Why is the crowd - it's bad
A Life / / December 19, 2019
A long time ago, Aristotle said that man - it is a social animal. That sociality has made us the most intelligent beings on the planet. Alas, it has a downside. Sometimes we turn into a herd that is too easy to control. On why the crowd - it is bad, we will explain below.
Imagine that you are walking down the street. Suppose, to work with a lunch break. Suddenly, 10 meters in front of you stranger falls and begins to beat in an epileptic fit. You've probably run up to it, as well as other passers-by. And what do you do?
Alas, if around at least five people, the probability that at least someone to help the injured, only 31%. However, everything changes when you're alone. Then the probability that you will try to help the person to be much higher - 85%.
Why?
effect passerby
The above case - it is a real studyWhich Robert Cialdini spent in 2001. It turned out that, in a crowd, people are much less inclined to ensure that assistance. Determination of this phenomenon in 1969 gave scientists Latham and Darley, conducted a series of experiments and their title
bystander effect, or "the effect of a passerby."In a standard situation, each of us falls under the influence of a passerby effect for two reasons:
- The division of responsibility. Everyone thinks that someone else will be able to help the person. At the same time the crowd reduces the personal responsibility of each person and provides a great excuse to do nothing.
- Pluralistic ignorance. A concept that refers to each individual confusing as to what the other individual thinks. Crowd members all kind evince calm and indifference, forcing each other to hide their emotions.
If you speculate a little and try to put in my two cents, we can say that his role is also played by shame. We subconsciously afraid of speaking in public. But the desire to help a stranger is such a performance. We therefore stand shyly, without having the courage to come forward and help the person.
Being in a crowd, we think differently
Remember how you felt at a football match? Did you feel unity with complete strangers around? Sigmund Freud said that in the crowd, we not only think, but act differently. The mind of each person as if combined with others in a collective organism that is capable of doing both good and bad things.
The problem is that if the crowd someone displeasing, then it is very easy to manage. For example, using deanonimizatsii its members. Suffice appear people in the crowd with cameras or reporters (optionally present) require your name, how are you mentally separates from the crowd and finds again its own opinion and thinking.
In the crowd there is always a leader
You are standing in a crowd, you think that everything is under your control. In fact, things can go wrong, like you have in mind. It takes only one person who understands the basic principles of crowd control.
Moreover, the crowd she wants to worship their leader, especially if he expresses the collective thought. And let you be alone never agreed with her. You are in a crowd, and therefore have no right to think otherwise.
Milgram experiment
Stanley Milgram was an outstanding psychologist who carried out a lot of interesting experiments. That only is his experimentShowing how far a man can go, considering that does its job.
But we are interested in his other project. In 1969, Milgram conducted studyTrying to figure out how to generate a crowd. For the test, he invited a group of people who were asked to look at a typical office building, where nothing happened.
He found that 4% of people stopped and watched wherever staring one person, and 40% stopped if there were looking for 15 people. Interestingly, 86% of passers-by stopped and is adjacent to the gaping, if they had the whole crowd.
That's what Milgram said afterwards:
We are easy to name the puppets that are controlled by strands of society. But we are puppets, realize and understand it. And perhaps this realization - the first way to our freedom.
Hopefully, Milgram was right, and many of us really understand what the crowd did not always pursue your goals.
Do not turn into a herd. So you have the easiest to manage.