I can vouch for the "fear of embarrassment" response. A few years ago at my high school, my parents and I were at an awards banquet for some kind of scholarships (I can't remember the occasion very well). Without warning, the fire alarm went off. There was no smoke or evidence of fire, but neither was there any proof that it was a false alarm. Nobody even moved to get up. I was wondering what was wrong with these people, and started to slowly stand up. No one moved, and my parents looked at me as if to say, "What are you doing? Sit back down." I didn't move, not sure what to do, and a few seconds later--about a minute after the fire alarm had started--it finally stopped. I think I was the only person there who even started to react. I don't know what caused the false alarm; at the time I thought maybe my reaction was immature, and I was too easily agitated, and that everyone else's response was the mature one. I started to think otherwise after I'd become a little more objective and clear-minded about the issue...
As the blog post and sourceofmiracles have said, it makes a very good analogy for a lot of consciousness-related topics.
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