Essay On Mass Hysteria

Mass hysteria has been part of history since the beginning of time. It happened in the United States the years 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. In Salem, two young girls were responsible for starting mass hysteria by showing erratic behavior and accusing other people of witchcraft. This resulted in the death of over 20 people. Salem citizens were very confused and scared because they were never sure of how secure they actually were. Another reason Salem citizens were nervous was because, if their fate was put to the test, it would be in the hands of an unreliable court. Another event that involves mass hysteria was the one known as “The Red Scare”. The Red Scare was a variety of actions that led to an enduring episode of fear and hostility through the years 1940s and 1950s. The Red Scare was caused by a series of threats towards America. The Red Scare had many figures but two that were exemplary to others were Hoover and McCarthy. These men stirred up the environment with more problems than it had before. Citizens of America were surrounded by many threats especially their homes being corrupted by the pressure they were surrounded by. Politics played a very keystone part in The Red Scare because it was the fuel to the fire. Families and friends were being separated since

During both the devastating Holocaust in the Germany and the tragic Salem Witch Trials in the small town of Salem, innocent people were brutally killed, causing hysteria among the people. Both groups of people endured hardships because of the hysteria that occurred among them. This hysteria caused people to react in ways that they would not usually act. Both of these events are very historical and help The United States of America be a unified and prosperous country that it has grown to become today. Hysteria is defined as an uncontrollable outburst of emotion or fear, often characterized by irrationality, laughter, weeping

In this world there have been causes of mass hysteria even back in the old days. In 1939 Mysterious girls were having cases of strange twitching making parents of the students curious. A big cause of hysteria was found in a case of a girl suffering in lack of attention. She was having sorts of insecurity and paranoia. For common people, twitching is a sign of nerve problem. But one case in Louisiana in 1939 involved numerous students suffering from twitching and all inflicted students were female. It began when one female student show sign of twitching in her right. It happened during an annual homecoming ball. Unfortunately, the twitching did not end up on that particular day, in fact, the twitching became worse as weeks went by. Following the incident, some of her fellow

1692, 1920. Both of these years have a perfect connection. Hysteria in Salem, and the Red Scare. The Salem witch trials began in 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem, Massachusetts. They said to be possessed by the devil later the girl accused several women of witchcraft. The people in the village were extremely religious, for example if you didn't know your 10 commandments it was a sin and people would start questioning you because it was something important to know if you were a “god’s child or the devil's child”. The Red Scare was fear of a potential rise of communism or radical leftism. Many people were scared, they had to protect themselves of the strikers but they didn't know who were they exactly or for how long were they going to do this for.

Imagine the terror of a mass hysteria hoax. During the sixteenth century, witch trials caused the deaths of thousands as chaos spread throughout Europe. Many European villages in history have witnessed witch executions and the imprisonment of suspected witches. The Crucible, along with the Salem Witch Trials and the European witch trials, have many similarities and differences that make them both memorable and important.

“Over 127,000 United States citizens were imprisoned during World War II. Their crime? Being of Japanese ancestry”(History par.1) all because people were scared which is a form of mass hysteria. Mass Hysteria is the cause of many panics across the world such as in Le Roy High School in New York where multiple girls suffered a twitch disorder much like tourettes and then in Tanzania when villages west of Lake Victoria experienced an epidemic of laughing and crying. Similar outbreaks have been reported in schools in europe and the US”(Waller par. 2). Most cases of mass hysteria all have different causes and there are three which are most common. Throughout history, mass hysteria has been caused by fear, attention and rumors, and even a psychic contagion.

“Good Night, and Good Luck is George Clooney’s warning to today’s post-9/11 YouTube culture that civil liberties and rights can slip away with mass hysteria” - (Caulfield, 2007). George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) is a huge alert and warning to todays post terrorist attack (of the Twin Towers in 2001) society, in which civil liberties and human rights of each and any person can slip away as an effect of mass hysteria.

