Proposed Study for Conformity/Groupthink

When we were discussing groupthink and conformity in class I thought of this study because I always fall victim of this particular behavior. I am wondering if anyone else does?

Hypothesis: that groupthink and conformity can be automatic or hot.

Operational Definition: how many students misspell the common word exactly like the professor does verses how many students continue to spell the common word correctly (or even misspell it a different way which would be assumed that they felt was their correct way) at the end of the semester.
Sample: all general psychology students at Montana Tech.

Method: The professor would do a lecture class in which required the students to take exact copy of the notes from a power point slide. Throughout the semester the professor would misspell a common word every time he used it throughout the entire semester. (Example of this would be the word Psychology spelled pyschology.) At the end of the semester the professor would give an exam with questions requiring the word to be used in the answer multiple times.

Possible Results: If at the end more students spelled the word exactly the way the professor spelled the word throughout the semester it would then show a possibility that these students changed their way of spelling to match/conform to the professors. It would be interesting to ask them later in a survey if they noticed they did this or if they did this for social desirability in the professors eyes. If it were found that less than noticeable or no students at all spelled the word exactly the way the professor spelt it then this could suggest that nobody noticed or that everyone continued to correct the word for themselves but did not want to correct the professor.

Discussion: Groupthink and conformity are important situations to study. Learning weather they can be automatic or deliberate is also a very important factor. If we would conform automatically to something as simple as misspelling a word and not pointing it out do to an authoritative figure, what else could possibly be overlooked or automatically assumed? This is something that could produce uncertain actions within a community, politics, health care, courts of law, education etc. I think that studies done in these areas are well worth it for the purpose of prevention.