The Experiment

I want to see if the desire to conform is stronger than a person's sense of modesty. I think it depends largely on the person's age. Very young children don't care who sees them naked whereas adults' minds are pretty much made up and they're not so concerned with conformity either.

I have devised an experiment to find out, targeting young people probably 5-18.
The thing is I would need hundreds of kids to do it and their parent's permission which I imagine probably none would give.

I think it could work like this:

The kid (the subject) is told he is going for a swim. The subject gets to the pool to find x number of kids already in the pool and naked. Will the subject kid get naked him/herself without being told just to follow the example set by the others?

There are so many variables here:
- The age and m/f of the subject and upbringing i.e. what s/he has been taught about nudity from parents or whomever.
- The size of the group that is already in the pool and their age(s) and are they m/f or mixed. If mixed then vary the proportion(s) and see what changes.
- What if only half of the above mentioned group is naked? 60%? 70%? and so forth.
- Are those in the group strangers to the subject or friends and/or relatives? What about a mixture?

I don't know if such an experiment has ever been carried out or if any experts on human behaviour visit these forums.
Maybe I have to become an expert myself if I ever want to carry out this experiment.

What do you think would happen?

 

I think you are a pedo.

 

I think Alexandra may be spot on here.

 

I'm not but you're entitled to your opinion.

This sprang from an experience I had a few years ago. I was at my friend's place on a hot summer day and he suggested we go for a swim. I hadn't come prepared but since I was just starting to experiment with (and enjoy) nudity, I did the unthinkable. He was shocked and although I encouraged him to give it a go, he refused and even went and got some shorts for me to wear because he was too uncomfortable.

I could have said suppose a kid walks into a room and all the other kids are smoking. Will he give it a go just to fit in? But that belongs in the smoking forum. And I never had an experience relating to smoking so it doesn't interest me.

 

If you performed the experiment with adults you'd get British and Americans largely saying no, Germans largely yes, and I'm not sure about the response of other nations.

 

How would you know it was conformity v. modesty? What if I just think swimsuits are cool?

 

sign me up.

 

yep....dude a much easier experiment would be: there is 5 piles of differnt coloured towels beside the pool, red, blue, yellow, green, orange. Have all the kids get out of the pool (while clothed) to towel off. Leave one kid or a few in the water an extra 5 mins. All the kids that got out were told to use red towels...say from a pile beside the pool. Then tell the last kid to get out. See what colour of towel he goes for....and now I'm sad I wasted this much time even considering this rediculous, experiment. Thanks.

 

i think he would like this.
but he would say it needs moar pedo.

 

lmao. Sorry, my version is skewed I guess. I can't grasp that pedo aspect of it.

 

y dont u do it with like diffrent colored ipods or somthing.
the kids dont have to be naked.
i made it pedo-free.

 

Well I guess because I have a particular interest in this area. The way I was raised nudity was unacceptable and pretty much shameful. It was a huge deal for me - being naked in front of someone - so I figure it's a big deal for everyone. If 10-year-old-me was one of the kids involved I honestly don't know what I would do.

I figure that how a person is raised will be the most important factor. Whatever the parents/caregivers teach their kids, that's gonna be the hardest thing to overcome. In the end it was peer pressure that first got me to reconsider what my parents had taught me. It's a powerful force in children and young people and maybe the best thing, maybe the only thing that a kid will listen to almost as much as his/her parents.

Might start a new thread because now that I think about it, the question I really want answered is "what did it take to overhaul what your parents taught you about nudity?" That is for people like myself who were taught that nudity is a bad thing.

 

Obviously the guy is delusional. My children, ages undisclosed, are so modest that they change in the bathroom at in my their own home and have for some time. Ya see, I teach them that creeps like the OP exist.

 

No ethics committee would ever sanction any experiment involving children either being naked or smoking, let alone the kids' parents. And no reputable academic journal would publish the results.