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Mob mentality, or herd behavior, is the mind set where people blindly follow the decisions of a group and dont think , deciding what everyone else is doing is what they will do. Herd behavior is often observed in times of danger and panic, mostly in large crowds. “The Monsters on Maple Street,” a telepay written by rod serling, “Why Do People Follow the Crowd,” by ABC news and, “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings,” written by gabriel garcia marquez are all great examples of mob mentality in a negative way. Mob mentality is not good, and it can change people for the worst side. Because mob mentality is not good, and it can change the best of people, to bad people. “Why Do People Follow the Crowd”, an article written by ABC News, explores the …show more content…
ABC News directs a test, in either a group setting, or individual, where people answer questions, in the group, someone knows the answer, but they say the wrong answer, and most people, because they are scared of being the odd one out, so they come to the conclusion that, “human[s] need to conform”, and when they dont, a trigger goes off in “the fear center of the brain”. Proving that when people are put under pressure, and there are other influences around, they might choose to make the wrong decisions. But, humanity can only imagine what might happen if someone followed the mob mentality when it comes to a life changing decision. Similarly, in the teleplay written by Rod Serling, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”, mob mentality leads to bad decisions, and results in the neighbors scapegoating each other. When one of the neighbors, Charlie, sees “a figure [getting] closer and closer [he] suddenly pulls the trigger” when they realize that it is one of their neighbors, Pete Van Horn, they start to believe Charlie is the monster (Serling 679) The neighbors want to scapegoat each other, and they are jumping to conclusions, because they feel as though
“Something happens to individuals when they collect in a group. They think and act differently than they would on their own. (17)” States Carol Tavris in her article, “In Groups We Shrink From Loner’s Heroics”. Tavris believes people who are in groups tend to act in a more sluggish manor than those alone. She states many examples of this theory in her article, including the story of Kitty Genovese which is stated in the first paragraph. Kitty was stabbed repeatedly and killed in front of her New York apartment. No one did anything to stop this heinous action from taking place. Within her essay she obtains rhetorical appeals to prove that her statements are plausible to the audience.
In "The Perils of Obedience," Stanley Milgram conducted a study that tests the conflict between obedience to authority and one's own conscience. Through the experiments, Milgram discovered that the majority of people would go against their own decisions of right and wrong to appease the requests of an authority figure.
In several cases, folks will set aside their personal beliefs or adopt the opinion of the rest of the group. Group-think influences police officer’s rationalizations for some behaviors by preventing members of the group from reconsidering their beliefs while causing them to ignore warning signs. Group-think tends to occur more in situations where group members are very similar to one another and is more likely to take place when a powerful and charismatic leader commands the group. Situations in which the group is placed under extreme stress or where moral dilemmas exist also increase the occurrence of groupthink (Haberfeld et al.2014,
In the teleplay “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” written by Rod Serling, a small street in a suburban American town falls into chaos after they lose all electricity, and in an effort to find the monsters responsible, they become animals. They search for a scapegoat and let their imagination et the best of them because “for a moment their fear almost turns their walk into a wild stampede, but Steve's voice, loud, incisive, and commanding, makes them stop. ‘Wait a minute...wait a minute! Let's not be a mob!’ The people stop as a group, seem to pause for a moment, and then much more quietly and slowly start to walk across the street. ” (Rod Serling ?). The residents of Maple Street fall victim to herd mentality. They rush to find the culprit and they lose all sense of moral and judgement. As they are about to become a mob they listen to Steve as he advises that they do not. All the residents of Maple Street listen to him and sure, he did use mob mentality to do good, but it goes to show the amount of power one man holds. Similarly, in the article “Why People Follow The Crowd” written by ABC News, the article discusses how humans are willing to let go of their beliefs, morals, and
