Influence Of Mob Psychology On American Culture

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There is a unique mentality that surrounds the people of America, a contagious, domino- effect of emotions that fluctuates among the nation in response to any given situation. Stubborn rebellions congregate angry citizens to combat inequality; tragedies produce overwhelming amounts of sympathy, hope, and unity; an injustice that effects one American automatically becomes an injustice that effects all Americans. These are examples of how mob psychology has the power to shift the beliefs and culture of one of the world’s most influential nations. Mob psychology, with the assistance of the vast presence of media today, now has the authority to influence the beliefs of not just one country, but the globe. These influences in turn alter the
complex …show more content…
‘Crowd’ culture and opinion actively shape the understanding of products, businesses, pictures, and other topics. To understand their impact on society, it is important to recognize that the formation of cultural groups and other mass populations is derived from the primitive human behavior to survive (Pagel 2). The tendency to follow the ‘herd’, commonly known as bandwagon, is due to “…our social behaviors

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[being] backed by an evolved psychology of emotions…[that gives us] a ‘warm glow’ from cooperating with others,” as stated by Mark Pagel, a professor of Evolutionary Biology who has direct field experience with the psychology of cultural groups (4). This primitive habit to be a part of a community gives an enormous amount of power to the global ‘herd’. The voice of this global herd is most clearly communicated through media platforms. The popular opinion of this group becomes amplified to a broad audience and filtered down into an individual’s life who, with the urge to be with and follow others, gets swayed into supporting the opinion of the global herd. This is most popularly known as bandwagon, a common persuasive technique in …show more content…
Bandwagon works effectively in large populations due to humans’ “instinctive tendency…to rely on the actions of others [when] choosing its own course of action,” (Wasik 482). After conducting his flash mob experiment,
Bill Wasik proposes that there are two types of bandwagon that align in our physical and social media societies: “invisible” and “visible” (483). Both types play into the pre-established fact regarding an individual’s relationship with crowd psychology: humans will join already popular ideas or crowds through active discussion or cooperation in order to possess a feeling of belonging with the people around them and achieve an elated feeling (Wasik 483).
Bandwagon, however, is not just a social attribute exploited by the global herd, as many businesses use the same technique when advertising to a large audience. As technology has advanced, manufacturers and businesses are becoming increasingly able to reach their clients through direct relation. As seen in Wasik’s article, his flash mob experiment reached a larger audience through media attention and open conversation. The more media attention the flash mobs received led to the growth in size of the mob’s following (Wasik 481). This concept of

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