Online Encyclopedia Search Tool

Your Online Encyclopedia

 

Online Encylopedia and Dictionary Research Site

Online Encyclopedia Free Search Online Encyclopedia Search    Online Encyclopedia Browse    welcome to our free dictionary for your research of every kind

Online Encyclopedia



Herd behavior

Herd behaviour is the term used to describe situations in which the individuals of any particular group react coherently. Examples of behaviours described in this way include flocking in birds, animals evading a predator, stock market bubbles, and behaviour in political demonstrations.

The phrase "herd behaviour" has acquired a certain currency in popular psychology, where it is offered as an explanation of such phenomena and other kind of crazes. In reality, however, it is highly unlikely that these behaviours have much in common other than the superficial fact that they all involve a number of individuals doing more or less the same thing. Attributing such collective behaviour to a "pack mentality" or "group mind" explains little, and might divert attention from the true explanation of the group's actions. Here are three cases that shows that not all group behavior are the same

In the case of animals evading a predator, it can be shown that each individual can minimise the danger to itself by choosing the location and behaviour that is as close to the centre of the group as possible; this was the subject of a famous paper by evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton called Geometry for the selfish herd. In this case, clearly the "herd behaviour" is as far from a pack mentality as possible, since it emerges from the unco-ordinated behaviour of self-seeking individuals.

In the case of stock market bubbles, the optimal behaviour for an individual may again be to do what everyone else is doing, because even though everyone knows that they are in a bubble, until it bursts, most profit is to be made by staying in the market; again the irrational "collective" behaviour emerges from unco-ordinated individual choices, even if it shows here some abandonment of risk aversion that is not totally rational, as the crash usually occurs without much warning. These phenomena are now much better understood as a result of investigations in experimental economics and behavioral finance, particularly by Nobel laureates Vernon Smith and Daniel Kahneman.

In the case of behaviour in demonstrations, the idea of a "group mind", groupthink or "mob behaviour" was put forward by the French social psychologists Gabriel Tarde and Gustav Le Bon , and was widely adopted by right-wing politicians, particularly in the inter-war years, to justify the repression of demonstrations.

In some cases, a common ferment of such phenomena can come from collective mind control by people playing on emotional arguments to federate the opinions in the direction of their own goals


See also


Last updated: 02-09-2005 11:44:12
Last updated: 03-18-2005 11:16:12