In July of 1961, Stanley Milgram began his experiment of obedience. He first published an article, Behavioral Study of Obedience, in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1963. This article, Behavioral Study of Obedience, is what this paper will be critiquing. He then wrote a book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View, in 1974 discussing his results in more detail. Milgram’s inspiration was the World War II and Adolf Hitler. During World War II, millions of innocent people were killed in a very organized manor. Milgram (1963) compares the organization and accuracy of the deaths, to the “efficiency as the manufacture of appliances” (p. 371). Milgram (1963) defines obedience as “the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose” (p. 371). Milgram acknowledges that it may only take one person to come up with an idea, such as Hitler coming up with a way to eradicate the Jews, but would take an
Ira Sher is able to capture the true philosophy and psychology of group thinking and conformism in the short story “The Man in the Well” by vividly reminiscing a specific encounter he had during his childhood. The short story depicts the savage and immoral actions of unsupervised children proving that as a collective unit individuals will tend to act in a wilder and uncivilized manner. The notion of group mentality as opposed to personal thought is saturated throughout the story and one of the main themes Sher is striving to express to the reader. Irvin Janis, the author of the book Victims of Groupthink, developed the word groupthink and defined it as a group making faulty decisions due to group pressures that lead to deterioration of their
Fromm explains that humans obey orders because of “fear, hate, and greed”, which, in the end, harms humanity (Fromm 125). Agreeing with this idea, Zimbardo states that “self-aggrandizement” is accomplished by “self-deprecation” of others (Zimbardo 109). Christopher Shea’s experiment also backs up the claim that people act for themselves. Shea would concur with Fromm that humans behave greedily (Shea). In contrast, Shea would not believe that people behave to put others down, which is Zimbardo’s beliefs (Shea). Jessup wished to express his authority by giving orders and allowing himself to advance even higher. Jessup harmed Santiago to advance personally; in addition, Dawson and Downey obeyed orders to gain approval from Jessup. Fromm may argue that Dawson and Downey followed commands due to fear. Zimbardo would believe that they thought completing the order was the correct action to be taken. The article “Human Obedience: The Myth of Blind Conformity” also connects with Zimbardo’s viewpoint. The article explains why people become passive and eventually deem their actions as correct (Human Obedience: The Myth of Blind Conformity). Zimbardo would not consider humans to be passive just blind to the truth. “Human Obedience: The Myth of Blind Conformity” would reply that individuals need to rely on their mind and not listen to commands. Both authors believe the marines’ actions
We live in a society where each individual has their own set of thoughts and beliefs. Occasionally one will modify their beliefs and behavior to coincide with a group. This is an example of social influence. Social influence has three main components; conformity, compliance and obedience. The concept of compliance is similar to conformity, however there is a slight difference. Compliance only requires a person to perform a task. The person does not have to agree or disagree with the assignment, just simply complete it. Conformity requires the person being influenced to change their attitudes and or beliefs. An example of this aspect of social psychology is the holocaust in World War II. Adolph Eichmann was a Nazi officer responsible for filling up death camps in Germany. After the war he went on trial in Jerusalem for crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. On May 31, 1962, he was sentenced to death for the horrible crimes he committed. His defense was "Why me? Why not the local policemen, thousands of them? They would have been shot if they had refused to round up the Jews for the death camps. Why not hang them for not wanting to be shot? Why me? Everybody killed the Jews". A few months after the start of Eichmann’s trial, Stanley Milgram instituted an experiment testing ones obedience to authority. He wanted to find out if good people could do atrocious things if they were just obeying authority. Was Eichmann and millions of others in Nazi Germany decent people who were just following orders? Some other famous experiments that have taken place to test the waters of social psychology are Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment and Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments, all ...
Mob mentality is when people begin to go along with whatever a crowd of people do without second guessing themselves because it is a large crowd. It is part of the reason why it was so hard to end the trials. Mobs are all unique and have different effects on people, causing all the characters in The Crucible to be affected by it greatly. It can affect their values and how they act within the group. Mob mentality is and important factor in The Crucible because the characters begin to loose their values and it causes them to act differently.
