Let’s Talk About Mass Formation

Since the fall of 2021, I became re-familiarized with the phenomenon of mass formation. Having graduated with a psychology degree from university, I tend to use a psychological lens when noting society’s response to current events. The response to Covid has effected many societies of the world so strongly, it’s intriguing to explore what psychological phenomena may be at play.

My curiosity piqued when I heard Dr. Mattias Desmet, a clinical psychologist from Ghent University, share about his knowledge of mass formation on a variety of podcasts. He described in more concise terms what I was sensing with regard to there being a predominant “blind allegiance” to a specific narrative around Covid.

Another way to refer to phenomenon could be crowd formation or groupthink. It involves looking at how a mass of people, the crowd, appear bound to one another due to their unprocessed generalized emotion connecting to provided script. The phenomena also speculates that there could be an element of hypnosis to it. Individuals hypnotized to a broader narrative or idea that being them into a collective, therefore appearing like participators in a shared collective mindset.

Discussions around the mass formation phenomenon can explore how much of the phenomenon is natural and how much of it is manipulated. But first, do you sense that the phenomenon is…