Herd mentality

“ SOCIOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HERD INSTINCT It was shown in the previous essay that the gregarious mental character is evident in man’s behaviour, not only in crowds and other circumstances of actual association, but also in his behaviour as an individual, however isolated. ”

“ Fundamental errors: to regard the herd as an aim instead of the individual! The herd is only a means and nothing more. But nowadays people are trying to understand the herd as they would an individual, and to confer higher rights upon it than upon isolated personalities. ”

“ Herd-Instinct.—Wherever we meet with a morality we find a valuation and order of rank of the human impulses and activities. These valuations and orders of rank are always the expression of the needs of a community or herd: that which is in the first place to its advantage—and in the second place and third place—is also the authoritative standard for the worth of every individual. By morality the individual is taught to become a function of the herd, and to ascribe to himself value only as a function. ”

“ And the old, weary canons of a herd-race, hedging in its deformities and greed against the flaming grandeur of a nature it has denied, were vented to make this child conform, in whom a tinge of the old gaieties and loves still dared to linger. ”

“ The conclusions were arrived at that man’s suggestibility is not the abnormal casual phenomenon it is often supposed to be, but a normal instinct present in every individual, and that the apparent inconstancy of its action is due to the common failure to recognize the extent of the field over which suggestion acts; that the only medium in which man’s mind can function satisfactorily is the herd, which therefore is not only the source of his opinions, his credulities, his disbeliefs, and his weaknesses, but of his altruism, his charity, his enthusiasms, and his power. ”

“ Instincts on the whole tend to be recurrent rather than concurrent. If we had only these simple instincts to reckon with, if our humanity was based only on sex, self-preservation, nutrition, there would be, it seems, no "war in our members."
But to these simple impulses, these life-functions as it were, man has added another,—the gregarious, or, as sociologists pleasantly term it, the "herd" instinct. [5] Why men and some other animals herd together—whether for warmth, for food, for mutual protection, or from some obscurer sympathetic impulse—is not very clearly known. ”

“ The herd regards the exception, whether it be above or beneath its general level, as something which is antagonistic and dangerous to itself. Their trick in dealing with the exceptions above them, the strong, the mighty, the wise, and the fruitful, is to persuade them to become guardians, herdsmen, and watchmen—in fact, to become [Pg 293] their head-servants: thus they convert a danger into a thing which is useful. ”

“ In both cases it is clear that no actual expression by the herd is necessary to arouse the appropriate feelings, which would come from within and have, in fact, the qualities which are recognized in the dictates of conscience. Conscience, then, and the feelings of guilt and of duty are the peculiar possessions of the gregarious animal. ”

“ And so with others in every branch of human activity: art and science, industry and commerce, literature and philosophy. We have within us, from the start, that which will distinguish us from the vulgar herd. Now to what do we owe this distinctive character? To some throwback of atavism, men tell us. Heredity, direct in one case, remote in another, hands it down to us, increased or modified by time. Search the records of the family and you will discover the source of the genius, a mere trickle at first, then a stream, then a mighty river. ”

“ Even as individuals they had a halter round their necks, and on the farther side of the narrow passage of individualism, through which the herd was driven, the herd awaited them again—one flock, one shepherd. ”

“ Or, if his difficulty is the ethical one, he will come to see how right the herd view really is; that it is a very narrow mind which cannot see the intrinsic excellence of suffering; that the sheep and cattle we breed for eating, the calf we bleed to death that its meat may be white, the one baby out of four we kill in the first year of life, that cancer, consumption, and insanity and the growing river of blood which bathes the feet of advancing mankind, all have their part in the Increasing Purpose which is leading the race ever upwards and onwards to a Divine consummation of joy. ”

“ Without it, indeed, the herd could not exist at all. Man as herd-animal has therefore by no manner of means to subject himself to laws enforced on him from without; he carries his social imperatives within himself, a priori, as an inborn necessity. As you see, I here put myself in decided opposition to certain views—I think quite unjustified—which have been put forth here and there inside the psychoanalytic movement.
So the line of least resistance does not signify eo ipso the avoidance of unpleasure so much as the just balancing of unpleasure and pleasure. ”

“ Man and a certain number of other species widely distributed throughout the animal kingdom show, in addition to the instincts of self-preservation, nutrition, and sex, specialized inherited modes of response to the needs, not directly of the individual but of the herd to which he belongs. These responses, which are perfectly well marked and characteristic, are those of the herd instinct. ”

“ My teaching is this, that the herd seeks to maintain and preserve one type of man, and that it defends itself on two sides—that is to say, against those which are decadents from its ranks (criminals, etc.) , and against those who rise superior to its dead level. ”

“ Modern psychology seems to hold that virtue and vice are simply phases of the herd-complex of normal man, and have been evolved by the herd during countless generations as the best method of perpetuating the human species. No individual man made his own herd-complex, by which he is so enormously swayed; no individual man made his own sex-complex, or his ego-complex, or anything that is his. ”

“ So long, however, as we revere the whisperings of the herd, we are obviously unable to examine them dispassionately and to consider to what extent they are suited to the novel conditions and social exigencies in which we find ourselves to-day. ”

“ Those who have studied the store of psychological material furnished by that affair, the trial and judgments which followed it, and the ultimate verdict of the people thereon, cannot fail to have reached the conclusion that here is exposed in a crucial experiment a people which is either totally in­com­pre­hen­sible, or is responding to the calls of herd instinct by a series of reactions almost {184} totally different from those we regard as normal. ”

“ But it was not in human nature, especially in such early times, for individuals to do such great service to their fellow men and not occasionally be punished for it. They induced men for a time to set reason and high ideals above the instincts of the herd: and sooner or later the herd must turn and trample them. ”

