Mass Formation
Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds
Mass Formation (or the madness of crowds or group psychology as defined by Sigmund Freud) is noticeably irrational and extreme societal behaviors that occur when society becomes decoupled from each other and experience a free-floating anxiety that things don’t make sense. The term was popularized by Mattias Desmet and Mark McDonald in late 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 mass formation.
Another way of describing it is when an entire group, or an entire population, lose their rational faculties, become unable to think for themselves, and begin acting as a herd.
It is at that point that it becomes easy for an individual or group of individuals employing Narcissistic Leadership to focus society’s attention. The result is similar to hypnosis on a large scale. That is because the people under the collective spell believe anything said to them by the narcissist, even though there is credible and proven data to prove the narcissist is not correct.
There are four basic conditions which need to be met in order for a society to be vulnerable to mass formation.
Lack of social bonding, disconnectedness and loneliness: It is easily argued that members of Western society struggled with loneliness long before the pandemic, and then with the ongoing lockdowns, isolation, and general fear of one another, this lack of community has continued to a dangerous degree.
Lack of purpose or meaning, despair: A recent poll of young people in the UK revealed that 89 percent of those aged 16-29, “believe that their lives have no meaning or purpose.” Desmet also cites studies showing that half of all adults believe that their jobs are completely meaningless and are basically “sleepwalking” through their day.
Free floating fear or anxiety or general sense of foreboding: This is a particularly frustrating malaise because there is no immediately apparent treatment or solution. This leads to a strong desire to connect the anxiety to an external object, for example a spider or a snake. This gives the sense that by avoiding spiders and snakes one will achieve at least a minimum control over the anxiety. An alternative is for a narrative to be distributed through mass media. There is then a huge willingness in the population to participate in a strategy to deal with the object of anxiety even if it is utterly absurd.
Free floating frustration and aggression, with no discernible cause. They can direct all this frustration and aggression at the object of anxiety or at the people that do not want to go along with the strategy to deal with the object of anxiety.
References
Mass psychology of the led and the leaders: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240238818_Mass_psychology_of_the_led_and_the_leaders
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness
https://c2cjournal.ca/2022/07/when-the-whole-world-goes-mad-mattias-desmets-the-psychology-of-totalitarianism/
Deep dive: https://bit.ly/MadCrowd and https://bit.ly/MDesmet
This entry is part of our Evolutionary Agents Glossary.