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Study proves 95% of people really are sheeple

study-proves-95-of-people-really-are-sheeple

Scientists at the University of Leeds have conducted research that proves the tendency many have to act like sheep, unwittingly following crowd as if they didn’t possess a reasoning mind. While this tendency may have its uses in some situations, such as planning pedestrian flow in busy areas, it doesn’t inspire a ton of hope for humankind.

The study showed that it takes a minority of just five percent to influence a crowd’s direction – and that the other 95 percent follow without even realizing what is going on.

Professor Krause, with PhD student John Dyer, conducted a series of experiments in which groups of volunteers walked randomly around a large hall. Within the group, a few received instructions regarding where to walk. Participants were not allowed to communicate with one or intentionally influence anyone.

The findings in all cases revealed that the informed individuals were followed by the others in the crowd, forming a self-organizing, snake-like structure (or flock of sheep, take your pick).

“We’ve all been in situations where we got swept along by a crowd,” said Professor Krause. “But what’s interesting about this research is that our participants ended up making a consensus decision despite the fact that they weren’t allowed to talk or gesture to one another. In most cases the participants didn’t realize they were being led by others at all.”

Scary. Are we such sheeple that we allow a few “informed” people to lead us around without even knowing what’s happening? Sadly, it makes sense. How many fall for scams of all kinds because of friends or “informed” sources, from pyramid schemes to religious hoaxes and political coverups. We seem to believe just about anything, or blindly tolerate it as long as the message is delivered with enough social credibility.

How to be your own person

There some things you can do to not only avoid living as a sheeple, but enjoy a full, prosperous and exciting life to boot. Here are a couple of the fundamentals that sheeple tend to miss.

Determine what you want in life. Over 25 years teaching Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) I’ve asked thousands of people the question what do you want? I’ve been amazed at the incredibly low percentage of people who can answer it. What are your primary goals? Which direction are you headed? Where do you want to be in five years? The most common answer: I don’t knowWe’ll see what happens. Perhaps one in ten can answer with certainty and specificity, which looks like this:

My top 3 goals right now are…

In five years my life will be different in the following, specific ways…

The primary obstacles in my way are the following…

The skills I need to develop to accomplish my goals are the following…

No one can predict the future, but few things serve us better than intentionally pursing a chosen future, rather than waiting to “see what happens.” If you do not choose your goals, your family, friends, community and culture will do so for you (knowingly or unknowingly). This is called status-quo. Not surprisingly, status quo is not that inspiring.

Learn to make intentional, full decisions. So many of our decisions are not well considered. In NLP, we learn that decisions and motivation are simply comprised of visual, auditory and kinesthetic (feeling oriented) phenomena. These are the building blocks of mental processes. Bad decisions, impulsive decisions and ultimately regrettable decisions are so often missing a building block. We make impulse decisions without discussing things (missing the auditory). We make emotional decisions without considering other options (missing visual and auditory). Or we get caught in mental loops with no exit (endless internal dialogue with no feeling that prompts toward action).

In all of these cases, because we lack the foundation for solid decisions, we are vulnerable to the whims of others. If we lack the ability to discuss and analyze decisions, we may accept someone else’s analysis as gospel. If we tend to make emotional decisions, we may fall prey to whomever can pump us up into an emotional state. If we can’t bring our thoughts to completion with a feeling of certainty, we may just do what others are doing to get ourselves out of the endless internal loop.

Fascinating we don’t teach goal setting and decision making skills in our education system. These help form the foundation of real character and individuality – and protect us from over dependency on the ideas or opinions of others.

Make your decisions with all of your building blocks in place and with a clear set of goals in mind. This will keep you out of the realm of the sheeple.

But don’t take my word for it. Think it through.

Sources for this article include:
http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/02/15/herd-mentality-explained/1922.html

Naturalnews.com
by Mike Bundrant 

Featured image: DeesIllustrations

About the author:
Mike Bundrant is the founder of the iNLP Center, which offers online NLP training to help you multiply your effectiveness in every area of life. To receive a free personal development mini-course, visit iNLP Center.

