Following the crowd could be dangerous
In our world, we see people following the crowd all the time whether it is due to an informational effect or a direct-benefit effect. However we haven’t really studied the full set of what kind of consequences come from an information cascade. As we will see, following the crowd can actually be a dangerous option as an information cascade.
A study has been done to figure out the psychology of a person when he is trying to answer a certain question when there is an opinion of a whole group involved. Basically, the results of the study were that scores of people who thought they had an answer to a question were decreased tremendously when the group voiced their answer. The reason behind this is that in the individual person’s mind, the more people have the same answer, the more that group has power and influence over the decision of someone else. Someone will most likely follow the crowd even if they have the right answer. The reason for this can be fear of getting the wrong answer in a crowd, the overwhelming aspect of being divided between the majority of the people having the same opinion and an individual having his own opinion drives people away from that and towards conforming to the crowd’s norms.
This could be a dangerous situation since in this case, people let go of their development of the thinking brain and forces people to stop coming up with their own opinions about given situations. This can lead to things like dependence and inability to critically think and come up with your own opinion. The worst part in my opinion is that most people can easily start to believe anything the crowd will say or promote. This is because of the power in presence. The crowd may be completely wrong about something but will be believed by everyone because many people followed and in the end whatever that crowd says will almost in all cases be believed as true. It could be completely wrong.
http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/Health/story?id=1495038