Herd Instinct
Thursday, February 18, 2010
, 3:34 AM
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My friend once said:" The herd instinct in Singapore is very strong, monkey see monkey do" Firstly, Herd Instinct is defined as a group of individuals working together without a planned direction, however, each individual is only acting out of his own interests and the entire process is not planned beforehand. For example, when people buy stocks from the stock market, they do it out of their own interests, it is not planned beforehand and is done purely out of his own interests. Next, I would like to emphasize on where this is often seen in Singapore, in Singapore, the herd instinct is indeed very strong. When we see a huge crowd gathering somewhere, we often rush off and try to see what they are doing there and try to get the best deals we can. For example, this is usually seen in heartland hawker centers, when someone passes by you when you are eating, he usually 'checks out' your food too, also, when we see a huge crowd at a hawker stall, we immediately rush to queue up. This is due to a mentality of:"If everyone is buying from that stall, the food there must be good". Although there are advantages of the Herd Instinct, I would also like to point out some prominent disadvantages. For example, due to the Herd Instinct, people become less likely to try and strike out on their own and tend to just go with the flow. This may prove dangerous in a country such as Singapore as people are our best resources, if everyone just follows another, everyone would be the same and nobody will be able to make a breakthrough in anything. Therefore, one big difference between Singapore and other countries such as America is that Singapore has a very strong Herd Instinct, thus everybody just wants to blend in and is afraid of having different thoughts or even different dressing as they will stick out and be stared at. Therefore, although there there are some advantages of the Herd Instinct, it should be moderated before it becomes a culture in Singapore, if not, we might never see a major breakthrough in Science invented/founded by a Singaporean scientist.
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