The Dangers of Herd Mentality
Link: https://www.intradiem.com/frontline-blog/herd-mentality-customer-experience-strategy/
This article looks at the reasons why there exists a “herd mentality” in many social situations. This is the phenomenon when an individual or entity makes a decision to take an action that may or may not be supported by their own private information on the subject in question. The article refers to an experiment which was done where many individuals were told to walk about a large indoor complex without speaking to anyone. Prior to this, a few individuals were given further instruction on where to go within the complex. It was observed that eventually all the participants who were not given specific instructions ended up following those who had received them. In this instance a majority of individuals had no private information and choose to follow those individuals who looked like they knew where they were going. In this particular experiment it discovered that it only took approximately 5% of the individuals to initially have further instruction for the group to gain a unanimous grouping. The article then highlights how this habit could be dangerous if most people are willing to follow such as small percentage of the population whom they see as being ‘successful’ in some aspect. It also discusses how herd mentality may prohibit further innovation within the business arena. If many companies are only trying to imitate successful companies, then they are less likely to be revolutionary in their respective fields.
This article is interesting because it goes into the dangers of herd mentality and cascading decisions. Herd mentality or ‘following the group’ is a good thing to consider when making a decision where the individual has no private information so they might as well do what others are doing. It can also be a good way to affirm a decision if the individual’s private information agrees with the general group consensus. What becomes a bit less clear is when an individual’s private information disagrees with the group. Then this individual has the choice of to either go with the information they have directly or with the information they can infer from the group they are observing. It would be interesting to run the same experiment as described above but give a very limited number of people instruction which were in opposition of the larger group and see if they adhere to this or change based on what they see. After reading this article maybe I will weigh private information and inferred information differently when faced with a situation where they are conflicting.