February 22, 2008

People are like sheep

Some fascinating research has been done by the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds; they have been looking into how crowds or groups of people are manipulated. Do they work as team of individuals?

Considering that for a long time we have always been considered different to the rest of the animals on the planet it will probably come as a surprise that the research found that in a big mass of people that are seemingly heading off on a course with no direction, they are in fact being direction by just five per cent of the mass, the other ninety five per cent just follow.

This sort of behaviour can be seen in the animal kingdom, especially with the herd animals like sheep and cattle, but to think of us highly sophisticated humans being lead by such a small percentage of people just goes to prove that we may not be that far advanced after all.

Source [ZME Science]