is this the right forum for this?? anyway, I was reading about the McMartin child molestation case, that just sent me into an OCD attack that has lasted for weeks now, anyway, let's have a discussion about hysteria.

I mean what's the psychology behind?? what can make people completely throw common sense out the window and do the most atrocious things??

Mass hysteria
Main article: Mass hysteria
The term also occurs in the phrase mass hysteria to describe mass public near-panic reactions. It is commonly applied to the waves of popular medical problems that "everyone gets" in response to news articles.

A similar usage refers to any sort of "public wave" phenomenon, and has been used to describe the periodic widespread reappearance and public interest in UFO reports, crop circles, and similar examples. Also, when information, real or fake, becomes misinterpreted but believed, e.g. penis panic.

Hysteria is often associated with movements like the Salem Witch Trials, McCarthyism, the First Red Scare, the Second Red Scare, Terrorism, and Satanic ritual abuse, where it is better understood through the related sociological term of moral panic.

Moral panic
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A moral panic is a reaction by a group of people based on the false or exaggerated perception that some cultural behavior or group, frequently a minority group or a subculture, is dangerously deviant and poses a menace to society. It has also been more broadly defined as an "episode, condition, person or group of persons" that has in recent times been "defined as a threat to societal values and interests." [1] They are byproducts of controversies that produce arguments and social tension, or aren't easily discussed as some of these moral panics are taboo to many people.

These panics are generally fueled by media coverage of social issues, although semi-spontaneous moral panics do occur. Mass hysteria can be an element in these movements, but moral panic is different from mass hysteria in that a moral panic is specifically framed in terms of morality and is usually expressed as outrage rather than unadulterated fear. Moral panics (as defined by Stanley Cohen) revolve around a perceived threat to a value or norm held by a society normally stimulated by glorification within the mass media or 'folk legend' within societies. Panics have a number of outcomes, the most poignant being the certification to the players within the panic that what they are doing appears to warrant observation by mass media and therefore may push them further into the activities that lead to the original feeling of moral panic.

The influences and behaviors of young people are common themes in many moral panics.

Contents [hide]
1 Origins
2 Examples
3 See also
4 References
5 External links



[edit] Origins
The term was coined by Stanley Cohen in 1972 to describe media coverage of Mods and Rockers in the United Kingdom in the 1960s. A factor in moral panic is the deviancy amplification spiral, the phenomenon defined by media critics as an increasing cycle of reporting on a category of antisocial behavior or other undesirable events.

While the term moral panic is relatively recent, many social scientists point to the Middletown studies, first conducted in 1925, as containing the first in-depth study of this phenomenon. In these studies, researchers found that community and religious leaders in an American town condemned then-new technology such as the radio and automobile for promoting immoral behavior. For example, a pastor interviewed in this study referred to the automobile as a "house of prostitution on wheels," and condemned this brand new invention for giving citizens a way of driving out of town when they should be attending church.


[edit] Examples
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Commonly cited examples of moral panics inspired by real or imagined phenomena include:

Armour-piercing ammunition, often dubbed "cop-killers" due to the misconception that armor-piercers are often used by civilians to defeat police body armor.
Bestiality, in Washington USA, in the wake of the 2005 Kenneth Pinyan affair, and in Missouri in the wake of the Jerry Springer Show episode 'I married a horse'.[2]
Comic books as a source of deviancy in the 1950s. See: Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham
Communism - see McCarthyism in the 1950s.
Day care sex abuse in the 1980s.
Gel bracelet - The urban legend of girls' bracelets representing sexual favors in high school.
Marijuana - see Reefer Madness.
Mods and Rockers caused moral outrage in Britain in the 1960s.
Pedophilia, Child sexual abuse - fear of "molesters" makes for sensational news - an ongoing tabloid newspaper campaign in the UK resulted in the (incorrectly) reported [1] assault and persecution of a paediatrician by an angry mob (which had confused the two words) in August 2000 [2], and in 2005 a man in Manchester, England was killed by knife after being mistakenly accused of child molestation by an insane man in the neighborhood. [3] [4]
Pit Bull Attacks - the media-fueled belief that the pit bull breed of dog is a "ticking time bomb" and more prone to attack people than any other breed.
Rock 'n' Roll music - protest of violent, rebellious, or sexual lyrics from 1950s to present.
Gangsta Rap and hip-hop in general over lyrics that pertain to criminality,materialism,drugs,sex,anti establishment,misogyny,and racism from the early 1990's to the present.
Role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons
Social networking sites, such as MySpace - fear of predators stalking teens. [3]
Violence in video games
The zipper - clergy in the 1920s and 1930s decried zippers as allowing one to take one's clothes off too quickly, thus hastening illicit sexual activity.

[edit] Sociology
Some sociologists have attributed the occurrence of witchhunts to the prevalent human tendency to blame unexplaniable occurrences on someone or something familiar. For example, Europe relied heavily upon agriculture during the period of the witch hunts; if there were large scale crop failures, the consequences would very likely be disastrous. Crop failures often correlated with the occurrence of witchhunts, leading some sociologists to suggest that communities often took out their anger about a lack of food on community members who were unpopular (witches.) This can be paralleled in more recent examples such as the Nazi use of anti-semitism to apportion blame for economic problems. A perception of moral righteousness, by the community, is a necessary element that enables rationalization. This, however, is only one element in a complex tapestry of factors leading to the events in question.

The modern notion of a "witchhunt" has little to do with gender, the historical notion often did. In general, supposed "witches" were female. Noted Judge Nicholas Rémy (c.1595), "[It is] not unreasonable that this scum of humanity, [witches], should be drawn chiefly from the feminine sex." Concurred another judge, "The Devil uses them so, because he knows that women love carnal pleasures, and he means to bind them to his allegiance by such agreeable provocations." [30]


[edit] Modern witch-hunts
In some parts of the world, including South Africa and India, witch-hunts still occur to this day.[31][32][33][34]

Witch-hunts against children were reported by the BBC in 1999 in the Congo [35] and in Tanzania older women are killed as witches if they have red eyes. [36] A lawsuit was launched in 2001 in Ghana, where witch-hunts are also common, by a woman accused of being a witch. [37] Witch-hunts in Africa are often led by relatives seeking the property of the accused victim.

In modern terminology 'witch-hunt' also has a metaphorical usage, referring to the act of seeking and persecuting any perceived enemy, particularly when the search is conducted using extreme measures and with little regard to actual guilt or innocence.


[edit] George Orwell
The Oxford English Dictionary describes the first recorded use of the term in its metaphorical sense in George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (1938). The term is used by Orwell to describe how, in the Spanish Civil War, political persecutions became a regular occurrence.


[edit] McCarthyism
The most famous 'witch hunt' of the 20th century is perhaps the McCarthy Era of 1950-1954, in which Senator Joseph McCarthy accused many American citizens of being Communists or Communist sympathizers, and hearings were held by anti-Communist committees, panels and "loyalty review boards" across the US. These hearings, later deemed unconstitutional, resulted in ostracism, ruined careers or even imprisonment for tens of thousands, and represent a major breakdown in civil liberties and civil discourse.

The term 'witch-hunt' was widely popularized in this context through Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, ostensibly about the Salem witch trials, but intended to criticize the hearings of McCarthy as well as the general atmosphere of paranoia and persecution that accompanied them.[38]




The term has also been used to describe allegedly harsh treatment or investigations of those undergoing the political confirmation process of US presidential appointees.

The practice of involuntary commitment has been described as a witch-hunt, with systematic bias in the standards for involuntary commitment, the search for people to involuntarily commit, and the judicial procedures that may result in their commitment