AUTHORITY BIAS, APPEAL TO AUTHORITY, BANDWAGON EFFECT, GROUPTHINK, HERD BEHAVIOUR, COLLECTIVE EFFERVESCENCE, SHEEPLE, and MASS HYSTERIA
We were trained to respect authorities. We've been trained to see it as a good thing. Starting from our parents, to our teachers, to our bosses at work, to the heads of clans, traditional rulers and religious leaders, and finally the government, every society is run by authority figures. Therefore we've developed an emotional attachment to the idea of respecting authorities and those who have influence over us. However when this goes wrong, it leads to AUTHORITY BIAS.
Authority bias is the tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure (unrelated to its content) and be more influenced by that opinion. Because he's someone you respect, you take everything he says without thinking. If a regular person had said it, you would've thought about it and argued but because it was your authority figure that said it, you swallowed it whole-heartedly.
"This is right thing to do."
"How did you know?"
"Well, because my pastor said so."
OR
"Well, because my parent said so."
The authority figure may be right some times but at other times, they're wrong and this leads to an error for the individual who is suffering from authority bias. Sometimes the opinion of the authority figure is wrong because he has a motivation to deceive or he knows nothing about what he's talking about. This is how we accept everything our parents say without questioning and then make the same mistakes they made. We share the same views with them and then think we are right when in fact, we might be wrong.
Sometimes the authority figure is an institution or a book that one respects. "This is what I want to do because so-so book says that is the right to do." The book may be right but for you to be double-sure and avoid errors in decision-making, you need to cross-check from other sources and then think.
The text message that led to many people bathing with salt back in 2014 contained the words "Doctors at the National Hospital, Abuja have confirmed that..." Pranksters know that when they broadcast some messages, people won't take them seriously but once they add "Scientists have confirmed..." "Research has shown that..." "Pastor Joseph Lee said..." "Aristotle said..." when in reality none of these people said what has been claimed, people will take the messages seriously. I usually ignore such messages. Before you take them seriously, it's important you cross-check from other sources.
APPEAL TO AUTHORITY (aka argument from authority or argumentum ad verecundiam) is when someone presents a wrong argument but insists he's right because he's an authority or because he's quoting an authority. That someone is an authority doesn't mean they're always right even though due to our authority bias, we almost always think they are.
Authority bias can lead to the BANDWAGON EFFECT. If the authority figure has an influence over a large group of people, it generates the bandwagon effect. Sometimes the whole group itself is the authority figure that forces individual members to conform. The bandwagon effect says the more the number of the people who have held a belief or idea, the more the likelihood of other people holding the same idea. In other words, you're more likely to adopt something if one or two other people around you have adopted it already. Experiments have shown that even when people have made a right decision, they can discard the decision and then pick up the one by the other folks around them instead. We're social animals. We don't like to be outcasts. We love to confirm to groups.
GROUPTHINK is when the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. People who have contrary views voluntarily keep their views to themselves because they're more interested in the unity of the group than in the correctness of the decision being made by the group. They feel they shouldn't cause trouble for the group. Even when opposing views are raised, rather than critically appraising every view, they suppress them. To also maintain the unity of the group, they avoid interaction with outsiders. This creates an echo chamber (discussed in volume 1).
This is a little different to HERD BEHAVIOUR in which individuals in a group behave the same way without prior discussion. Each person thinks he's thinking and acting independently but unknown to them, they have all actually thought and done the same thing. It's because they all have imbibed exactly the same idea without knowing it.
COLLECTIVE EFFERVESCENCE is defined as the high energy that is generated when individuals gather in a group. This energy can make them believe or do things they wouldn't have done as individuals. Popularly called "collective anointing" in Christian circles, it is in play in many other scenarios. It's the reason why mobs become highly charged and energetic doing things they wouldn't have done as individual persons. It's the reason why spectators in a football stadium sing louder and display much more energy than they would as individual persons. At those moments of frenzy, people are at their most vulnerable periods and are easier to be influenced into the bandwagon effect and groupthink.
This is why group gatherings are essential for such ideas. People gather together to eat grass and drink petrol, someone waves his hand and adults in a group keep falling over dramatically, people drop all the money in their pockets and then regret few hours later, protesters face armed police, students beat up their vice-chancellor, etc - these are things these people would probably not be able to do as individuals.
SHEEPLE is a portmanteau of two words: "sheep" and "people". It describes people who are victims of the bandwagon effect (+/- authority bias), groupthink, and herd behaviour. Its origin is unknown but it has been in use since the 1940's: WR Anderson used it in 1945 and Ernest Rogers also used it in 1949. Ever since then, various people have used it and the usage increased with the advent of the internet. It appeared in the Nigerian space several years ago but the latest popularizer is Daddy Freeze who captioned his movement "Free the Sheeple."
MASS HYSTERIA is when groupthink relates to a negative stimulus like threat or danger. Via availability heuristic and cascade (discussed in volume 2), a rumour or wrong information spreads and grips the minds of many people leading to bizarre behaviours by the whole society. It's a global phenomenon but Nigerian examples include the public panic of the fear of missing genitals and breasts in the early 90's and the salt-water bath in the 2014 Ebola scare.