If you like my blog, please tell others.
If you don't like it, please tell me.
The mob mentality – it is dangerous to both our personal character and to society at large. If we subordinate our actions to the beliefs and decisions of a group we become less human, less than we should be. We also endanger others and risk passing along false or bigoted beliefs to our families. This is a problem that has plagued society throughout history and it shows no sign of going away on its own. If it is to be eliminated we must take action against it.
How do we recognize the problem so we can deal with it? Perhaps the most insidious aspect of the mob mentality is that we can so easily participate in it without realizing it. Indeed, the essence of a mob mind-set is not thinking about what we are doing, a severe form of groupthink.
How then can we stop this nonsense? How to eradicate or at least reduce the mob mentality in our society? It won't be easy but there are ways to do it, and it starts with each of us. We must look at our own lives and thinking patterns before we can presume to tell others how to correct their own mind-sets. A recipe for starting to do this is:
First, self-awareness. We must learn to ask ourselves if we really believe what we say in public, or are we just putting up a front? Are we just “going along to get along?” This self-examination is probably the hardest part. Ideally we will learn to examine ourselves in the heat of a group consensus. However even thinking about it afterwards is helpful, that can be a step towards clear thinking in the face of inappropriate group consensus.
Second, if we find that we are showing signs of a mob mind-set, we can attack the causes directly. If we are deindividuating ourselves we can stop and think of ourselves as individuals. I could say to myself, “Hal, you are a person, an individual with a brain and integrity of your own. Why don't you act like it? Who will you see in the mirror tonight, a real person who acted like a man or someone who gave up his personhood to others?”
Third, we can also look at the “enemy” as individual human beings, not part of an amorphous group. I can think that each person who opposes me is a human with a face, with human desires and needs. Those people may enjoy the same sports I enjoy, watch the same sunset I watch, and in many other ways be the type of people I might enjoy knowing. The fact that we have different colored skin or disagree on politics, religion, or other things is really only a small part of who we are. If I can call those people by name that will help even more. It can be easy to hate someone for the disagreements we have or the color of their skin. It is more difficult to hate Bill Smith who likes football and barbecues, but happens to disagree with me in one area.
By such measures we can reduce our own susceptibility to mob mentality. That is an important beginning. What next? How do we help and encourage others to do the same? The first step is to have the courage to speak up. Frequently a group will refrain from anti-social action if only one person points out the problems. That should not be surprising since most members of a mob are indulging in groupthink. They believe everyone else agrees with the group. One person speaking out can destroy that fallacy and they may all wake up to the reality of what they are doing.
However there are cases in which one person opposing is not enough. I doubt a Ku Klux Klan cross burning would stop just because one person spoke out. However even then there are measures that can be effective. The first is to reverse the deindividuation, essentially re-individuate some of the mob members. If possible call them by name and mention something in their lives that calls them back to their humanity. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird Scout does this by calling Mr. Cunningham by name, then apologizing for the fight she had with his son. Suddenly that man must recognize himself as an individual. He can no longer put aside his own personhood.*
Though a work of fiction, I believe that is an example of how a person can be reminded that he is not simply part of an amorphous group, he is a human being. I suspect that even a KKK member, if he can be identified by name, would respond to such an approach. His anonymity would be removed and he would be forced back into the world of individual persons.
OK, I know I've given my readers (if I still have any) a tall order. However nothing worthwhile is likely to be easy so I challenge you to do your part by first examining yourself, then by having the courage to speak out when a group is going off into the mob mentality. It may not be easy but I promise that it will be worth it.
*I thank the author of the Wikipedia article on “Deindividuation” for reminding me of that episode in the book.
Showing posts with label reverse mob effect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reverse mob effect. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Mob Rule, Part 2
If you like my blog, please tell others.
If you don’t like it, please tell me.
Imagine if you will the following:
Situation 1: You're walking home when you see a wallet in the gutter. Inside you find $250 in cash. It turns out that the wallet belongs to your neighbor. Do you keep the cash and claim the wallet was empty when you found it, or do you return it intact?
Situation 2: A major storm just passed through your area. It dropped a few limbs from a neighbor's tree in your yard but did no other damage to your property. While cleaning up you accidentally break a window. Repair will cost $250. Your insurance won't cover the damage because you broke the window yourself. Had the window been broken by a falling tree limb it would have been covered. Do you pay for the repair yourself or do you claim that it was storm damage and get the insurance company to pay for it?
Most people would probably return the money to their neighbor. In fact many would return it to a stranger. However many of those same people will cheat and tell the insurance company that the storm broke the window. Often people who consider themselves honest will not only defraud the insurance company but will take a few “unauthorized benefits” from their employer or help themselves to some items at the store that they didn’t exactly pay for. Some business managers will divert company resources to their personal use. Why that disconnect in honesty? I think the cause is similar to the mob mind-set discussed yesterday; actually what we might call the reverse mob effect. Anonymity and diffusion still play a big part, but in a different way.
First, anonymity and deindividuation: The wallet owner is an individual, but the insurance company is an amorphous entity. In this case it is the victim, not the perpetrator that gets deindividuated. It is the victim who lacks personhood. That makes it easy to think we are harming nobody when we cheat that company.
Second, diffusion: The effects of cheating the company are diffused over a large number of people, doing very little damage to any one of them. In this case it is not the responsibility that is diffused but the damage. Stealing that $250 from the insurance company is still fraud, but is less visible because only a little is stolen from any one individual.
