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Herd behavior
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Herd behaviour)
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It has been suggested that Herding instinct be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)Some information in this article or section has not been verified and may not be reliable.
Please check for any inaccuracies, and modify and cite sources as needed.To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page, and/or replace this tag with a more specific message. Editing help is available.
This article has been tagged since September 2006.
Herd behavior is the term used to describe situations in which a group of individuals react coherently without there being any coordination between them. Such a group is called a herd. The term is used uncontentiously to describe the behaviour of animals within herds and flocks, and more controversially to describe some kinds of human phenomena such as stock market bubbles, and behaviour in political demonstrations.
Contents [hide]
1 Herd behavior in animals
2 The concept of herd behavior as applied to human societies (crazes)
3 Examples of the application of the herd behaviour concept
3.1 Stock market bubbles
3.2 Everyday decision-making
3.3 Behaviour in demonstrations
3.4 Religious and political affiliations
4 See also
5 External links
[edit]
Herd behavior in animals
The case of animals evading a predator illustrates the uncoordinated nature of herd behavior. It can be shown that each individual can minimise the danger to itself by choosing the location and behavior that is as close to the center 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. The herd thus appears to act as one in always moving and acting together, but its behavior emerges from the uncoordinated behavior of self-seeking individuals.
[edit]
The concept of herd behavior as applied to human societies (crazes)
The phrase "herd behavior" has acquired a certain currency in popular psychology, where the idea of a herding instinct is offered as an explanation of phenomena such as crazes where large numbers of people act in the same way at the same time. Such people are sometimes labelled with the derogatory term "sheeple."
A craze is an excessive fad or collective mania due to herd behavior. Some crazes have mild consequences (fashions). But others lead to the excesses of mass hysteria. Popular psychologists describe this as involving the disappearance of the individual personality, with regression to some lowest emotional instinctive denominator described as "crowd sentiment". The evidence that there is any real psychological process of this nature is, however, weak, and in many cases the term "herd behavior" is strikingly inappropriate for the phenomena, since the group is reacting under the orders or influence of a charismatic leader (see charisma.)
Examples of phenomena that have been described as involving herd behavior include stock market bubbles, stock market crashes, street violence, demonisation and persecution of minorities, and political or religious zealotry. In reality these behaviours may have little in common other than the superficial fact that they all involve a number of individuals doing more or less the same thing, and the extent to which they can reasonably described as "herd behaviours" varies. Attributing such collective behaviour to a "pack mentality" or "group mind" explains little, and is most likely to divert attention from the true explanation of the group's actions. The following examples illustrate the range of phenomena to which the label "herd behaviour" has been attached at one time or another.
The functional intelligence of a herd of people is analogous to electrical resistors set up in parallel. Herd intelligence, then, can be quantified by the following equation.
1 / IQT = 1 / IQ1 + 1 / IQ2... + 1 / IQi where IQ is the intelligence quotient and i is the total number of individuals in a group.[citation needed]
This is the opposite of swarm intelligence in that it reduces the overall mental capacity of the group and results in exponentially lower productivity. Typically most wild animals herd in order to benefit the group, for example, when a herd of zebra forms it increases the overall survivability of the group. In the case of most human beings, benefits to the individual may be harder to quantify.
[edit]
Examples of the application of the herd behaviour concept
[edit]
Stock market bubbles
In the case of stock market bubbles, the optimal behaviour for an individual may 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. In this case the term "herd behaviour" is relatively appropriate, because the "collective" behaviour emerges from uncoordinated individual choices. Interestingly, though the behaviour of the group is evidently irrational, the behaviour of the individuals that cause it is rational at least in the short term, though it does show some abandonment of risk aversion, as the crash usually occurs without much warning. These phenomena are now much better understood as a result of investigations in experimental economics and behavioural finance, particularly by Nobel laureates Vernon Smith and Daniel Kahneman.
