Swarm Theory & Group Psychology

Scientists are studying and trying to develop an ability to emulate the actions of animal swarms. The birds and the bees can do it; why cannot humans emulate their behavior to our advantage?

The collective behavior of animal swarms displays advantageous collective actions without the guidance of organized leadership. Ants, as individuals, are not clever—as a collective ants, bees, birds, caribou, etc. are amazingly clever—there seems to exist something one might label as swarm intelligence—simple creatures following simple rules equal swarm intelligence.

Computer engineers attempt to emulate swarm intelligence to solve complex human problems.

Compare animal swarm intelligence with group psychology. What is the nature of the ‘group mind’, i.e. the mental changes such individuals undergo as a result of becoming a group?

A bond develops much like cells which constitute a living body—group mind is more of an unconscious than a conscious force—there are motives for action that elude conscious attention—distinctiveness and individuality become group behavior based upon unconscious motives—there develops a sentiment of invincible power, anonymous and irresponsible attitudes--repressions of unconscious forces under normal situations are ignored—conscience which results from social anxiety disappear.

Contagion sets in—hypnotic order becomes prevalent—individuals sacrifice personal interest for the group interest.

Suggestibility, of which contagion is a symptom, leads to the lose of conscious personality—the individual follows suggestions for actions totally contradictory to person conscience—hypnotic like fascination sets in—will and discernment vanishes—direction is taken from the leader in an hypnotic like manner—the conscious personality disappears.

“Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organized group, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization.” Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—a creature acting by instinct. “He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings.”

There is a lowering of intellectual ability “pointing to its similarity with the mental life of primitive people and of children…A group is credulous and easily influenced”—the improbable seldom exists—they think in images—feelings are very simple and exaggerated—the group knows neither doubt nor uncertainty—extremes are prevalent, antipathy becomes hate and suspicion becomes certainty.

Force is king—force is respected and obeyed without question—kindness is weakness—tradition is triumphant—words have a magical power—supernatural powers are easily accepted—groups never thirst for truth, they demand illusions—the unreal receives precedence over the real—the group is an obedient herd—prestige is a source for domination, however it “is also dependent upon success, and is lost in the event of failure”.

Perhaps human groups cannot develop in a similar manner as does swarm intelligence but the existence of such successful ways of handling complex problems indicates that some critical thinking regarding human group behavior is certainly in order.

Questions for discussion:

Do you think it is possible for humans to significantly improve performance within a group?

Do you think that we can find a way to make group behavior to be smarter?

Sources for ideas and quotes in this OP come from “Swarm Theory”--an article in the July 2007 edition of “National Geographic” and from “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” by Freud.

I was researching this interesting post and noticed that the direct quotes are not from Freud, but from Gustave Le Bon (The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind).
Credit where credit is due.

I'm so sorry! I couldn't help but think of the Borg when I read this..."Strength is irrelevant. Resistance is futile. We wish to improve ourselves. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours." -- The Borg

"Freedom is irrelevant. Resistance is futile." -- Borg Collective

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

__________________


"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "WOO HOO, What a Ride!"

Nice subject. I'll have a wee go.

Force is.. ummm, force. In social relations, things like kindness and compliance can be as great a force as any threat.

Kindness is not to be confused with weakness or with grovelling in any form. Kindness is very often the tool of the dominant, not the resort of the subordinate.

Tradition is triumphant when tradition works, and tradition works when the premises for the tradition remain unchanged. Otherwise, change is triumphant.

Well, communication has a magical power. We just happen to notice words as a mean of communication more than other forms of communication. Probably because words reach out far further both in time and distance.

Nah, groups demand protection. That's why groups form in the first place. And for that they demand hierarchy and leadership. How leadership is attained is where you should look for illusions.

Illusion is a byproduct, not a demand. Although the group itself will often tell you it is

If it serves the primary objectives of the group, yes, it certainly seems to be able to work as a social glue.

Social interaction has the very purpose of maintaining a functional social structure. For that simple reason, behavorial concepts like tolerance, compliance and subservience are part of standard social interaction. If everyone in a group sought disobedience, there would no longer be a group.

Sure.

Define 'performance'

Without a clarification of that definition, I'd say it's impossible for humans to significantly improve 'performance' without a group.

Isn't it already smart enough?

What do you want group behavior to be able to do that isn't already covered well enough? Of course, we don't really recognize most group behavior in the first place (it makes us feel small and painfully inferior) and in order to improve on something we kinda have to recognize what it is we must improve. So it's pretty much futile to ask such a question.

I'd like to split your issue in two separate issues, viz. swarm theory as such and next the application to human behaviour.

Swarm theory appears to be an extension of things like chaos theory, neural networking, emergent behaviour and fractal geometry, where typically complex, seemingly random behaviour is found to be defined by simple -but very importantly- non-linear equations.

