The Sheep Syndrome

Have you ever considered yourself a crowd follower? Perhaps most of us would respond with a definite no, since we all feel smart and independent enough to let the others be controlled. However, several social experiments have shown that indeed, the majority of people would follow others behavior, even if it is completely unreasonable. But if we are supposed to be the only rational animal, then what is the psychological reason behind this sheep syndrome?

Dr. Gregory Berns, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Atlanta's Emory University, tested a group of people by asking them to compare some tridimensional shapes and notice the differences between them. First, they wrote the answers privately and then they had to say them out loud. All of the participants, except for one, were told to answer a certain thing, while the other one was supposed to give his own. Whenever the group gave an answer, the one that wasn't aware of it, agreed with the others, even when they were wrong. The experiment was applied to different people, and most of them passed with the written answers, but failed when they heard the others. Only two of them answered correctly in spite of the crowd.

What is more, when Berns studied the brain of the tested ones at the moment of decision, he found out that the neurological activity took place in the back of the brain where vision is interpreted, instead of the rational region. "What that suggests is that, what people tell you (if enough people are telling you) can actually get mixed in with what your own eyes are telling you” said Berns. But the neurological activity of those who responded correctly, appeared in the amygdala “the fear center of the brain”, so perhaps they were afraid of being against the crowd, but did it anyway to follow logic.

What is interesting about the experiment is that our brains can actually question what the eyes are seeing and it starts believing in what other people say. But is it because two heads are better than one? Or just because we prefer to feel like we belong rather than stand alone?, after all, we are social beings who need others to survive. However, there is another theory which suggests that we can only see what we believe in, and because our reality is the sum of our belief systems, we need others for it to survive.

Anyways, whether we like it or not, humans follow the crowd as sheep in a flock. Nevertheless, the problem doesn't lie in the fact that we are social beings who need to be part of a group, but in the danger of mass unconsciousness. Just think about Hitler, or the fact that we are willing to kill someone in order to defend an idea that has been imposed by others, even when we wouldn’t do that in our full awareness. And this fact not only exists in situations as huge as war, but it also exists in our everyday lives, like a gossip we believe in just because the neighborhood knows about it. So next time you doubt about following others or your intuition, think about it twice, because ideas can move the world if we give them the power to grow.