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25 Comments

  1. That study confirms my own life experience. Now what REALLY matters is what is the intention of the 5% of leaders. If the leaders are selfish, greedy and godless then the whole world society goes downhill (war, destruction and poverty). If the 5% have a good heart, then the world society experiences greatness, peace, production, art, wealth etc. The problem is: The greedy selfish ones among the 5% are trying their hardest to destroy the good ones among the 5%…

  2. The world elite manipulates and impacts every aspect of our lives through control of government and media. They control what the mass should believe… So the most important information and facts are pushed aside and labeled as fairy tales and conspiracy theories.  

    1. 95% of people are sheeple, and its so sad that the other 5% need to do all the hard work such as demonstrating and fighting for democracy, getting beaten up and arrested by police all while the sheeple sit at home and watch sport or do other useless activity and watch the mainstream brainwashing news to keep them there.

      Ofcourse the university didnt need to do exotic tests to come to that conclusion, should have just asked any of the 5%.

  3. This is the plan of the Illuminati – the people to behave like
    sheep.
    The people get accustomed and conditioned to behave like
    sheep for a lifetime! In the kindergarten, at school, at work,
    at home watching tv and learning how to be sheep.
    Newspapers treat people like sheep. Massmedia leeds to
    mass behaviour. And behind all this stands a small group
    that doesn´t want us to be individuals but masses!
    And in Germany the situation is even worse!
    It is not allowed to put any question about Holocaust
    or a person runs the risk to get prisoned up to 12 years,
    like Mr. Mahler – despite Jewish almanachs tell us, that
    there have been some more Jews after the war than
    before, that´s no joke! If you say any critical word about
    this so called “MultiKulti”-policy of desaster or critize any
    foreigner, then you are a “Nazi”! If some Turks kill a
    German, then they – not the victim! – are “discriminated”
    Don´t blame it on the people! They are only reacting
    to that Orwell conditions. Blame it on viscious politicians
    and Illuminatis, that play with peoples like puppets on
    a string!
    Be good people! Call for shortening on the wellfare dime
    and for more foreigners, that are financed with that money!

    1. Dear Gerhard, guten Morgen;)
      i absolutly agree with you.
      for me as a german it is really hard to witness the complete destruction of germany, multikulti, paying the whole world, following the orders from the hidden….but what do you suggest? ….be good people? of cause. but thats it? i mean violence ect is out of question. infeccting more people?
      You will see soon the EUdssr, you will see the currencies crashed and replaced by a worldwide currency, the UN will pop up as a world economic or direct goverment, all with the sozialism cover covered to hook all up for world wide control state. sick. greece where i am actually working is just the pig you hunt through the town..a joke to watch htis, but i see the people deeply sufferung. depression is hard here now, lots of people and homeless searching for food and home. and all is made, planned , orechestered by psychopath actors…okay, enough for monday morning.
      wish all watchers the best and good.
      god bless you, Chris

    2. Dear Gerhard,

      What you say, is just the appearance.

      There is no way, we should accept all the BS they are shovel down our throats. It is that the humans, they do not have and collar bone at all, they are almost as animals, they have no appreciation for the GOD who create us, nor the divine laws, nothing.

      They just accept the minimum effort path and that is. In the rest are preoccupied by the cars (especially my German colleagues) and last gadgets, etc.

      Even under the hardest communist dictature of Ceausescu, where we have Securitate political secret police, something like Stazi x 100 times, even in those times there were people who said no, and opposed and were suffering and been tormented in the dungeons, most of those people died, but they died free, without renouncing to their GOD and their ideology. People of these days, are nothing! Most of them scum, they will rat on you for a package of chewing gum, while most, they will rat you on free, being "happy" that they helped the regime.

      That being said, I think we will all go for slaughter, that's for sure. Only if GOD make a miracle!

  4. If 5% can command/manipulate the rest to be unwitting followers,
    then they could also inspire them to become creative, caring and conscious.

    Only the “illuminated 5%” (more like 0,001% = e.g. the conductor in the experiment) so far had no meaningful idea where to go themselves or how to get there.
    By now maybe, the 0,001% know the only solution:

    unconditional LOVE

    1. Totaly agree with you, I would say the same thing !
      Don’t underestimate the chain reaction 🙂
      Be positive, be human, writes the new world, people may admire you !
      (And sorry for my bad english)

    1. good news for the big’uns…but I guess they already know much more about human nature and behaviour than we realise.

      Or, put this way, will those 5% contribute to the bettering of mankind? Do they even have to?

      If not, will there ever be change?

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