(featured image: illustration from the Emperor’s New Clothes via Wikimedia)

The non-non-conformity bias

How what we believe other people think leads to a peculiar kind of inaction

Picture the scene. A bunch of young adolescents, all dressed up, awkwardly sitting on the chairs surrounding an empty dance floor. The music — a popular song that some are silently singing along to — is loud (not too loud, of course), but nobody moves. The young people keep on eyeing each…