Why do humans tend to behave in herds? It's a fundamental question that only recently have researchers been able to better understand. On the one hand, it doesn't take an advanced degree in some neurological science to see the basis behind it; survival for our ancestors often meant getting along with the crowd. There are times when that very trait applies still.
In 2009, neurologists in the UK conducted function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans on volunteers. The subjects were asked to rate the attractiveness of faces while being swayed by what they were told were the group's overall assessments. What scientists found on those scans was that when one person's rating conflicted with the group's view that person's brain gave off what was characterized as a “prediction error-like response.”
In other words, researchers believe that our brains rewire or retool themselves when our own opinions or beliefs fall outside those perceived of the group. It can help explain cults, Nazis, and maybe even Economists.
In the public opinion regarding the economy, what counts as the “norm” is harder to see and appreciate. We can't observe the economy directly, so our views on it are shaped by a variety of outside factors. Figuring what everyone else thinks is left often to what “experts” believe. This top-down method becomes, I think, quite easily the case where everyone tends to think what those at the top do, especially when it is repeated so often.
For my work, that's about the only way I can begin to explain the current economic boom. I don't mean that this particular psychological study unleashed a torrent of similar ones, so much that there has been a burst of medical equipment spending sufficient to bring the global economy right out of its decade-long funk.
What I do mean is much simpler. “They” keep calling this a boom, and it is often characterized in the mainstream as a big one – the biggest, some people are saying, since 2007 (which isn't really a sufficient standard to begin with, but that's for another day). Economists are constantly characterizing the economy as great, therefore the norm has become the economy is great, leaving our brains to believe it has to be because that's what everyone else thinks.
