You ever have the herd turn against you?

[Mike Dura]

We all know about herds or what's commonly called the mob mentality. You put people in a crowd and they lose their individual consciousness or sense of personal responsibility. This is the stuff of social psych 101.

If a person is being mugged, for example, and there are lots of people around, chances are higher that no one will intervene because there is what's called "a diffusion of individual responsibility." It's as if one feels "why should I do anything? Nobody else is."

In a cohesive (or cliquish) group, if you rub one influential person the wrong way, that person can single you out and form the impression of you for the whole group. In such a case, you can witness members of the group, relying completely on heresay or a group consenus, approach you as if he or she actually knew you from direct experience and treat you with utter contempt (or with incredible adulation).

There's more to it: By singling a person out (in the negative sense) a group increases it's sense of self-worth. There is a logic to scapegoating: It brings identity and pride to the relatively "elite order." This is how we come to understand the Jew and the antisemite during the holocaust.

Anyway, you ever have a herd turn against you? It can happen! Watch out! It may be you that is cattled onto a train and shipped off to a camp. Creepy yet real.