Consumer Psychology - Are We "Wired" To Follow The Crowd?

Scene: An attractive white female newscaster on a prominent syndicated news channel head bobs and chants "blame it on the a-a-a- a-a alcohol" when the Jamie Foxx/T. Paine hit is cued in the background. The most astonishing thing about this is that she didn't consider how that may have been perceived by her peer group, the other three news casters sharing the dias with her. Which crowd was she following at that very moment when the impulse hit her to "get in the groove" to a top-charting R&B song about clubbing and casual sex? Was her conditioning and associated responses to the song so strong that they were able to override her ability to stay "in character" with her fellow news caster peers?

This might all have seemed relatively benign had it occurred within the context of a popular entertainment news-zine or on one of the popular music video channels. The fact that it didn't raises interesting questions about media and group mentality. David Robson addresses group think in his article, "How To Control A Herd of Humans". The title itself conjures up images of people as cattle or "sheep-ple" as some would say, being shepperded around mindlessly. Robson frames his discussion within the context of the rise of social nationalism in nazi Germany (an interesting aside here is that the word nazi is actually an anagram for the german word zian, an interesting segway into the role religiosity plays in forming group mentality). Robeson presents scholarly evidence of how group activity and ritual form group loyality (chanting, dancing, etc.) based on the research of Scott Wilmuth (Stanford U). and Jonathan Haidt (U of Va), but he does not discuss the role of charismatic preaching as a key element in cult formation. In other words, there are many angles influencing herd mentality, and all influence the behavior of the target group. Robson also did not discuss the draconian, authoritative tactics imployed by these groups to maintain group loyality. The worst example of this I can think of in recent times is the horrific Jonestown cult mass suicide, where group members were threatened or killed for trying to leave the group and those who did not escape were forced to drink cyanide-laced cool aide.

I do agree, however, that the impact of priming, the subject of Seger's research (Indiania U.), should be considered, particularly when we look at group behaviors in adolescents, children, and teens. Most significant is the way prolonged exposure to violent media may be priming anti-social behaviors in young audiences, and audiences in general for that matter. Minimally, the audience is being numbed and conditioned to habituate violence in media as normative with repeated exposure to violent material. But what does all that have to do with "herd mentality"? Specifically, all of these factors combined influence and control the behavior of the group.

Using our opening scene as a good example of the priming effect, we are left to still wonder which group our newscaster was in mentality when she chanted along with the song in the middle of a news cast? We can assume it was a pleasurable experience which was triggered by impulse and positive associations, hence why she "got in the groove", though totally out of character for that place in time.