So there’s this video that’s been drifting around the intertubes. It shows several very similar situations involving a large mob of people and a clueless victim. In each of the scenarios, the mob either runs at the victim or performs an action en masse. It’s very interesting to note what happens in the final segment of the video. The mob casually surrounds the victim and at a given moment, all drop to the ground. The victim responds in turn by dropping with a look of fear in his eyes. It may be a silly video, but it does help to show
what mob rule can do to a person’s psyche.

Lately, we’ve been talking about network effects and how the fact that the popularity of a certain good or action can influence the decision of an individual. Looking back at human history, it’s not that surprising to see. Network effects pit the information that an individual has against the assumed signals of others participating in the experiment, lets call it. The uncertainty in a private signal makes the individual’s idea vulnerable to the mob. The more people in the mob, the more influence they have. The reasoning behind it is simple. The individual says to him or herself, “I’m one person…but they are one hundred. Shouldn’t they know what they’re doing.”

Even if there is statistically no danger of an explosion in the middle of a Japanese city, if everyone around you drops to the ground, you’re probably going to follow suit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C62usP1P0aU