             |
Do you consider yourself a follower or a leader? Have you recently been a victim of teasing? I polled forty-five people (eleven male adults, nine female adults, eleven male kids, and fourteen female kids) on the subject of mob psychology to find the answers to these and other questions. I wanted to know what people thought about crowds and what kind of role they played when they were in one. The people who participated were classmates and teachers at Albany Middle School and adults and boys in my Boy Scout troop during one of our meetings. Most of my polling was done on March 1st and 2nd. At first I wasn't sure what groups I wanted to compare, so I left it open to compare between male and female and adults and kids. I figured that I would compare the groups with the biggest difference in answers, and it turned out to be mostly adults and kids. I expected, for example, that adults would be victims of bullying, teasing, hazing, etc. less than they said they were. But I guess adults still get a lot of criticism, they just have greater power over showing their emotions. One of the biggest differences in answers was the question about being a follower or leader. I would have thought adults would think of themselves as followers instead of leaders because they have had more life experience with conforming and being told what to do. One of the reasons adults said they were more leaders than followers is that I mostly polled teachers and scout leaders, which are both leadership positions. A very interesting question was the one about who was more likely to join crowds and mobs. I thought that comparing males and females would be more relevant to this question. Two-thirds of males agreed that they are more likely to join a crowd than women, while just about half of females agreed. This fascinates me because I've heard conflicting opinions about who is more likely to join crowds. One opinion is that females are more likely because they are more social and get along better. But some people think that joining a crowd is anti-social. Males tend to do things on instinct, instead of thinking it through, thus making them more likely to join crowds. The question about marches and demonstrations turned out about the way I thought it would. The adults had been to a lot more demonstrations, probably because they've been around a lot longer and have seen a lot of controversy. I wish I had changed the possible answers so that there was an option for zero demonstrations and an option for 1-5. I think a lot of the people I polled had been to one or two, but not more than 5. I also wish I hadn't included 'political' in the question because I don't think it really matters what kind of demonstration it is. Both kids and adults replied the same about whether going along with a crowd was good or bad. About 85 percent of both groups said that going along with a crowd is sometimes good. I thought that the results would be a little more varied. Not one person chose Never Good or Always Good. Kids didn't know the famous world leader question as well as the adults, which wasn't surprising. The choices were leaders from a mostly different era than the ones the kids have grown up in. I think the kids guessed on this question, because their answers were evened out among three choices. The adults had better answers, choosing the two most oppressive leaders. The correct answer was Mussolini, but it's quite possible that all of the leaders knew something about mob psychology. The question about brand loyalty was interesting because it tested the more unconscious side of mob psychology. I wanted to see if people conformed with what society tells them to wear and eat. I got similar responses from both adults and kids. About two-thirds of both groups said they didn't have brand loyalty, but I find that kind of hard to believe. I bet people don't realize that they buy the same things over and over again. If I could redo the poll, I might have given a better example of brand loyalty than Hershey's chocolate. On Friday, February 27th, I came in to class with my poll ready to be checked, but I didn't remember that Mr. Pressnall had said that he wouldn't be coming that day. I had really wanted to poll people over the weekend, because I was going on a snow trip with a lot of Boy Scouts and their families and I thought I could get a lot of my polling done there. But I had to wait until Monday to get my poll approved, and I lost the opportunity to poll the 47 people on the snow trip. If I did another poll, I would ask a wider range of people from different backgrounds. I felt kind of constrained by the time restriction of doing this poll, and I only got to question a few different kinds of people. I also might ask a question about sports fans and why they get so enthusiastic. If I did this poll again, I would like to go to a few sports games and hand it out there, and then compare the answers of people who were at games with people who weren't. For the most part, I was pretty satisfied with the answers I got, and they matched most of my predictions.
The Questions I Asked
|
