The Biology of Mob Violence
photo: Colin Lloyd, unsplash
The group mind is powerful. It can be dangerous: primitive, irrational and violent or, enthusiastic, supportive and calling for positive change. In the past, psychologists offered all kinds of explanations for the development and existence of groupthink. Novel investigative methods have provided new insight into how the group mind actually operates, placing the field on a genuinely scientific footing.
Generally speaking, a crowd is defined as a group of people that have gathered for a common purpose or intent such as at a demonstration, a sports event, or during looting, or may simply be made up of many people going about their business in a busy area. It is not so much crowds that worry me. It is mobs like lynch mobs or the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington. By a mob I refer to a large and disorderly crowd of people especially, one bent on riotous or destructive action.
Both the brain and the heart generate extensive electromagnetic fields with the heart having the much more powerful one. When two or more people are in close proximity these electromagnetic vibrations will be picked up and responded to by their respective organs. It is like two people standing six feet apart, each of them holding a tuning fork. When one person strikes their tuning fork, the other’s tuning fork starts to vibrate in the same rhythm. When our hearts are on the same wave-length with the heart of another person, and to a lesser extent, when our brains synchronize, mutual attraction takes place and we feel emotionally close to that person. When two or more people spend time together their organs synchronize, particularly the heart, which then fosters social bonding and cohesion.
An experiment which throws a new light on the issue of mobthink is the “Kidnapping-and-Cross-Fostering Study” devised by Gene Robinson, Director, Institute of Genomic Biology, University of Illinois. What Robinson did was to pluck about 250 of the youngest bees from two African hives (“killer bees”) and two European hives (a gentle bee strain), and paint marks on the bees’ backs to identify their origins. Then he and his team switched each set of newborns and placed them into the hive of the other subspecies. European honeybees raised among more aggressive African bees, not only became as belligerent as their new hive mates – they came to genetically resemble them. And vice versa. What this experiment beautifully proves is that in a very short time the social environment can change gene expression and behavior.
David Clayton, a neurobiologist and a colleague of Gene Robinson, at the University of Illinois, found that if a male zebra finch heard another male zebra finch sing nearby, a particular gene in the bird’s forebrain would be stimulated and it would do so differently depending on whether the other finch was strange and threatening, or familiar and safe. Songbirds demonstrated massive, widespread changes in gene expression in just 15 minutes.
We are learning that brain responses to social stimuli can be massive, involving hundreds, sometimes thousands of genes. Even as recently as 20 years ago no self- respecting geneticist or neuroscientist would have thought in their wildest dreams that social experiences lead to changes in brain gene expression and behavior. But they do.