I don’t think anyone who has had access to the news over the last few days could be unaware of the riots that have been spreading across the country in our major cities. What has caused the most shock for some people is how young some of the rioters are, and how many people seem to be getting involved. With the impact of social media and access to video clips as situations are happening, it is easy to feel that this has become an unruly mob, with no individual presence but rather a group consensus that deems acts of violence and looting to be considered o.k.
While watching the news I can’t help but consider the experiments conducted by psychologists over the last hundred years, which show how strong the influence of a group can be, especially if led by people who we see as authority figures. The Stanford Prison Experiment¹ showed how quickly people can become surprisingly sadistic when influenced by their surroundings and peers. This famous experiment found that given the right circumstances and the right influence of a strong character within a group, a group mentality can appear where people will do things that individually they may deem inappropriate and (within the context of that experiment) violent and cruel. In a previous role when working with young people delivering anger management programmes I became very aware of the influence of group mentality. A particular group who were supposed to be going through the programme were all young men between the age of 16 and 25. When in the room together it didn’t take more than half an hour for a cover of macho bravado to become the way they communicated, with very little acceptance or willingness to look at their issues with managing anger and aggression. Some of the group even began to state that it was fine to hurt someone when they were angry, as it showed who was in control. The entire group began to agree with this view point. Together as a group they had quickly begun to walk down a road that justified their unhelpful and sometimes violent behaviour towards others. What was fascinating to me was that individually each of these young men had approached me to ask for help with their anger, and individually had recognised that their behaviour was out of control, inappropriate and harmful. One man was particularly concerned that he felt he couldn’t control his behaviour, and the impact this could have on his girlfriend who was pregnant. Outside of the group their whole demeanour physically and emotionally was different, but the power of the group meant they felt they could not be honest, or face the reality of their situation.
It is with this awareness of the impact of the group, that we choose within mediation to see each person individually, even it is appears that a group share as a similar view or behaviour. Even within families, seeing partners and family members together can cause this group mentality to emerge, where people will agree with what is considered to be the group norm, even if they individually feel and think something quite different. The danger of seeing people together, and assuming they hold shared beliefs and views, is that it promotes the idea of group behaviours, and can be easier for people to validate their behaviour based on the principle that everyone has done it, and if enough people are behaving in a certain way maybe that behaviour is o.k. It can also be easier for people to hold the view that the person on the other side of the conflict must be wrong, because they don’t hold the same view as the group. In mediation we don’t focus on right or wrong, but we do encourage people to become aware of the impact of their own behaviour on others, so it is important to be able to challenge people about their behaviour, and this is easier for people to cope with when they are not in a group.
It could be easy to believe that young people are more influenced by this group mentality than others, especially when we see large groups of young people on the streets. However when you consider how conflict occurs in the workplace, communities and within families, these experiences would suggest that group mentality is not age specific, rather the influencing factors are surroundings and how we view our peers (whether we deem them with respect or some level of authority). It is important to establish the viewpoint of the individual when dealing with a conflict, to avoid the risk of assumptions about their perspective within the group. After all if we do not do this as a mediator, we too could be seen to be allowing the influence of a group to affect our interventions, causing us to lose our impartiality and credibility.
As a final thought, as Manchester starts to clear up after the destruction caused by the riots, many young people have turned out to help with the clean up. Perhaps this suggests that group mentality does not always have to be a negative influence, but can lead people towards positive behaviour as well.
To see more about this experiment you can visit: http://www.prisonexp.org/
