Herding Thoery – Do People Herd ?

A long time ago someone asked me if I had ever heard of the hearding theory

I said I hadent and asked him what it was about, and he said. “People are like a Herd and follow one another”

Well at first I said No I dont really think so, but I kept thinking about it a bit and now say it is fairly true.

It doesn’t mean that everyone follows each other, just like a herd of cattle or horses, or sometimes even like lemmings . One follows a leader usualy.

You can apply that to social situations, work, school and especialy any uniformed positions.

Lets face it its easier to follow than break away and have no one follow you. In the work world sometimes breaking away just doesnt offer the money needed to keep yourself with food and shelter. So it pays to follow at least for a while.

I used to play quite a few online games like Everquest, Wow, City of Heroes, Conan, Lord of the Rings, and Guildwars. These are games you playover the internet with people from all over the world. You usualy have missions, sometimes very long ones, that you team up to try and conquer together. Teams used to get as large as 70 people at a time with Everquest. Missions were mostly led by one. During normal gameplay people would just join anyones group, because they didnt want to lead. It was too much effort even though they might be better at it.

I just looked this up on Wikipedia, I had to see if it was on there or not, and it is, here is their definition:

“Herd behavior describes how individuals in a group can act together without planned direction. The term pertains to the behavior of animals in herds, flocks, and schools, and to human conduct during activities such as stock market bubbles and crashes, street demonstrations, sporting events, religious gatherings, episodes of mob violence and even everyday decision making, judgment and opinion forming.”

Lets face it although we have great brain power, we are often too lazy to excersize it, this can sometimes, or often, lead to group stupidity where people think agreeing with the herd means they must be right and dont look at things from outside the box they have put themselves in.

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