We know about herding or flocking among animals. Do humans exhibit herding behavior? Herding is more animal like. But decision research has opened us to what is called herding effect. Maybe an illustration might assist us to make our point. I had gone to present an academic paper at a national seminar in a Kolkata at the morning star seminary. As I arrived in part of a city where the seminary was located, I saw a huge crowd standing in front of restaurant. It was unusually long queue. The situation provoked my curiosity. So I asked one of them what was so special about that restaurant. I was told that it was one of the best mutton biryani place. Since I and my colleague were looking for a place to eat our lunch, we decided to stand in the line and experience that biryani. It was indeed a great experience. I had not ate better biryani till that date. I certainly exhibited what decision research calls behavior herding.
There is another kind of herding which decision research calls self-herding. This happens when we believe something as good (or bad) based on our previous experience. Essentially, we become the first person in line to eat at a restaurant, and in our next visit we become a person behind our own self in subsequent experience. I had similar experience. I use to study in Pune. I liked the chicken biryani of Blue Nile. The first time I went there, I came to like the taste of that biryani. From that time, I frequented that place and still do to taste the biryani for last 25 years. I feel good and happy to visit the place although the prices have changed over the years. I am trapped in what behavioral economists call a cycle of consumption. I still think it is a good decision. But decision research calls me to examine these and other ways I have been self-herding. Decision research says that I exhibit what it names as self-herding. I thus, become the second, third … person in the line behind me. It was my first experience that operates as anchor all the time. It makes me line-up behind my initial experience of the biryani at Blue Nile. I am now the part of the crowd that frequents Blue Nile.
Self-herding is not just about restaurants. It is about several things. It can be about kind of religious services we herd around or even political parties we vote. Perhaps, many Hindus are self-herding around BJP in India and several other liberal Hindus and the minorities are herding around the Congress. The anchor is set and we can see how people behave electorally. Of course self-herding can be dismantled. But it requires critical thinking. Right now we are controlled by what we may call the irrational impulse. We are indeed predictably irrational. With our first experience, the die is cast and the anchor is set. There are many decisions that we make where anchoring has its role. Does that mean our life that we so carefully craft is vulnerable to be manipulated by the big brother who knows to trigger the anchoring experience and we will then simply mindlessly self-herd? It seems to be true. The big data analytics might hack us and we might choose decisions that are doctored for us to make. We can be trapped into a herding effect.
Descartes said , ‘Cogito ergo sum!’ I think therefore I am. But being impelled by the irrational impulse as demonstrated by decision research, we may begin to question about us being fundamentally rational. Decision research seems to indicate that we are nothing more than the sum of first, naïve , random experiences. Does that mean David Hume is right that we are nothing but a buddle of emotions? But we can become aware of the power of the irrational impulse. This way we can make more rationally informed choices. This means we need to be also critically aware of the first decisions that we make. These decisions can bind us to long chain of decisions. Thus, we will trap ourselves happily into self-herding. Knowing the power of the first decision, we have to stay critically aware and try to restrain ourself of setting on the anchor that will take us to a slippery slope of self-herding ( about, food, clothing, political and religious leanings etc).
We need to adopt critical thinking. Socrates said: Unexamined life is not worth living. It is, therefore, an ethical imperative to revisit the imprints or anchors in our life. We have to examine where we are self-herding. Perhaps, it has become a habit for us. examining where we self-herd can open us to redraw new ways of responding to the anchors that chain us to repeated behavior. It may open us to new decisions, we days and new life. All this is not easy. We have our memories of repeated indulging to deal with. This is why critical examination of our repeated indulgings might emancipate us from the bad chain of self-herding that is hurting us.
