The Mob Mentality

One of the major causes individuals get caught up in mob mentality is because people feel pressured to execute the corrupt actions in order to be accepted in society. Mob mentality can trigger certain emotions to participate in terrible public events in which causes harm to others. In the 1920’s, a horrible incident occurred in Duluth Minnesota which will always be remembered in history.

Initially gang activity could only be found in large metropolitan cities, but now gangs have invaded neighborhoods of all sizes across the country. Gangs introduce violence and fear to the communities they occupy, raise the level of drug activities, and destroy businesses and property which brings down the overall value of the whole area. Instead of going to school, many young people find themselves drawn in to the gang life which in most cases either leads to being locked up or death. There are various reasons why people would want to join a gang, but no matter what that reason might be one can only expect a life of violence and troubles.

Mob Mentality is strange behavior that is displayed when people are in a large group (Smith). People take part in these mobs because, when a group of people are emotional and angry about something, it takes very little for the crowd to break out in violence (Edmonds). In To Kill a Mockingbird mob mentality is apparent in the book. An example of mob mentality is, typically others will follow the initial rioter’s lead (Edmonds). This is shown in To Kill a Mockingbird when Scout guilts the mob into leaving and Mr. Cunningham tells the rest of the mob lets go and they follow right after him (Lee 206). Along with the Jim Crow laws and mob mentality another influence in To Kill a Mockingbird was the Scottsboro

In the statement on mob - mentality by Nina Munteanu, mob - mentality is when one individual takes fear and uses it to their advantage. They are the ones that are responsible for controlling how others act within the mob. People in the mob also become someone other than themselves. It is as if they are temporarily insane, not thinking straight. A mob - mentality is when the people within the mob come up with their on desired form of justice. I agree with Nina, when she says if you allow the mob to happen, you are allowing insanity to occur.

There are several other terms that could replace mob psychology such as group think, group control, social psychology.

It is often affirmed that as the most dominant species on planet earth, human beings essentially rule the way in which our world has evolved; we have cognitive abilities that allow us to explore a multitude of complex variables, utilize logic, formulate a wide range of choices, and act out our decisions. However, even as highly logical creatures, humans have the propensity to be influenced by the choices of others or information presented to them, form groups of like-minded individuals, and participate in behaviors they would likely not have undertaken on their own. This particular behavior has been coined the “mob mentality and under it, people appear to become mindless automatons that lack any ability to act on their own thoughts. While there are perfect examples of mob mentalities doing good, such as the pivotal march on Washington during the Civil rights movement of the 1960’s, to something as simple as the yearly gathering of like-minded individuals at the Burning Man Festival, there are far more insidious examples such as the Holocaust, the Salem Witch trials, and Bacon’s Rebellion. In the realm of human behavior, each of these “events” is representational of what psychology defines as a mob or herd mentality and this group behavior has been an intrinsic quality of human civilizations throughout history. As such, this writer believes that Bacon’s Rebellion is a prime example of the negative implications mob mentalities are capable of generating. However the

“Think about the last sporting event or concert you attended. It’s unlikely that you would have been yelling or singing the way you were if you were the only person doing it!” (Donley). Being in a group, in some way, seems to make some behaviors acceptable that wouldn’t be acceptable otherwise. “The bandwagon effect is a psychological phenomenon whereby people do something primarily because other people are doing it, regardless of their own beliefs” (Bloom). Bandwagoning is also commonly referred to as “mob mentality” or “groupthink.” We can observe many instances of bandwagoning and mob mentality when reading about the false accusations and impulse convictions made in The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller and published in January 1953. This piece is a play inspired by the infamous witch trials that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts in the late 1600s. How do the effects of bandwagoning relate to the Salem Witch Trials and why do we, as humans, allow behavior of others to influence our own?

The brisk air fills the lungs of the students who shout, cheer, and sing in the bleachers of the sports stadium. One student starts the chant, as others follow, the next chanting louder than the first. It’s unlikely that these students would be yelling and singing the way they do if they were the only person doing it. This is mob mentality. The person starting this trend has a threshold of zero, because they didn’t need anyone to do it before they did, whoever is next has a threshold of one and the next, two and so on. Mob mentality is how people are influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors and a threshold is how many people it takes for this influence to be adapted by their peers. Mob mentality can be seen in many ways in The Crucible and at Blue Valley West. Groups spreading the pressures of things like bullying, accusations, and clothing in order to fit in are all great examples of mob mentality.

The mob mentality could be or give a positive or negative effect, for instance a positive effect on a Mob mentality was the civil-rights protest that took place in 1955 called The Montgomery Bus Boycott, in Alabama. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil-rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride the city buses, to battle against segregated seating, it was the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. It took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, 4 days before the boycott Rosa Parks was detained, simply because she didn’t yield her seat which was in the front of the bus to a white man. As a result The U.S. Supreme Court ordered Montgomery to integrate its bus system, and the main leader of the boycott was Martin Luther King Jr. A negative effect would be the KKK, they were unfortunately a mob of angry white men that despised colored people, there was a large amount of deaths and destruction that mob created at the time, because they were primarily driven by anger.

After reading and viewing the mob mentality pieces, I conclude that mobs were gruesome groups that were hard to stop when in the action. For Instance, in the NPR Radio Diaries, it talks about how a mob a lynched two of three boys and broke into a place station to get the last boy ( “ Strange Fruit: Anniversary of a Lynching” ). This shows that mobs were virtually unstoppable. They were not satisfied until everyone they wanted dead were dead. They were willing break into the holding cells and get in trouble or hurt just to have one more person dead. Another idea that supports this conclusion is from S.E. Smith’s article “ What is Mob Mentality? “, the article talks about about if some people get trampled when there is a lot of urgency or

One reason as to why mob hysteria could create a form of power to the wrong person is that this creates a form of fear in the rest of the people. As a result, those people look to someone to lead them out of the bad situation, and that person is not always the best one for the job. Humans have not

Reputation in the past and in today’s world has played a major role in people’s decisions and actions. Crowd mentality has been integrated into society, causing people to copy or follow other’s actions within a crowd. Normally in these situations people do not consider the situation as a whole, instead they are pressured into what is deemed right. In the novel The Crucible Arthur Miller explains how persuasion through crowd mentality changes the perception of human reputation, which blinds those from reality.

Far too often, one person shares an idea and then a domino effect takes place. Soon hundreds of people show up in a blurry rage. Mob mentality is a lot like cataracts. It clouds your vision and plays with your brain. Often times the person doesn’t fully understand what they are doing.

Mob mentality is an act that is brought on by the sense of fear. Whether it be fear in government, fear of a specific ethnic group, or fear of ones own life, whenever the mob mentality sets in, people tend to not think rationally. The Ku Klux Klan, or KKK for short, for example, is a group of people who are in a mob mentality toward U.S. citizens of African descent. The KKK, in essence, is just like the people

Mob Hysteria Why do you think people lose their morals when a massive event happens? Suddenly, rules seem to surcease when an inexplicable event occurs. On October 30th, 1938, the American radio drama, The War of the Worlds aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System. For the people who heard only a portion of the broadcast, thought it was the events being narrated in Word War II. Mob Hysteria has played a big part in the Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy Era.