingerprints. Acceptance of being different and of the differences of others enhances life; intolerance diminishes it.

Being different is being happy with who and what we are and want to be. That's our right and the right of all people. It is conformity that is sad.

To read more from Kristen Houghton, peruse her articles at Kristen Houghton.com and visit her Keys to Happiness blog. Also, take a look inside her book, "And Then I'll Be Happy!" You may email her at
kch@kristenhoughton.com.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
gender-differences healthy living society twilight zone rod serling happiness gay rights mental health conformity beauty

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As the creator of " The Twilight Zone " television series of the late 1950s and '60s, Rod Serling wrote several stories about the human experience of being pressured to conform to so-called societal norms. Two of the episodes from that series are particularly relevant today because they deal with the problems of being different in a world that professes tolerance yet stresses conformity.