[edit]
Everyday decision-making
Herding behavior is frequent, and often relatively benign, in everyday decision making. Not knowing which of several options is best, a person may use others' choices as clues as to how to behave. While this can be reasonable, this behavior leaves open the possibility of random influences on choices. Consider for example, a person walking down the street and deciding which of two restaurants to dine at. Both look pretty good, and, as it is early in the evening, both are empty. At random, this person chooses restaurant A. A little later, a couple strolls down the street looking for a place to eat. Seeing that one restaurant is empty and the other has a couple of customers, they figure that the one with customers is probably better and enter that one as well, and so on into the evening, so that restaurant A does better than B that night.
[edit]
Behaviour in demonstrations
Although the term "herd behaviour" has often been applied to behaviour in political demonstrations, its appropriateness is more questionable, since such groups commonly are co-ordinated to some extent. The idea of a "group mind" 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.
[edit]
Religious and political affiliations
People who are sometimes accused of herd behaviour are followers of religions, new religious movements, and cults, especially if they follow a charismatic leader. Nazism is for many people the most shocking example of this kind of herd behaviour. Here the term "herd behaviour" seems quite inappropriate for the actual behaviour of the group, however, since people are clearly responding to a leader, and their behaviour is often closely co-ordinated with careful delineation of roles. Deciding to affiliate to such a group, however, can reasonably be thought of as a craze like any other.
[edit]
See also
Bandwagon effect
Collective behavior
Collective consciousness
Collective intelligence
Crowd psychology
Group behaviour
Groupthink
Herd instinct
Herd morality
Hive mind
Meme
Mob rule
Propaganda
Sheeple
[edit]
External links
Transmission of Information and Herd Behavior in Finance Irrationnalites en bourse... les simuler! les expliquer? (fr)
Retrieved from "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd...vior"
-----------------------------------------
Bandwagon effect
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The bandwagon effect is the observation that people often do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. The effect is often pejoratively referred to as herd instinct, particularly as applied to adolescents. Without examining the merits of the particular thing, people tend to "follow the crowd." The bandwagon effect is the reason for the bandwagon fallacy's success.
Literally, a bandwagon is a wagon that carries the band in a parade. Riding on the bandwagon is popular since one can enjoy the music, conveniently without walking. The phrase "jumping on the bandwagon" is therefore used in the sense of "joining an increasingly popular trend." (The earlier phrase "hop on the bandwagon" was coined in 1900 during William Jennings Bryan's second campaign for the U.S. Presidency.)
The bandwagon effect can be observed in voting: some people vote for those candidates or parties who are likely to succeed (or are proclaimed as such by the media), thus increasing their chances of being on the 'winner's side' in the end.
In microeconomics, bandwagon effect is a term for an interaction of demand and preference.[1] The bandwagon effect arises when people's preference for a commodity increases as the number of people buying it increases. This interaction potentially disturbs the normal results of the theory of supply and demand, which assumes that consumers make buying decisions solely based on price and their own personal preference. See network externality and Veblen effect.
In science, the bandwagon effect is the phenomenon of scientists exercising self-censorship when reporting results that differ considerably from "accepted wisdom". For example, when measuring important values in astronomy, such as the distance of the Sun to the center of the Milky Way, published values tend to agree with the accepted value at the time of publication, even if completely new measurement procedures are employed. When a measurement yields a result at variance with the then-accepted value, scientists will check their methods and calculations repeatedly and delay (or even abandon) publication, while results that agree with the accepted value are published uncritically.[citation needed]
Without the bandwagon effect, one would expect that published estimates for such a constant initially show a wide range of values and then converge over time as measurement precision increases. In reality however, published values often cluster closely together, with the whole cluster moving over time in a certain direction. [2] shows evidence of this effect.
[edit]
See also
Argumentum ad populum
Collective behavior
Bandwagon
Meme
Propaganda
Sheeple
Bandwagon fan
[edit]
References
^ Harvey Leibenstein, “Bandwagon, Snob, and Veblen Effects in the Theory of Consumers’ Demand,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics (May 1950).
^ Reid, Mark J.: The distance to the center of the galaxy, Annual review of astronomy and astrophysics Vol. 31, pp. 345 - 372 (1993), available online at [1]
Retrieved from "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band...fect"
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Herd behaviour)
Jump to: navigation, search
It has been suggested that Herding instinct be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)Some information in this article or section has not been verified and may not be reliable.
