Reuters and AP, Associated Press, Issue Simultaneous Fact Checks: “Mass Formation Psychosis” or “Mass Psychosis” Does Not Exist As a Legitimate, Academically Recognized Theory

Two of these three above caused Reuters and AP to issue fact check articles that there is no such thing as "Mass Formation Psychosis"

More or less simultaneously, a day apart, Reuters and AP, the Associated Press, issued fact check articles announcing that “Mass Formation Psychosis” or “Mass Psychosis” is an “unfounded,” “discredited” theory; that the “concept has no academic credibility,” is “not officially recognized” “is not supported by evidence, and is similar to theories that have long been discredited” and that the term does not appear as a classification in medical reference dictionaries.  See: Fact Check-No evidence of pandemic ‘mass formation psychosis’, say experts speaking to Reuters, By Reuters Fact Check January 7, 2022, and (AP) FACT FOCUS: Unfounded theory used to dismiss COVID measures
By Angelo Fichera and Josh Kelety, January 8, 2022.

According to professor John Drury quoted by both articles the theory is a “notion” that “has been discredited by decades of research.” He says that “no respectable psychologist” now “agrees with these ideas.”

Reporting this delivery of the verdict of “psychology experts,” Reuters and AP both say that they talked with “numerous psychologists” and “multiple experts.”

Both Reuters and AP quote some of those experts, between them a total of six.  Both Reuters and AP quote:

    •    John Drury, Professor of Social Psychology and Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange at the University of Sussex
    •    Jay Van Bavel, Associate Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University, who says “I’ve been studying group identity and collective behavior for nearly two decades
    •    Steven Reicher, Professor of Social Psychology at the University of St Andrews, who has studied crowd psychology for more than 40 years. (and important update 2/14/'22)

In addition, Reuters quotes:

    •    Chris Cocking, Principal Lecturer at the School of Humanities and Applied Social Sciences at the University of Brighton

And AP additionally quotes two other experts:

    •    Steven Jay Lynn, a psychology professor at Binghamton University in New York
    •    Richard McNally, a professor of clinical psychology at Harvard University- He is not quoted as saying the theory does not exist, only as offering the opinion that the way that public is responding to Covid is a rational response “to the arguments and evidence adduced by the relevant scientific experts.”

As one can tell from the above, there are theories of “crowd psychology,” “group identity and collective behavior” that these experts, who were tapped to offer these opinions, believe exist.  But as Professor Drury explains, he distinguishes and dismisses concepts, such as “mob mentality” and “group mind,” where “when people form part of a psychological crowd they lose their identities and their self-control” and where “they become suggestible, and primitive instinctive impulses predominate.”

The fact checks were, of course, picked up and republished elsewhere.   ABC affiliate- FACT FOCUS: Unfounded theory used to dismiss COVID measures, NBC affiliate-  Fact Check: Doctor uses unfounded theory to dismiss COVID measures on Rogan podcast, by Angelo Fichera and Josh Kelety Associated Press, Tuesday, January 11th 2022, CBS affiliate-  FACT FOCUS: Unfounded theory used to dismiss COVID measures, Jan 8, 2022, Yahoo News- ‘No academic credibility’: Experts debunk mass psychosis Covid theory floated by doctor on Joe Rogan podcast, Gino Spocchia, January 9, 2022.

All the other publications don’t matter so much since Google’s algorithms ensure that these fact check articles, and/or the points they make, Google high.

The fact check articles both identify themselves as being a quick response to Dr. Robert Malone speaking about the theory on the Joe Rogan Show about a week before:

AP:

The term gained attention after it was floated by Dr. Robert Malone on “The Joe Rogan Experience” Dec. 31 podcast. Malone is a scientist who once researched mRNA technology but is now a vocal skeptic of the COVID-19 vaccines that use it.

Reuters:

Dr Robert Malone . .  told The Joe Rogan Experience that “mass formation psychosis” is a phenomenon that occurred in 1920s and 30s Germany when a highly educated population “went barking mad”.

“And that is what’s happened here,” he said, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic (here).

According to Malone, the condition occurs when a society “becomes decoupled from each other and has a free-floating anxiety in a sense that things don’t make sense… And then their attention gets focused by a leader or series of events on one small point, just like hypnosis.”

. . . . . They will follow that person – it doesn’t matter whether they lie to them or whatever, the data are irrelevant.”

Aside from the fact checks saying that the theory does not exist, Big Tech media responded to Malone’s speaking about this notion by immediately taking down the Joe Rogan YouTube clip of Malone talking to Rogan about this idea.  See:  NY Post- YouTube scraps Joe Rogan podcast episode over Nazi Germany comparison By Ben Cost, January 4, 2022   and NY Daily News-  Joe Rogan video taken down by YouTube for anti-vax content, By Brian Niemietz, January 03, 2022.

The same week Twitter cancelled Dr. Malone’s account banning him from Twitter’s platform, the reasons for which are analyzed here.  Likewise, LinkedIn cancelled Dr. Malone’s LinkedIn account.

Meanwhile, somebody mustered a group that includes professors, some health professionals, some scientists, some doctors, etc. to sign a letter demanding that the top-rated Joe Rogan Show be cancelled from Spotify because Joe Rogan interviewed vaccine expert Dr. Malone about Covid.

The unfounded “Mass Formation Psychosis” theory is more or less a variation, with the overlay of certain extra manifestations that take it in a more extreme direction, of what has been described as “Groupthink.”  “Groupthink” hales back to a seminal article written by William H. (Holly) Whyte published in Fortune magazine in 1952.  The “Groupthink” theory was built upon and further developed, by Irving Janis, a research psychologist from Yale University in ensuing years.  Features of the Groupthink theory involve a dysfunctional deterioration of critical, independent, and quality thinking and decision making as people within an “ingroup” are pressured to think similar things.  There is an intolerance of other ideas and the “ingroup” is likely to get an inflated sense of the correctness of their own decisions that goes along with “illusions of invulnerability.”  This is likely to go along with denigration of anyone in an “outgroup” and that can often cause members of the “outgroup” to be treated in a dehumanized way.  The theory includes the observation that “groupthink” often arises or is more likely in situations where there is a high level of stress or anxiety from external threats.

As for the “Mass Formation Psychosis” theory itself, one good expression of what it is Reuters and AP were able to fact check as being unfounded is this cartoon illustrated After Skool/Academy of Ideas presentation: Mass Psychosis - How an Entire Population Becomes Mentally Ill, August 3, 2021.  Cartooning ideas can be extremely influential: it could easily be argued that Whyte’s Fortune Groupthink article would never have been as influential without the accompanying illustrations by Robert Osborn.  This After Skool/Academy of Ideas presentation is incredibly similar in approach to the recent “Your Debt Is Someone Else’s Asset,” a cancel debt with a jubilee advocacy video up at the Intercept (December 9 2021) by Kim Boekbinder, Jim Batt, illustrations by Molly Crabapple, except that the illustrator is somebody different from Molly Crabapple.

If you want something more talky and academic, less streamlined, to review this (talking, for instance, about breaking down human bonds), there is an interview available here with Professor Matthias Desmet, Professor of Clinical Psychology Ghent University, Belgium, a psychoanalyst and who also has a degree in statistics: Why Do So Many Still Buy into the Narrative?  Professor Matthias Desmet, September 21st, 2021.

Human brains and human thinking are strange.  For instance, there is the famous story of Tolstoy’s challenge (originally from his older brother?) to stand facing a corner and not think of a white bear.  It’s almost impossible.