RP396 Part of the Herd

 RP396 Part of the Herd

It is said that there's safety in numbers.
Fish collect in huge schools, and zebras come together in large groups, blending into an uncountable mass to confuse predators. This kind of herd behavior, while apparently beneficial to the whole group, actually has a more selfish motive. Though a flock of birds may look majestic and graceful, seemingly moving as if with one mind, each individual animal is in fact looking out for itself and itself alone. Each animal is trying to get as close to the center of the herd as possible, effectively using its fellows as living shields. It is of course the unfortunate individual on the outer edges that inevitably gets eaten. Herd behavior is also seen in humans, with similarly selfish motives and potentially destructive results.
Crashes on the stock market are a result of human herd behavior. Panicked investors try to sell their stock before others, resulting in a financial disaster caused by individual fear. People have been trampled to death in supermarkets during frantic shopping seasons in a bid to get that last-in-stock product.
Being a part of a huge crowd can cause people to behave in ways that they wouldn't otherwise behave. An individual becomes less aware of the true effects of his or her actions, depending on raw emotion rather than reason and looking to the majority for signals on how to proceed. This kind of behavior has been labeled mob mentality and has led to acts of violence and destruction that people would not usually be willing to perform.
An experiment by a British illusionist recently explored the dark side of herd behavior. He set up a fake TV show for which the audience members were asked to vote for what should happen to an unsuspecting member of the public. They were given choices between something nice and something unpleasant, and as the show progressed the audience increasingly voted for the unpleasant option, resulting in the victim having his property destroyed, being told he had been fired, and in the end being kidnapped. This was done to show how uncharacteristically people can behave when they are an anonymous part of a crowd.