This is shown in the excerpt from the short story, “Maple Street in the last calm and reflective moments...” and the excerpt , ”We move to a series of close-ups of various people as they shout, accuse, scream...” these two excerpts show that the a group turned into a mob ,because in the first excerpt it shows how calm and peaceful everything is and how it seems as if everyone is getting along together. However, in the second excerpt it shows how a peaceful crowd could turn into a mob , because when everyone started blaming each other pandemonium broke out. This book also explains influence , because the residents are being influenced by fear to freak out. In the book it states , “[The camera pans along the faces of the people as they stare somehow caught up by this revelation and somehow, illogically, widely, frightened]” this relates ,because fear is getting into their systems and influencing them to freak out. Overall, The Twilight Zones, “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” , can relate to a group turning into a mob and influence by
A person can stand up for their beliefs against another person, but as more people criticize those beliefs, it becomes much harder to stand up for what one believes in and much easier to give in and agree with the majority. When a person begins to feel condemned and cornered against a group of people, they tend to conform their actions in order to align them with their new identity. Gladwell states about the Stanford Prison Experiment, “the guards, some who had previously identified themselves as pacifists, fell quickly into the role of hard-bitten disciplinarians. The first night they woke up the prisoners at two in the morning and made them do push-ups, line up against the wall, and perform other arbitrary tasks.” (158). The subjects’ identities fell into align with respect to their immediate environment. With no control over their true identities, their actions as a group must coincide with each other’s. The situational pressure is automatically exerted onto each member of the group; if one member does not act in accordance with the group’s actions, one will most likely face criticism from the other members. The conscious awareness of these consequences will keep most members of the situation in align with their newly molded identities. External pressures play a very similar role, without the presence and involvement of groups of people. Like peer pressures, external influences lure us to change our actions according to the expectations of those certain outer influences. Davidson states, “…given that our system of education presumes college preparation is the ideal, even in environments where most kids are not going on to college” (59). Even if a student does not have the ambition to attend college, they are still forced to meet the expectations of those who plan to attend college. If they do not meet those expectations, they will be
We have a primal instinct to be part of a group (Smith). Most people want to be like and because of peer pressure we often find ourselves doing actions that we would not normally do (Smith). Mob mentality can be seen in To Kill A Mockingbird many times. It only takes one act of violence to whip the emotionally distressed crowd into a fury (Edmonds). In the book, when Atticus was sitting at the jail with Tom Robinson, the mob that came to kill him had never had a previous bad experience with Tom, they just were mad that a man could pull something like this off.
Individuals often yield to conformity when they are forced to discard their individual freedom in order to benefit the larger group. Despite the fact that it is important to obey the authority, obeying the authority can sometimes be hazardous especially when morals and autonomous thought are suppressed to an extent that the other person is harmed. Obedience usually involves doing what a rule or a person tells you to but negative consequences can result from displaying obedience to authority for example; the people who obeyed the orders of Adolph Hitler ended up killing innocent people during the Holocaust. In the same way, Stanley Milgram noted in his article ‘Perils of Obedience’ of how individuals obeyed authority and neglected their conscience reflecting how this can be destructive in experiences of real life. On the contrary, Diana Baumrind pointed out in her article ‘Review of Stanley Milgram’s Experiments on Obedience’ that the experiments were not valid hence useless.
Conclusion: It is often difficult for individuals to disobey authority figures and groups based on these primary reasons; individuals will obey malevolent authority as from legitimate figure, decision making are often influenced by groups and unceasing quest for achievement causes humanity to have a hard time disobeying any legitimate authorities or groups given the fact that we are acting on self-deception in order to satisfy our inner ego, groups and with structural laws given to us as the correct way to obey.
Mob mentality is the idea that when a big group of people are together they loose their sense of individualism and moral constraints to follow blindly what they are told. During the French Revolution mobs were highly prevalent as many of the population were starving, poor, and angry. In A Tale of Two Cities the author, Charles Dickens criticizes mobs by showing how dangerous they can be in many scenes.