Great results have been achieved in that field finally allowing the representation of the quirks of real nature in contrast with the idealized, reductionist models that were linear. The idea of non-hierarchic self-organization, freely emerging from 'dumb' components, has been found to be the cornerstone of natural organization, from turbulence in a water pipe to the driving force of evolution.

Applying this to trivial issues such as route logistics or robots is fine. The components here are either indeed 'dumb' or forced to act as such. But applying it to human group dynamics in general is more than one bridge too far. The complexity of a single human is not on the level of the single logistic node or the robot, but on the level of the entire system.

The right analogy is not between an ant colony and human society, but between an ant colony and a single individual. It makes much more sense to view an ant colony as the organism instead of the individual ant. Individual ants have no complexity, they have a single function, comparable to the dumb individuality of e.g. liver cells or neurons.

The extrapolation towards human society and/or group psychology suffers from the same delusions as e.g. most of economics. Humans are far too complex to be considered as reductionist, mechanistic bots such as they are in the models used in both. What you would need to model human behaviour is not swarm theory, but meta-swarm theory, i.e. a theory that describes how swarms of swarms behave.

A much better source for information on group dynamics is the Santa Fe institute (Santa Fe Institute) which was established by pioneers in the field of complexity such as Murray Gell-Mann, George Cowan and Brian Arthur. Much of the published papers are freely available (SFI | Research | Publications | Working Papers)

Groups tend to destroy humans greatest advantage: Individual Freedom to search own solutions.
And i ve no doubt, that intelligence and reason are a product of this individuality. A group of the same consciousness is not a flexible and productive, as Individuals who only share information and experience through certain cultural orders like law or the price system.

Sure, such cultural systems could be improved, but we shouldn`t try to form collectivist communities.

__________________
Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else

Claude Frédéric Bastiat

This swarm theory applied to group psychology seems like a redefinition of "herd mentality" or "mob mentality".

I believe that an individual has the potential to lose their individual values and mores when caught up in a group, mob, herd, swarm (it's hard to keep straight the current term). Riots, concerts, sports events are great examples.

The key is for the individual to recognize when the group has reached this point where laws, civility, values are irrelevant and step away. It sort of reminds me of a shark feeding frenzy.

Anyway, interesting read. Thanks for posting it.

Another great read about micro societies and how they can get out of control (group mentality) is The Beach, by Alex Garland, The Beach (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

__________________
I am an American. That's the way most of us put it, just matter of factly. They are plain words, those four: you could write them on your thumbnail, or sweep them clear across this bright autumn sky. But remember too, that they are more than just words. They are a way of life. So whenever you speak them; speak them firmly, speak them proudly, speak them gratefully. I am an American. ...a tradition

The quotes are from the book "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego" by Freud

SMadsen

The animals in the swarm follow simple instinctual algorithms. There exists no management in the swarm and it is this fact that is the reason swarms are so effective.

It appears that group behavior is dominated by suggestibility and transference. Transference is what makes hypnotism possible.

Wo/man worships and fears power; we enthusiastically give our loyalty to our leader. Sapiens are at heart slavish. Therein lay the rub, as Shakespeare might say.

Freud was the first to focus upon the phenomenon of a patient’s inclination to transfer the feelings s/he had toward her parents as a child to the physician. The patient distorts the perception of the physician; s/he enlarges the figure up far out of reason and becomes dependent upon him. In this transference of feeling, which the patient had for his parents, to the physician the grown person displays all the characteristics of the child at heart, a child who distorts reality in order to relieve his helplessness and fears.

Freud saw these transference phenomena as the form of human suggestibility that makes the control over another, as displayed by hypnosis, as being possible. Hypnosis seems mysterious and mystifying to us only because we hide our slavish need for authority from our self. We live the big lie, which lay within this need to submit our self slavishly to another, because we want to think of our self as self-determined and independent in judgment and choice.

The predisposition to hypnosis is identical to that which gives rise to transference and it is characteristic of all sapiens. We could not function as adults if we retained this submissive attitude to our parents, however, this attitude of submissiveness, as noted by Ferenczi, is “The need to be subject to someone remains; only the part of the father is transferred to teachers, superiors, impressive personalities; the submissive loyalty to rulers that is so widespread is also a transference of this sort.”

Freud saw immediately that when caught up in groups wo/man became dependent children once again. They abandoned their individual egos for that of the leader; they identified with their leader and proceeded to function with him as their ideal. Freud identified man, not as a herd animal but as a horde (teeming crowd) animal that is led by a chief. Wo/man has an insatiable need for authority.

