Contagion heuristic
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In cognitive psychology, heuristic refers to a decision made contrary to a person's cognition, that is, a decision biased by emotion. Such decisions tend ultimately to be contrary to the person's best interests. Recent research has shown that such decisions involve high activity in the collection of lower brain organs known as the limbic system, while rational decisions involve more activity in the cerebral cortex.
The contagion heuristic is perhaps the most powerful of all the cognitive biases; it can produce some of the most extreme forms of irrational action (in an otherwise sane person). Extreme, but unfortunately real, examples generally occur when military units and mobs (comprised largely of people within society's ethical norms)commit rape, murder, and other atrocities. One could even say that the very existence of modern warfare depends upon the contagion heuristic; hypothetically, the majority of men at D-Day would refuse to step off a boat onto an unprotected beach with withering machine-gun and cannon fire, unless there were thousands of other men doing the same thing. One might also hypothesize that the contagion heuristic plays a part in mass suicides.
The foundation of the contagion heuristic is deindividuation, where an individual cedes control of his decision-making to a large group. Commonly, there are four dynamics postulated by which deindividuation produces the contagion heuristic: First, the 'school of fish' dynamic. A person feels less likely to be identified or punished if he is a member of a large group, whether or not it is factually correct. Second, the feeling of internal personal accountability diminishes or disappears when control has been relinquished. One experiment showed that children in a group were three times more likely to steal Halloween candy than single children. [note] Third, the probability and power of the heuristic are a function of group size. The larger the group, the more likely cognitive bias becomes, and the more extreme the degree of unusual behavior. Fourth, sensory overload will contribute to the phenomenon, which helps explain the extremely loud music at dances or the tendency for persons to join a standing ovation against their will after a concert.
It must be noted that unified group behavior is not always counter-congnitive. In the face-to-face battles of earlier times, it made perfect sense for individuals to stand fast or run away as a group. Actual schools of fish are no doubt a Darwinian adaptation. The application of the term "cognitive bias" applies only when a decision is made contrary to a person's cognition.
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