This reverse mob effect affects business and public life. For example, once when I complained about wasteful government spending I got the response, “I regard it as my duty to get as much federal money spent in the county as I can, even if it is spent on wasteful projects.” The speaker was a county commissioner, allegedly a fiscally conservative republican. I had complained to him about the waste but he just wanted to get money into the county. He didn’t think of the fact that he was taking tax money from the widow in Nebraska, the struggling young family in Wyoming, or the parents in California trying to pay for their daughter’s education. The reverse mob effect allowed him to ignore the overall results of his efforts.
Such shortsightedness is common. It is easy to convince ourselves that nobody is hurt when we take maybe a hundredth of a cent from millions of people. We don’t want to think that millions of people may be doing the same, stealing in the aggregate rather large sums of money from each victim. Nor do we remember that a business or government is nothing but a collection of people. Those people need and deserve the fruits of their labor to care for themselves and their families.
Businesses do not manufacture money; instead they exchange goods or services for it. If they lose money to theft they must make it up by raising prices, cutting employee pay or benefits, or reducing payments to stockholders. Worst case, they go out of business and leave customers, employees, stockholders, and even creditors without funds. When we cheat a retailer, insurance company, or any other business we are really cheating the people who depend on that business. Spreading our crime over many people does not change the fact that it is a crime.
Likewise, government has no real way to obtain resources except from the people. Even borrowing or printing money is just a different way to get those resources from you, from your retired first grade teacher, and from other citizens who have to give up the results of their work to provide for government projects. If we demand and get a fancy sports stadium at taxpayer expense, we are really taking the money from those people, many of whom don’t care a fig about sports.
We can improve our economy if we get everybody to realize that there is no such thing as stealing from government or business. Those organizations are only intermediaries between us and other individuals, flesh and blood people with names, homes, families and their own wants and needs. When we defraud a company or the government, we are really defrauding each individual who has an interest in that organization.
If you don’t like it, please tell me.
Imagine if you will the following:
Situation 1: You're walking home when you see a wallet in the gutter. Inside you find $250 in cash. It turns out that the wallet belongs to your neighbor. Do you keep the cash and claim the wallet was empty when you found it, or do you return it intact?
Situation 2: A major storm just passed through your area. It dropped a few limbs from a neighbor's tree in your yard but did no other damage to your property. While cleaning up you accidentally break a window. Repair will cost $250. Your insurance won't cover the damage because you broke the window yourself. Had the window been broken by a falling tree limb it would have been covered. Do you pay for the repair yourself or do you claim that it was storm damage and get the insurance company to pay for it?
Most people would probably return the money to their neighbor. In fact many would return it to a stranger. However many of those same people will cheat and tell the insurance company that the storm broke the window. Often people who consider themselves honest will not only defraud the insurance company but will take a few “unauthorized benefits” from their employer or help themselves to some items at the store that they didn’t exactly pay for. Some business managers will divert company resources to their personal use. Why that disconnect in honesty? I think the cause is similar to the mob mind-set discussed yesterday; actually what we might call the reverse mob effect. Anonymity and diffusion still play a big part, but in a different way.
First, anonymity and deindividuation: The wallet owner is an individual, but the insurance company is an amorphous entity. In this case it is the victim, not the perpetrator that gets deindividuated. It is the victim who lacks personhood. That makes it easy to think we are harming nobody when we cheat that company.
Second, diffusion: The effects of cheating the company are diffused over a large number of people, doing very little damage to any one of them. In this case it is not the responsibility that is diffused but the damage. Stealing that $250 from the insurance company is still fraud, but is less visible because only a little is stolen from any one individual.
This reverse mob effect affects business and public life. For example, once when I complained about wasteful government spending I got the response, “I regard it as my duty to get as much federal money spent in the county as I can, even if it is spent on wasteful projects.” The speaker was a county commissioner, allegedly a fiscally conservative republican. I had complained to him about the waste but he just wanted to get money into the county. He didn’t think of the fact that he was taking tax money from the widow in Nebraska, the struggling young family in Wyoming, or the parents in California trying to pay for their daughter’s education. The reverse mob effect allowed him to ignore the overall results of his efforts.
Such shortsightedness is common. It is easy to convince ourselves that nobody is hurt when we take maybe a hundredth of a cent from millions of people. We don’t want to think that millions of people may be doing the same, stealing in the aggregate rather large sums of money from each victim. Nor do we remember that a business or government is nothing but a collection of people. Those people need and deserve the fruits of their labor to care for themselves and their families.
Businesses do not manufacture money; instead they exchange goods or services for it. If they lose money to theft they must make it up by raising prices, cutting employee pay or benefits, or reducing payments to stockholders. Worst case, they go out of business and leave customers, employees, stockholders, and even creditors without funds. When we cheat a retailer, insurance company, or any other business we are really cheating the people who depend on that business. Spreading our crime over many people does not change the fact that it is a crime.
Likewise, government has no real way to obtain resources except from the people. Even borrowing or printing money is just a different way to get those resources from you, from your retired first grade teacher, and from other citizens who have to give up the results of their work to provide for government projects. If we demand and get a fancy sports stadium at taxpayer expense, we are really taking the money from those people, many of whom don’t care a fig about sports.
We can improve our economy if we get everybody to realize that there is no such thing as stealing from government or business. Those organizations are only intermediaries between us and other individuals, flesh and blood people with names, homes, families and their own wants and needs. When we defraud a company or the government, we are really defrauding each individual who has an interest in that organization.
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