Please check for any inaccuracies, and modify and cite sources as needed.To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page, and/or replace this tag with a more specific message. Editing help is available.
This article has been tagged since September 2006.
Herd behavior is the term used to describe situations in which a group of individuals react coherently without there being any coordination between them. Such a group is called a herd. The term is used uncontentiously to describe the behaviour of animals within herds and flocks, and more controversially to describe some kinds of human phenomena such as stock market bubbles, and behaviour in political demonstrations.
Contents [hide]
1 Herd behavior in animals
2 The concept of herd behavior as applied to human societies (crazes)
3 Examples of the application of the herd behaviour concept
3.1 Stock market bubbles
3.2 Everyday decision-making
3.3 Behaviour in demonstrations
3.4 Religious and political affiliations
4 See also
5 External links
[edit]
Herd behavior in animals
The case of animals evading a predator illustrates the uncoordinated nature of herd behavior. It can be shown that each individual can minimise the danger to itself by choosing the location and behavior that is as close to the center 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. The herd thus appears to act as one in always moving and acting together, but its behavior emerges from the uncoordinated behavior of self-seeking individuals.
[edit]
The concept of herd behavior as applied to human societies (crazes)
The phrase "herd behavior" has acquired a certain currency in popular psychology, where the idea of a herding instinct is offered as an explanation of phenomena such as crazes where large numbers of people act in the same way at the same time. Such people are sometimes labelled with the derogatory term "sheeple."
A craze is an excessive fad or collective mania due to herd behavior. Some crazes have mild consequences (fashions). But others lead to the excesses of mass hysteria. Popular psychologists describe this as involving the disappearance of the individual personality, with regression to some lowest emotional instinctive denominator described as "crowd sentiment". The evidence that there is any real psychological process of this nature is, however, weak, and in many cases the term "herd behavior" is strikingly inappropriate for the phenomena, since the group is reacting under the orders or influence of a charismatic leader (see charisma.)
Examples of phenomena that have been described as involving herd behavior include stock market bubbles, stock market crashes, street violence, demonisation and persecution of minorities, and political or religious zealotry. In reality these behaviours may have little in common other than the superficial fact that they all involve a number of individuals doing more or less the same thing, and the extent to which they can reasonably described as "herd behaviours" varies. Attributing such collective behaviour to a "pack mentality" or "group mind" explains little, and is most likely to divert attention from the true explanation of the group's actions. The following examples illustrate the range of phenomena to which the label "herd behaviour" has been attached at one time or another.
The functional intelligence of a herd of people is analogous to electrical resistors set up in parallel. Herd intelligence, then, can be quantified by the following equation.
1 / IQT = 1 / IQ1 + 1 / IQ2... + 1 / IQi where IQ is the intelligence quotient and i is the total number of individuals in a group.[citation needed]
This is the opposite of swarm intelligence in that it reduces the overall mental capacity of the group and results in exponentially lower productivity. Typically most wild animals herd in order to benefit the group, for example, when a herd of zebra forms it increases the overall survivability of the group. In the case of most human beings, benefits to the individual may be harder to quantify.
[edit]
Examples of the application of the herd behaviour concept
[edit]
Stock market bubbles
In the case of stock market bubbles, the optimal behaviour for an individual may 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. In this case the term "herd behaviour" is relatively appropriate, because the "collective" behaviour emerges from uncoordinated individual choices. Interestingly, though the behaviour of the group is evidently irrational, the behaviour of the individuals that cause it is rational at least in the short term, though it does show some abandonment of risk aversion, as the crash usually occurs without much warning. These phenomena are now much better understood as a result of investigations in experimental economics and behavioural finance, particularly by Nobel laureates Vernon Smith and Daniel Kahneman.
[edit]
Everyday decision-making
Herding behavior is frequent, and often relatively benign, in everyday decision making. Not knowing which of several options is best, a person may use others' choices as clues as to how to behave. While this can be reasonable, this behavior leaves open the possibility of random influences on choices. Consider for example, a person walking down the street and deciding which of two restaurants to dine at. Both look pretty good, and, as it is early in the evening, both are empty. At random, this person chooses restaurant A. A little later, a couple strolls down the street looking for a place to eat. Seeing that one restaurant is empty and the other has a couple of customers, they figure that the one with customers is probably better and enter that one as well, and so on into the evening, so that restaurant A does better than B that night.