People have an insatiable need to be hypnotized by authority; they seek a magical protection as when they were infants protected by their mother. This is the force that acts to hold groups together, intertwined within a mutually constructed but often mindless interdependence. This mindless group think also builds a feeling of potency. The members feel a sense of unity within the grasp of their leadership.

‘Why are groups so blind and stupid?’ Freud asked; and he replied that mankind lived by self delusion. They “constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real.” The real world is too frightening to behold; delusion changes this by making sapiens seem important. This explains the terrible sadism we see in group activity.

Your suggestion of comparing various ant colonies with the human group is an interesting suggestion except it seems to me that in nature there is no such thing. Perhaps I am wrong?

It is the simplicity of the individual ant’s behavior that makes the swarm so effective. I can see why swarm theory does not work for humans but the fact that there are other ways might lead us to changing, if possible, our inclination to suggestibility and transference which causes us to behave so deplorable in groups.

Groups as defined in this post about group psychology are ideologies and not groups pf professionals for example.

Absolutely. However, I disagree with the idea that humans don't "swarm". Swarms, herds, or schools of humans are typically referred to as "mobs", "gangs", "teams" or simply "groups". I think we as humans create swarms, heards, or mobs on a number of levels, and because we are complex creatures, for a number of reasons. We group together and bounce ideas off of each other down at the family level and at work all the way to the highest levels of government for the benefit of the group.

I also disagree that, "The collective behavior of animal swarms displays advantageous collective actions without the guidance of organized leadership." These animals do have organized leadership. There is an orgainzed hierarchy. In biology, there are Alpha, Beta, and Omega males and females and these groups make up the leadership of the group. Proof of Alpha female in the H. sapiens species would be to group a bunch of females together and notice how their monthly cycles shift to follow that of the Alpha female.

The quote "No man is an island, entire of itself" by John Donne comes to mind.

Smarter compared to what? Individual? Other groups?

I think group intelligence can be higher than individual intelligence. Higher intelligence among groups can be seen in 'Think Tanks'. These are popular in a variety of areas that involve research and they benefit the group and in some cases they benefit society. This is why our schools have 'group projects' and places of employment have 'teams'. The end result is often times much different than what any one individual could have come up with.

I also think it can be diminished in some respects. What comes to mind is my 10 year old son when he's with his friends - "You did what?!?! "

Can one group be smarter than another group? We would have to compare similar groups and compare productivity, effectivness, etc...and that's really more than I feel like getting into at the moment

__________________
New to the forum? Check out our Newbie's Guide!
Interested in supporting USPO? Click here!

I'm not saying they're not in there, but that the words are originally in Le Bon's work, which was published in 1896, while that of Freud in 1921. It wasn't necessarily common back then to fully credit one's sources. You probably know that the further one goes back, the less the idea of intellectual property was given importance. It's not plagiarism, it was merely the way of the era.

Not in swarms. Swarms can be perfectly modeled through very simple rules who are identical for each member of the swarm. There is no necessity for giving one or some members of the swarm other rules. Each component of the swarm only reacts to its immediate neighbours. This phenomenon is called emergence. You can play with the maths if you like : ACO: Public Software

The notions of Alpha males and such are only found in more complex organisms such as horses, apes, monkeys and humans, which demonstrate consciousness of individuality. In these cases, the models that show swarm behaviour would not work. The behaviour of social insects is entirely collectivist and shows no hierarchy.

Well, if you accept that the level of correspondence lies a level higher than the individual ant, and thus lies with the colony, then the occurence in nature would precisely be the group behaviour of humans. Swarms of swarms would then be swarms (groups) of people (swarms of cells). For it is in fact not at all self-evident how the billions of cells that make up a human manage to cooperate so that a single coherent organism can be identified at the meta-level (the human individual).

I'm not as pessimistic about human group behaviour as you appear to be. There are of course excesses which are usually described as 'mob behaviour' but the fundamental cooperation that makes up a society is also group behaviour. Human societies fundamentally function whatever the rules are.

There thus appears to be a similarity in nature, but to transcend the dissimilarity in complexity, I'm afraid we'll have to wait at least decades, if not centuries before working and applicable models are found for that. And even if/when they are found, there is still the problem of applying them. Swarm behaviour is emergent collective behaviour which is pretty much independent of individual behaviour, as it is the case in a flock of birds where the flock is not disrupted if you shoot down a single bird. So, if you had such a model, what would you do with it ?

So, the idea of Queen bee and/or ant along with worker bees and ants wouldn't demonstrate the consciousness of individuality? I think once individuals within the group know and fulfill certain roles they demonstrate their consciousness of individuality. There has to be a method to the madness within a swarm.

And I may be way out of my element here with theories and psychology, but it could only benefit me to learn something new

__________________
New to the forum? Check out our Newbie's Guide!
Interested in supporting USPO? Click here!