Hundredth monkey effect

The hundredth monkey effect is an esoteric idea claiming that a new behavior or idea is spread rapidly by unexplained means from one group to all related groups once a critical number of members of one group exhibit the new behavior or acknowledge the new idea. The behavior was said to propagate even to groups that are physically separated and have no apparent means of communicating with each other.[1]

Since it was first popularized, the effect has been discredited in many cases of research.[1][2][3][4][5] One of the primary factors in the spread of this concept is that many authors quote secondary, tertiary, or post-tertiary sources that have themselves misrepresented the original observations.[1]

  1. ^ a b c Amundson, Ron. 1985. "The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon." Skeptical Inquirer 9(4):348–56. Also available via University of Hawaii (Archived on May 25, 2011).
  2. ^ Shermer, Michael. 1997. Why People Believe Weird Things.
  3. ^ Myers, Elaine. 1985. "The Hundredth Monkey Revisited." In Context 9(Spring 1985):10–10. Archived from the original on 2012-02-06.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Galef was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Pössel, Markus, and Ron Amundson. 1996. "Senior Researcher Comments on the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon in Japan." Skeptical Inquirer 20(3). Archived from the original on 2004-08-03.