[edit]
Behaviour in demonstrations
Although the term "herd behaviour" has often been applied to behaviour in political demonstrations, its appropriateness is more questionable, since such groups commonly are co-ordinated to some extent. The idea of a "group mind" 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.
[edit]
Religious and political affiliations
People who are sometimes accused of herd behaviour are followers of religions, new religious movements, and cults, especially if they follow a charismatic leader. Nazism is for many people the most shocking example of this kind of herd behaviour. Here the term "herd behaviour" seems quite inappropriate for the actual behaviour of the group, however, since people are clearly responding to a leader, and their behaviour is often closely co-ordinated with careful delineation of roles. Deciding to affiliate to such a group, however, can reasonably be thought of as a craze like any other.
[edit]
See also
Bandwagon effect
Collective behavior
Collective consciousness
Collective intelligence
Crowd psychology
Group behaviour
Groupthink
Herd instinct
Herd morality
Hive mind
Meme
Mob rule
Propaganda
Sheeple
[edit]
External links
Transmission of Information and Herd Behavior in Finance Irrationnalites en bourse... les simuler! les expliquer? (fr)
Retrieved from "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd...vior"
-----------------------------------------
Bandwagon effect
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The bandwagon effect is the observation that people often do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. The effect is often pejoratively referred to as herd instinct, particularly as applied to adolescents. Without examining the merits of the particular thing, people tend to "follow the crowd." The bandwagon effect is the reason for the bandwagon fallacy's success.
Literally, a bandwagon is a wagon that carries the band in a parade. Riding on the bandwagon is popular since one can enjoy the music, conveniently without walking. The phrase "jumping on the bandwagon" is therefore used in the sense of "joining an increasingly popular trend." (The earlier phrase "hop on the bandwagon" was coined in 1900 during William Jennings Bryan's second campaign for the U.S. Presidency.)
The bandwagon effect can be observed in voting: some people vote for those candidates or parties who are likely to succeed (or are proclaimed as such by the media), thus increasing their chances of being on the 'winner's side' in the end.
In microeconomics, bandwagon effect is a term for an interaction of demand and preference.[1] The bandwagon effect arises when people's preference for a commodity increases as the number of people buying it increases. This interaction potentially disturbs the normal results of the theory of supply and demand, which assumes that consumers make buying decisions solely based on price and their own personal preference. See network externality and Veblen effect.
In science, the bandwagon effect is the phenomenon of scientists exercising self-censorship when reporting results that differ considerably from "accepted wisdom". For example, when measuring important values in astronomy, such as the distance of the Sun to the center of the Milky Way, published values tend to agree with the accepted value at the time of publication, even if completely new measurement procedures are employed. When a measurement yields a result at variance with the then-accepted value, scientists will check their methods and calculations repeatedly and delay (or even abandon) publication, while results that agree with the accepted value are published uncritically.[citation needed]
Without the bandwagon effect, one would expect that published estimates for such a constant initially show a wide range of values and then converge over time as measurement precision increases. In reality however, published values often cluster closely together, with the whole cluster moving over time in a certain direction. [2] shows evidence of this effect.
[edit]
See also
Argumentum ad populum
Collective behavior
Bandwagon
Meme
Propaganda
Sheeple
Bandwagon fan
[edit]
References
^ Harvey Leibenstein, “Bandwagon, Snob, and Veblen Effects in the Theory of Consumers’ Demand,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics (May 1950).
^ Reid, Mark J.: The distance to the center of the galaxy, Annual review of astronomy and astrophysics Vol. 31, pp. 345 - 372 (1993), available online at [1]
Retrieved from "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band...fect"
posted by:
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Re: Herd Psychology
Fri, September 29, 2006 - 3:45 PM
Herd behavior is the term used to describe situations in which a group of individuals react coherently without there being any coordination between them. Such a group is called a herd. The term is used uncontentiously to describe the behaviour of animals within herds and flocks, and more controversially to describe some kinds of human phenomena such as stock market bubbles, and behaviour in political demonstrations.