“ Those who belong to a herd are in general unable to understand the wish of others to escape from it. Such a wish is an implied criticism upon the herd conception, and brings a sense of insecurity. Thus the desire for leisure and solitude, or for a life amid wild surroundings, is regarded with instinctive disapproval. ”

“ But, if it is important that we should not lose sight of the basal instinct, it is still more important that we clearly recognise the complexity of the emotional system into which that basal instinct enters, because therein lies the complexity of the problem of relating the individual to the herd. ”

“ The conception of herd accessibility includes the specific sensitiveness of the individual to the existence, presence, thought, and feelings of his fellow-members of the major unit; the power he possesses of reacting in an altruistic and social mode to stimuli which would necessarily evoke a merely egoistic response from a non-social animal—that is to say, the power to deflect and modify egoistic {159} impulses into a social form without emotional loss or dissatisfaction ”

“ The peculiarity of the herd instinct is that it does not itself have definite motor expression, but serves to intensify and direct the other instincts. This herd instinct is a tendency, so to speak, which can confer instinctive sanction upon any other part of the field of action or belief. The herd instinct, for example, gives instinctive quality to the social organization and social proclivities of three different types of society, which appear as national characters. ”

“ The essential point of these biological views is that, when the human herd is subjected to any influences that tend to arouse the herd instinct—that is, to unite the herd in any common emotion or action, the old instinctive forms of response are likely to be brought to the front. Whatever the stimulus, the tendency is for the herd to fixate its attention upon some external object, which at once is reacted to with deep emotion. ”

“ Again, not only will the individual be responsive to impulses coming from the herd, but he will treat the herd as his normal environment. The impulse to be in and always to remain with the herd will have the strongest instinctive weight. Anything which tends to separate him from his fellows, as soon as it becomes perceptible as such, will be strongly resisted. [34]
According to sociologists of this school, public opinion, conscience, and authority in the state rest upon the natural disposition of the animal in the herd to conform to "the decrees of the herd." ”

“ The solutions by indifference and by rationalization or by a mixture of these two processes are characteristic of the great class of normal, sensible, reliable middle age, with its definite views, its resiliency to the depressing influence of facts, and its gift for forming the backbone of the State. In {54} them herd suggestion shows its capacity to triumph over experience, to delay the evolution of altruism, and to obscure the existence and falsify the results of the contest between personal and social desires. ”

“ Thus, as so often happens in human society, has one manifestation of herd instinct been met and opposed by another.
As inter­com­mun­i­ca­tion tends constantly to widen the field of action of altruism, a point is reached when the individual becomes capable of some kind of sympathy, however attenuated, with beings outside the limits of the biological unit within which the primitive function of altruism lies. ”

“ My friend, healthy and normal people are only the common herd. ”

“ I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we "mingle with the herd of common men." ”

“ When they are hunting, feeding, playing, or paying court, their every action suggests the real enjoyment of perfected power. May we not reasonably believe that they do enjoy life, and that the other actions, suggestive of anxiety or fear, are merely the outcome of heredity, the inborn necessity of "keeping the eyes skinned"? ”

“ You will not question the statement that what you do with your life is the combined result of heredity and environment. At the same time you doubtless possess a more or less hazy belief in the freedom of your own will. ”

“ Herder was no less opposed to the distinction between mind and nature, God and the world, than to the sharp distinction between the individual and society, or between the conscious and the unconscious. ”

“ This is the first guiding principle in the life of the human infant. Upon this instinct we immediately superimpose the habits of reason, all the bodily and intellectual conventions that have been handed down from generation to generation. We learn everything we know as children by the hereditary, simian habit of imitation. The child of intellectual, cultured parents, born into savage surroundings, becomes the slave of this inherited habit—call it tendency, if you will, the intention is the same. I elaborated the theory by instance and introspection, and found no flaw in it.... ”

“ By revealing to us the absolute mechanism of all action, and so freeing us from the self- imposed and trammelling burden of moral responsibility, the scientific principle of Heredity has become, as it were, the warrant for the contemplative life. It has shown us that we are never less free than when we try to act. ”

“ Upon my word, sir, I dreaded more these human voices than I should have done those of wild beasts. I was at a loss to know what to do. If I descended, I should probably be discovered by the men; and if they had dogs I should, doubtless, be 'treed.' It was an anxious moment, but hardships and dangers have been the accompaniments of my life; and have, perhaps, imparted to me a certain hardness of character, which, to some extent, adapts me to them. In my present predicament, I decided to hold my place in the tree-top, and abide the consequences. ”

“ Instincts are here distinguished from the emotions to which they give rise. Without unduly stretching the meaning of the word "suggestion," in the sense of a prompting to action not specifically in hypnotism, instinct may perhaps be looked upon as the innate suggestion of heredity. The two primary factors held to be fundamental in shaping and influencing the character of the individual are environment and heredity. ”

“ Again the social and the maternal instincts and sympathy are identified and classed as under the dominion of the moral sense, pages 168-170: "It is evident, in the first place, that with mankind the instinctive impulses have different degrees of strength; a savage, will risk his own life to save that of a member of the same community, but will be wholly indifferent about a stranger; a young and timid mother urged by the maternal instinct will, without a moment's hesitation, run the greatest danger for her own infant, but not for a [Pg 10] mere fellow-creature. ”

“ In most cases it is to the influence of the early home environment rather than to that of heredity that the persistence of precise mental and moral characteristics should be ascribed.
Yet it is certain that we can and do inherit tendencies and capacities in the mental and moral realm. We inherit, for instance, instincts, the forms of nervous mechanism which enable us to act usefully without having learned. We inherit temperaments and dispositions, which define our general emotional and practical attitude to the world. ”