quiet-the-power-of-introverts-in-a-world-that-cant-stop-talking-susan-cain

that they had arrived serendipitously at
the same correct answer.” They were
utterly blind, in other words, to how
much their peers had influenced them.
What does this have to do with social
fear? Well, remember that the volunteers
in the Asch and Berns studies
didn’t always conform. Sometimes they
picked the right answer despite their
peers’ influence. And Berns and his
team found something very interesting
about these moments. They were linked
to heightened activation in the amygdala,
a small organ in the brain associated
with upsetting emotions such as
the fear of rejection.
Berns refers to this as “the pain of independence,”
and it has serious implications.
Many of our most important
civic institutions, from elections to jury
trials to the very idea of majority rule,
depend on dissenting voices. But when
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