--------------
ppan>
For our purposes, herd behavior is behavior in which persons conform to prevailing pack identities without actually being members of the structure. For instance, "Andy" in Tribers Court was an external individual not actually a member of the clique, who attacked me on multiple grounds simply on the basis of his own herd instinct; the assumption that he makes that the herd is always right and thus anyone who opposes it is wrong. This type of herd behavior is like making a petition to join a pack, it is participation in pack psychology though not actually a member of the pack per sey.
-------------
The concept of herd behavior as applied to human societies (crazes)
The phrase "herd behavior" has acquired a certain currency in popular psychology, where the idea of a herding instinct is offered as an explanation of phenomena such as crazes where large numbers of people act in the same way at the same time. Such people are sometimes labelled with the derogatory term "sheeple."
---------------
ppan>
People who simply jump onto the bandwagon without knowing whats really going on, without reviewing the background of a situation, or who jump to the conclusion that a group is right when that group confronts a solitary person are displaying herd behavior.
-----------
A craze is an excessive fad or collective mania due to herd behavior. Some crazes have mild consequences (fashions).
--------------
ppan>
Anti-intellectualism behaves as a form of viral fad.
-------------
But others lead to the excesses of mass hysteria. Popular psychologists describe this as involving the disappearance of the individual personality, with regression to some lowest emotional instinctive denominator described as "crowd sentiment".
-----------
ppan>
In this case, diabolization of a delta pack element, or a nerd, or, somebody attempting to have a real or depth conversation.
-----------
The evidence that there is any real psychological process of this nature is, however, weak, and in many cases the term "herd behavior" is strikingly inappropriate for the phenomena, since the group is reacting under the orders or influence of a charismatic leader (see charisma.)
---------------
ppan>
Wikipedia neutered shpeek, or, duckspeak. Theres plenty of great evidence, tho it is also
true that charismatic leaders and pack psychology tend to be elements. Whats going on here is a sort of dissassociation of obvious cause and effect vectors. Instead of seeing how pack psychology and herd psychology fit together, they are are making it out to be like the two reality models are mutually exclusive. They aren't.
Generally a herd movement is led by several packs or pack alphas, in a "tribe" thats usually two or 5 people who set the tone and pace for the others.
----------------
Examples of phenomena that have been described as involving herd behavior include stock market bubbles, stock market crashes, street violence, demonisation and persecution of minorities, and political or religious zealotry. In reality these behaviours may have little in common other than the superficial fact that they all involve a number of individuals doing more or less the same thing, and the extent to which they can reasonably described as "herd behaviours" varies.
-------------
ppan>
More duckspeak. Somebodies trying to invalidate the reality model even while its being presented.
------------
Attributing such collective behaviour to a "pack mentality" or "group mind" explains little,
------------
ppan>
It explains a great deal, and is the only way to understand and thus deal with the phenomenon.
------------
and is most likely to divert attention from the true explanation of the group's actions.
----------
ppan> The "groups actions" have explanations which are grounded in the thinking process
of the pack alphas.
----------
The functional intelligence of a herd of people is analogous to electrical resistors set up in parallel. Herd intelligence, then, can be quantified by the following equation.
1 / IQT = 1 / IQ1 + 1 / IQ2... + 1 / IQi where IQ is the intelligence quotient and i is the total number of individuals in a group.[citation needed]
This is the opposite of swarm intelligence in that it reduces the overall mental capacity of the group and results in exponentially lower productivity.
-------------
ppan> To put it another way, the larger the herd, the stupider it gets.
Also called drift towards the lowest common denominator, and the primary reason why Wikipedia will eventually be outpaced by whatever effort is able to compensate for the phenomenon instead of being led by it.
-----------
Typically most wild animals herd in order to benefit the group, for example, when a herd of zebra forms it increases the overall survivability of the group. In the case of most human beings, benefits to the individual may be harder to quantify.
--------------
ppan> Group identity cements generally personal ego; most people are a part of such
herd movements because they end up having their egos affirmed by the pack or herd.
-------------
