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ST BRENDAN’S COLLEGE picked up another piece of silverware last week when intrepid scientists James Knoblauch, Harry Knoblauch and Oran O’Donoghue won the Best Group award at the 54^th BT Young Science and Technology Exhibition.

The 16 year olds, who are all currently in 5^th year, also received the RTÉ Best Social & Behavioural Science Project Award. This accolade comes with a day shadowing a well-known RTÉ DJ.

The Sem students’ project, titled “An investigation into conformity and how minorities influence it”, demonstrated how one person can influence the behaviour of others using a unique approach to studying group dynamics. In two controlled psychology experiments, they focussed on the influence of an individual within a group setting.

The boys began work for their project in November when they found out they had qualified to exhibit their project at the BT Young Scientist and Technology competition in the RDS in January 2018.

In the course of their work for the project they designed their own social psychology experiment which they ran on over 100 students from St Brendan’s College and the nearby St Brigid’s secondary school. Their broad sample size provided their results and they received an average rate of conformity of 40% from that research. To further legitimise their findings, the boys took the historically famous Asch Experiment and changed it so it was a minority influence experiment. They then used 45 students from their school as participants and recorded an average rate of conformity at 35%.

Given the proximity of the results (35% to 40%) the boys concluded that across multiple groups there is a fairly consistent rate of conformity at approximately 37.5%.

The boys had a great week representing their school at the exhibition and were interview by Will Goodbody of RTÉ News, Kevin O’Sullivan of the Irish Times and by the BT Young Scientist Media team. The boys were also visited by Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae, South Ireland MEP Séan Kelly and RTÉ weather lady Evelyn Cusack.

“It was a really enjoyable experience,” said James Knoblauch, “and all of us on the team had a great time in Dublin”.