Hysteria is a mental disorder marked by excitability, anxiety, or imaginary disorders. It can play an important role in people’s lives. Hysteria supplants logic and enables people to believe that their neighbors, whom they have always considered highly respectable, do things they would never expect them of doing. In “The Crucible”, hysteria causes people to believe their friends are committing deplorable acts. The townsfolk accept and become active in the hysterical climate not only out of genuine religious piety but also because it gives them a chance to express repressed sentiments and to seek reparations from grudges. Hysteria suspends the rules of daily life and allows the acting out of every dark desire and hateful urge under the

Waller, in this article, it trying to get the image of how widespread the idea of Mass Hysteria has occurred around the world and how more people need to be aware about that possibility in order not to greaten the situation.“[T]he reaction of the authorities [can] make things worse” and can make “the situation seem far more serious than it [is]” (Waller 1) by hyping up the participants even more and possibly prompting more people to be added to the mass of hysteria. Mass Hysteria victims usually are triggered by stored up anxiety and can spread like a virus through a large group of people who truly think that they are physically sick. These groups tend to be made up of mostly females for an unproved reason that they either have more fragile nerves where that become distressed easier or they are more frustrated in living in a world dominated by men and or subconsciously looking for a short way out.

Mass hysteria is when a group of people act out of the norm because of a fear of something. Other examples of mass hysteria are riots, weather problems, and illnesses. In fact, Riots fit in perfectly with mass hysteria. A riot occurs when someone is very unhappy with the results of something, like politics, and turns out other people are unhappy about it so they join together and cause trouble.

Mass psychogenic illness, also known as epidemic hysteria, is a set of unexplained symp- toms affecting two or more people who usually share a theory of some sort about what is causing their distress.

Can some of the most deluded water be purified by the Almighty Allah? The people in Mumbai truly believed that their most grotesque water had became sweet and potable. The outbreak of hysteria brought chaos to the large city sitting on the west coast of India. Thousands rushed, in hopes, to get a taste of the holy water that held great promise to the Muslims and others residing in the area. From the reports, religious beliefs, prior events and scientific research, the phenomenon of mass hysteria brought great question to the seemingly odd event.

A moral panic is a condition in which widespread fear is present as a result of a social problem becoming exaggerated beyond its real threat (Krzanich, 2010: 165). According to Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994) cited in Critcher (2008: 1131-1132), moral panics are characterised by several aspects: concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality and volatility. A heightened level of concern over a specific issue is often evidenced through the media, how they are reporting on the issue and how often they are reporting on the issue. Hostility is held towards the groups or individuals believed to be causing the issue, often because they are seen as threatening to the morals and values of the society. Consensus involves an overall agreement within society

People are known to be very adaptable on both a physical basis but also on a metaphysical basis, which holds its own advantages and disadvantages. This leads in to the required environment needed to breed the most effective amount of hysteria, which is a partially and/or fully religious society or a society that has some mild superstitious beliefs. Within these environments, to maximize hysteria, two key factors are needed. The first factor is having people within that superstitious environment either playfully, habitually, or seriously attribute a good action or outcome occurring due to something on a metaphysical realm, such as tossing a coin and calling it correctly due to say, “God’s will”. The second factor is having a unexplainable problem or relatively odd situation in where people don’t exactly know what to do, which allows for the possibility to attribute it to the same superstitions or religious beliefs that they asked for help, and instead paint it as the converse; a curse or some other form of negative oddity that an apparition creates that manifests in that person with the unexplainable condition (although, even seven children with no access to a doctor, who may never had experienced hiccups could label that as “unexplainable”). This leads to the inevitable end result of irrationality that leads to various fatal impacts of death, wrongful accusations, and even torture.

Human beings are complex. There is not one person on this earth that is perfect, but that's the beauty of it. Everyone has moments in their lives where they might just go crazy. Mass hysteria is “a condition affecting a group of persons, characterized by excitement or anxiety, irrational behavior or beliefs, or inexplicable symptoms of illness” (Dictionary.com). There have been multiple instances where large amounts of people have identical symptoms that alienate them from others in society. Many factors play into the incline of mass hysteria in students over others: similar social problems, challenges, or traumatic events.