…the recursive phenomenon whereby people do something they think they have to do because everyone else does it, and those people did it because they saw other people do it, and so on and so forth? I’m not talking about superstition or old wives’ tales.
For example, I don’t believe it’s required in my state to hang a white flag from your car if you leave it parked on the shoulder of a highway. Yet everyone does. And I think everyone does because they see everyone else do it and think it’s the law.
There’s a very slight difference in my mind. Conformism to me speaks about people wanting to be like everyone else. My distinction is that the word I’m looking for speaks about people who are compelled to do something, since everyone else is doing it, not out of fashion, but because they think it’s the law or whatnot.
Well I took Psychology in college and it sound’s like you are speaking of a phenomena that’s related to the “Innocent bystander effect”, on other words, people are usually inclined to react in a different manner when they are in a crowd than when they are not. People in a crowd tend to do “nothing” because they depend on someone else to do it. Whereas, someone acting alone, might become involved. Then there are "Collectivist "societires, that act for the good of the whole, such as in Asian countries. Opposed to “Individualistic” societies much like ours, where we act for our own personal needs in general. I’m not quite sure this is what you were looking for, but this is what came to my mind when I read your post.
Not really a convention, as I understand it. What I think Agent Foxtrot is talking about is like this - I’m Catholic. As most people know, at Mass we do the Catholic Aerobics - stand, sit, stand, kneel, stand, sit, etc. Occasionally, someone will stand out of order, in the wrong place. Other people will follow. Then you begin to think, “Are we supposed to stand here? I don’t think so. But look, more people are doing it. We must stand now. I guess I’ll stand, too, because I must be wrong.” And one by one, until the whole congregation is doing it, everyone gets up in the wrong time. Very strange. Herd mentality, I guess.
In fact, even though I’ve never, to my knowledge, read the term “Herd mentality” before, I looked it up. The wikipedia definition:Herd mentality, or mob mentality, describes how people are influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors, follow trends, and/or purchase items. Examples of the herd mentality include stock market trends, superstition, home décor, etc. Social psychologists study the related topics of group intelligence, crowd wisdom, and decentralized decision making.
meme (noun); an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation. (adjective = memetic)
“The white flag on a parked car meme seems to be spreading across the state”
The internet has co-opted the word to describe cat photos and whatnot, but I think what the OP is describing fits Dawkins’ original definition.
Conformity or conformism is what psychologists call it - there are some quite famous experiments on the subject, where (for example) a few stooges in an audience are primed to do something specific (stand up suddenly) at a specific time or on a specific trigger word - and when they do, a ripple of conformity spreads across the whole group.
