It was a quiet summer night.
A group of friends was camping out in the woods not far away from where they live. It was planned a few months back, and they’ve all been looking forward to this day ever since. They decided to go on with the plan, even after knowing that there was a serial killer on the loose according to reports by their local news station.
As the group was hanging around the campfire, John heard a faint voice calling out from a distance. He asked whether anyone heard the sound, none from the group heard of it. As the group continued sharing ghost stories by the campfire, John kept hearing the faint voice calling out to him.
He felt uneasy, and curious at the same time.
Moments later, John needed to take a leak. He went to the thick bushes nearby to solve his problems. As he is relieving himself, the voices call for him again – this time even louder than before. Drawing up the courage John decided to investigate the voice. As he trailed the voice into the woods…
Any of you who are familiar with the horror/slasher movie genre would know – something unfortunate is about to happen to John.
He left the herd.
Staying with the Herd
Our ancestors knew the importance of staying with the herd – way back in the Stone Age. They hunted together, gathered food together, and drive away threats together. As a matter of fact, it was basically as good as a death sentence if one was to be banished from the group. No human could survive alone in that era.
Life was way simpler back then.
Whenever you see your prehistoric buddy refuses to eat that colorful mushroom, you would know something is wrong with it, and avoid it as well.
When the seniors decide to take a detour instead of using the most direct route back to camp – the young will follow, as they know that there must a good reason for doing so.
As this trait is vital for survival, those that do not possess it will be weeded out (either they got eaten by bears or fell off a cliff). Those who remain will go on to live life, have offspring, and teach those traits to their little ones. The cycle repeats itself, and now – it’s mostly hardwired into our brains.
Well don’t be shy now – we ALL have a little bit of stone age inside us.
Herd Mentality
Herd mentality, mob mentality, and pack mentality, also lesser known as gang mentality, describes how people can be influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors on a largely emotional, rather than rational, basis. When individuals are affected by mob mentality, they may make different decisions than they would have individually. – extract from Wikipedia.
The idea was first put forward by 19th-century social psychologists Gabriel Tarde and Gustave Le Bon, and much research and studies have been done on the subject since then.
I bet you’ve watched a video somewhere on the internet on how researchers test out herd mentality. If you have not, here’s one. The video was part of the 1951’s Asch conformity experiments, directed by American Psychologist Solomon Asch.
Each of the experiments goes like this:
One test subject will be put together in a room with a few other actors (these actors are hired by the researchers to match their responses to the upcoming trials, without the test subject’s knowledge). The test subject will be seated towards the back of all participants – usually 4th or 5th from the 1st participant.
In the series of trials, the researcher will show all participants some variants of pictures as below:
One by one, each participant had to state which line (A, B, or C) was most similar to the target line out loud. During one of the trials, the actors will purposely call out the wrong answers out loud. Influenced by the wrong answers given by the actors, the experiment found that one-third (33%) of the test subject conformed with the clearly incorrect majority. When the test subjects were asked to do the trials alone, only 1% will give the wrong answer.
From this experiment, we can see indications that decisions made by the group will give individuals peer pressure to align themselves with the party, even though it goes against their sound judgment.
Nobody likes to be the odd one out.
The (Somewhat) Pros
Looking at the brighter side of things, herd mentality does give us benefits in life. As mentioned earlier in this post, it was what our ancestors adapted to ensure their survival!
From the modern-day perspective, some benefits I can see are:
Online reviews and ratings. When you are looking to purchase products and services online or offline, how do you make those purchase decisions? How to differentiate the good from the bad? For me, it was through online reviews and ratings. You usually can’t go wrong if you go with the highest-rated ones – if that many people have given it 5-star reviews, there must be a good reason for it, right?
Note: Please go through some of the reviews tho, due diligence is key.
Crowded restaurants. When deciding on where to cure your hunger (without doing any research beforehand), you came across two places that you’ve never heard of before:
1st Place – fully packed with people, and a long queue building up in front of the restaurant as we speak.
2nd Place – only a handful of people inside. No queue.
Base on the scenario above, which do you think serves the better food? My bets are on the one with the crowd. However, waiting in line for God-knows-how-long to get in is a different question altogether.
Of course, this isn’t foolproof, things could still go wrong. However, it does save us some time and help simplify some of our daily decision-making.
The Definite Cons
As herd mentality causes people to not think rationally as an individual and blindly follow the group as a whole, it poses threats – physically and financially.
Violent actions in large crowds. You’ve definitely heard of a peaceful protest that turned violent after some trigger events. People who are originally rational and non-aggressive in nature will sometimes perform irrational acts they will not normally do when they are alone. They are influenced by the crowd. As one event leads to another, chaos breaks loose.
Stock markets bubbles and crashes. We all know that the stock market is not really known for its rationality. As the market starts trending upwards, greed kicks in – and investors will pour in on the buying frenzy, pushing prices to go way over the intrinsic value of the stock. Eventually, there will be profit-taking, and selling ensues – causing the stock to trend downwards, bringing fear to the other investors. The herd (investors) will then do what the herd does: SELL SELL SELL!!!
“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”
George S. Patton
Going back to the title of this post: Should You Follow The Herd?
It really depends.
My thoughts are – it’ll be good for us to be aware of such occurrences, and the tendency for us to behave out of the ordinary when in a group. Probably then, we would have the upper hand.
Don’t be a sheep!
This is post #10.
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