Herd Mentality
Also: Bandwagon, Peer Pressure, Argumentum Ad Populum
Class: Evade > Irrelevant
Implying others should agree with something because many people believe it.
Why do you dress like that? Everyone thinks it’s weird.
I like to stand out from the herd.
Everyone else thinks white lies are okay.
That doesn’t really justify it.
75% of people surveyed said they oppose this bill. It’s a bad law!
Popularity is influenced by many things, including all the misleading political ads.
Foolacy vs. Fallacy
This is the Bandwagon fallacy (argumentum ad populum).
Some peer pressure is Herd Mentality. It’s not usually stated as flawed logic, but it is implied (you should do it
because others do).
Also this is common in bad journalism as “people say...” to imply a large herd of popular opinion, whether one exists or not.
While most adults have heard of “bandwagon”, they don’t know why it’s called that, and it has no intuitive meaning to young people. (FYI, a bandwagon was a type of horse-drawn wagon used for bands. In 1848, when a popular clown invited a presidential candidate to join him on his circus bandwagon, “jumping on the bandwagon” became an idiom for showing support. All this is now lost to history.) “Herd Mentality” is a common expression used these days, with an appropriate negative connotation to point out the fallacy.