Infection or ” herd” mentality is one of the methods of group influence on the psyche.
This method of integrating group activities occurs when there is a large crowd of people.
One of its features is spontaneity – “everyone ran and I ran”.
During psychic contagion, an emotional state is transmitted from one person to another on an unconscious level.
Examples:
I liked a comment where there were a lot of likes, but I didn’t read the text until the end.
Wearing a T-shirt with the letter “Z” on it – everyone on the Internet wears them, although you don’t fully understand what they mean.
Bots use the “infection” mechanism.
Bots leave a lot of emotional comments under social media posts that cause psychological impact on a person in the process of interaction, which conveys certain moods, encourages a change of opinion/mood through the emotional sphere rather than through consciousness and intelligence.
As a result, criticality to events and information disappears.
