The best way to avoid being influenced by 'mob mentality' is to concentrate on one's own moral standards, a new research states.
According to the researchers, people are more likely to do certain things that might make them "lose touch" with their own morals and beliefs.
"Although humans exhibit strong preferences for equity and moral prohibitions against harm in many contexts, people's priorities change when there is an 'us' and a 'them'," said Rebecca Saxe, associate professor of cognitive neuroscience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a press release.
For the study, the researchers measured brain activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that is involved with thinking about oneself. The team explained that when someone is reflecting on themselves, this part of the brain lights up in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans.
The study results showed that this particular activity in some reduced when they participated in a competition as part of a group as compared with when they competed as individuals. The team said those with reduced brain activity were more likely to harm their competitors.
"This is a nice way of using neuroimaging to try to get insight into something that behaviorally has been really hard to explore," said David Rand, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University, who was not involved in the research. "It's been hard to get a direct handle on the extent to which people within a group are tapping into their own understanding of things versus the group's understanding."
"Groups also promote anonymity, diminish personal responsibility and encourage reframing harmful actions as 'necessary for the greater good'," Mina Cikara, assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, noted.
The study was published in the journal NeuroImage.
