Mob Mentality — The Plague of Mediocrity

The hidden pull towards averageness.

I recently doomscrolling through YouTube, as you do, when I came across this hilarious social experiment. Here’s what it was about — a young lady enters a clinic where there is a group of people waiting inside. At random, a beeping sound would go off and everyone in that group would stand for no apparent reason. After a few beeps, the young lady who entered at the start begins to conform to this strange behavior. Oh, and it gets better still. When everyone in that group begin to leave one by one till she was the only remaining person, she continued standing at the beep ofher own volition. Then, as new people entered this same clinic for their first time ever, they too began following the young lady’s behavior. When one guy rightfully asked “why are you standing up,” the girl somewhat naively replied, “Everyone was doing it… so I thought I was supposed to”. By the end of the experiment, the whole group of new people had conformed to this unexplainable behavior.

This experiment perfectly displays the power of ‘mob mentality’. As social animals, we have evolved to adapt to our milieu. It is why people from the same culture speak with the same accent, no matter their race or birth origin. It is how we assimilate into different cultures and become ‘socially acceptable’. Such adaptability is crucial. Without it, we become outcasts, we get marked as socially inept or people with low EQ in general. Fair enough I say, such cognisant is what makes us human after all. Yet, this powerful skill can also hold us back at times…

Remember back when everyone was obsessed with that weird fidget spinner? Or when everyone suddenly became a sourdough baker during lockdown? Or when suddenly every single person was a “crypto expert”? It’s not that these things are inherently bad, but it’s the way we jump onto the bandwagons without really contemplating. Such things may seem trivial, but the same principles can apply to major decisions in our lives too. When everyone around you leads the same sedentary lifestyle, preferring to relieve their day’s work with a pizza instead of a workout, how compelled would you feel to go to the gym? How many talented people never discover their potential because it’s ‘not the norm’.

Things seem even crazier with the university situation in countries such as China. Each and every year, students feel increasingly pressured to get into good colleges; Parents spend more money on tuition while their kids study longer hours to fight for a place in this increasingly competitive landscape. All of this is happening against the backdrop of decreasing employment rates among graduates. Even master’s and PhD holders from the top universities in China are struggling to find jobs. You would think that students and their parents would be encouraged to find alternatives given that an average graduate has almost no chance of getting a respectable white-collar job, but mob mentality dictates otherwise. Seeing all their friends fight so hard to get into a good university, people naturally conclude that doing so must be the best thing to do. Why would people work so hard for something that produces no results?

And therein lies the danger of mob mentality.

It creates a self-perpetuating cycle, a feedback loop where perceived value is amplified by sheer numbers, not necessarily by intrinsic worth. This phenomenon isn’t limited to China’s university system. We see it in the volatile stock market, where meme stocks rise and fall on the whims of online communities, and in the echo chambers of social media, where opinions are validated by likes and shares, not by critical thinking.

This isn’t about condemning conformity entirely. Society needs shared norms to function. But it’s about recognizing the subtle, often unconscious, pressures that shape our choices. It’s about cultivating a moment of pause, a space for reflection before blindly following the crowd.

Perhaps, instead of just asking ‘why is everyone doing this?’, we should ask ‘why am I doing this?’ Is it aligned with my values? Does it contribute to my long-term goals? Or am I simply reacting to an external stimulus, a social beep that compels me to stand without understanding why?

The key isn’t to become a contrarian for the sake of it. It’s about developing the discernment to differentiate between genuine inspiration and the siren call of the crowd. It’s about remembering that individual paths, though often less traveled, can lead to far more fulfilling destinations.

So, the next time you are about to make a major decision or embark on a journey towards a new goal, ask yourself whether this is something you want or a product of social expectations. Just because everyone is doing something does not make it right, it does not make it valid. Instead, cultivate your own inner compass. Learn to listen to your own ‘beep,’ the one that guides you toward authenticity, purpose, and genuine fulfillment. And remember, sometimes the bravest act is to remain seated when everyone else is standing.