From Cairo to Tunis, demonstrators united by emotion, purpose and social media gather in their thousands to topple long-standing despotic regimes. Across the UK, crowds of a different temperament surge through summer streets, leaving behind them a trail of destruction. Meanwhile, in the world’s financial centres, bond traders linked by the internet behave like a “virtual” crowd as they sell the securities of increasingly embattled eurozone members, leading yields to soar.
The crowd was at the heart of some of the most memorable events of 2011, demonstrating the power of the group driven by common identity and capacity for decision-making. They are classic examples of the herd mentality – the shared and self-regulated thinking of individuals in a group – an area of study popular with sociologists and psychologists.
And while a social, economic and cultural chasm separates wealthy financial traders fixated by screens in corporate offices from unemployed youths hurling bricks, recent research into herd mentality suggests the two groups are, in fact, closer than is commonly believed. Moreover, their behaviour can be examined, plotted and, to a certain degree, predicted.