Psychology of behavior: how does the herd mentality control us?

We bring to your attention seven conclusions that can be drawn from psychological research and experiments that can be useful to us if we want to defeat terrorism and help us to act more effectively in extreme situations.

Pass the tests

• Do you have phobias?

We are convinced that others think the same as we do, but this is not so.

In 1977, Lee Ross, David Greene, and Pamela House invited university students to walk around the campus with a large advertising sign. Someone refused, someone agreed. All participants were then asked to rate the likelihood that other students would also agree to wear the sign. The researchers found that no matter which option the participants chose, they tended to assume that most people would also choose that one.

We really tend to think that our thoughts and feelings are identical to the thoughts and feelings of other people. The researchers called this phenomenon the “false agreement effect.” Remember how politicians are unreasonably convinced of their victory during the election race, and you will get a clear confirmation of this effect in practice. And if not a politician, but the leader of the Islamists is convinced of his rightness? That’s when things get much worse¹.

Read more:

• Why do migrants annoy us?

In emergency situations, we take an example from others, which often leads to fatal inaction.

The students were invited into a room and asked to complete a questionnaire. Some ended up in the room alone, some with two other students, or two people who were instructed by the researchers not to react to anything. Suddenly, smoke began to enter the room. Most of those who were alone in the room reported an emergency. Of those who were in the room with other students, only a third decided to raise the alarm. Those who were sitting with two figureheads were worried, but ignored the smoke.

This 1968 study by Bibb Latané and John M. Darley makes it clear that when we are faced with a strange and unexpected situation, we look at how others will behave. In the first minutes of a fire, an explosion, an armed attack, if the rest do nothing, then we are inactive. But many incidents could have been prevented if we knew that the responsibility for ourselves and for the lives of others lies with us too.².

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• Why do we go to rest where it is dangerous?

We listen more often to those who are similar to us, and ignore the arguments of “outsiders”

In 1990, Dominic Abrams conducted the following experiment. Six participants in the experiment, who were in a dark room, were asked to determine by eye the distance at which the light source was from them. Three of them deliberately added 5 cm to each answer of the others. Moreover, the implied participants were selected so that it was more or less obvious that they belonged to the same social group as the rest. And what is the result? The participants in the experiment actually changed their estimates by listening to the opinions of the dummy participants who belonged to the same social group as them.

When we are not sure what to do, we rely on the opinions of the members of the group to which we identify ourselves. If we are talking about a society of lovers of classical music, then, of course, this does not threaten anything terrible. However, as soon as a certain group of people is isolated from the whole society, blind imitation of each other can turn into tragic consequences. Preventing such isolation is the task of politicians, but we should listen more often to the opinions of others so that we ourselves do not fall under the excessive influence of collective beliefs.³.

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• Our own among our own: how does the group change us?

We easily label ourselves and others.

The author of the theory of social identity, Henry Tajfel (Henri Tajfel) and his colleagues conducted an experiment. They randomly divided the students into two groups (telling the participants that the division was based on love for the work of Kandinsky or Klee). There were no interactions either within these groups or between their representatives during the experiment. The students were then asked to rate all participants in the experiment. It turned out that students showed more benevolent behavior towards representatives of their own group.

Such a result is not something out of the ordinary. We have all seen football matches where everyone cheers for their team. But in this case, people were willing to rank others lower based solely on what the researchers told them. They did not communicate with these people, did not see them, and already oppose themselves to them. Here it is – the absurd nature of emerging prejudices. If they cannot be stopped in time, they may well result in discrimination of some by others. We must strive to see everyone as a unique individual, and not just as a member of a particular community to which we are hostile or friendly. Otherwise, we risk becoming a source of discrimination ourselves and in this we become like terrorists who divide people into friends and foes.⁴.

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• How to live in a world where the threat of a terrorist attack is constant?

We often begin to put the good of the team above our own.

Psychologists conducted a study by asking Spanish participants to answer how they would behave in a situation where a trolley was about to knock five people to death. These five people could be Spaniards, or Europeans, or Americans. Those interviewed who attached great importance to their Spanish nationality were willing to sacrifice themselves to save their compatriots, and even Europeans, but not Americans.

This experiment proved that people who attach great importance to the group they belong to are often ready even to sacrifice themselves for its interests. This fact explains the behavior of suicide bombers. It turns out that they are simply loyal to the interests of their group! They cease to be aware of themselves as a person, and everything they are guided by is the interests of the organization in which they are members.⁵.

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• Break line. After the Parisian bloodshed, we became even further from Paris

Self-criticism wins people over to you

Researchers have provided Israelis with falsified documents relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some of these documents contained criticism of the Palestinian policy towards Israel, coming from the lips of the Palestinians themselves. Israelis who read such documents ended up speaking better about the Palestinians and their policies in general. But most importantly, they were more than others ready to compromise and seek a peaceful solution to the conflict.

Of course, Palestinians who criticize their own policies can be called traitors. But often this is the only way to achieve mutual understanding and reach out to others through the wall of prejudices. If the leaders of Islamic states openly condemned radical Islamists, then society’s attitude towards Islam as a religion would improve significantly. We all need to acknowledge not only our own mistakes, but also the mistakes of those with whom we are connected.⁵.

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• “The shock is stronger when we identify ourselves with the victim”

By pushing our beliefs to extremes, we can see how true they are.

The participants in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were shown a video reflecting their own point of view, but taken to an extreme. For example, the video promoted the following idea: “We need the war to continue so that we have the strongest army in the world.”

This technique really influenced the opinion of those who watched the video: they saw themselves and the consequences of their actions from the outside. Just as sobering can be for radical Muslims the urge to ban women from leaving their homes. Not only will they find the idea absurd, but they will also overestimate their other beliefs.⁶.

See more at Online Scientific American editions.

¹ L. Ross et al. «The False Consensus Effect: An Egocentric Bias in Social Perception and Attribution Processes», 1977.

² B. Latané, J. Darley «Group Inhibition of Bystander Intervention in Emergencies», 1968.

³ D. Abrams et al. «Knowing What to Think by Knowing Who You Are: Self-Categorization and the Nature of Norm Formation, Conformity and Group Polarization», 1990.

⁴ H. Tajfel et al. «Social Categorization and Intergroup Behaviour», 1971.

⁵ W. Swann et al. «Dying and Killing for One’s Group: Identity Fusion Moderates Responses to Intergroup Versions of the Trolley Problem», 2010.

⁶ T. Saguy, E. Halperin «Exposure to Out-Group Members Criticizing Their Own Group Facilitates Intergroup Openness», 2014.