Are autistic people as susceptible to herd behavior as NTs?

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Sarcasm. The answer was just so blatantly obvious. The OP knew the answer before even asking. I was also irritated by the replies other posters gave, mostly completely ignoring the actual question. That's why we're not a herd. Everyone just does their own thing and goes off on their own tangents.

I think that would be a matter of typical Aspie behaviour having nothing to do with "herd instinct". In my own case, I likely would have tried to just stand at the side for a bit and wait for the crowd to dissipate before stepping onto the escalator. Doing what everyone else does would have been more like running to the stairs and on to the top to try to be first (or among the first) at the baggage area...but the Aspie knows doing that could leave him or her with the challenge of next passing through the herd against the flow after having claimed one's baggage.

I'm not really, but I do tend to find that the leaders of the packs do tend to take me under their wings. (I'm experiencing this at the moment at work).

Otherwise I'm like a lost sheep.

^^He was lucky that rock was there. ^^

Maybe one of them will now PhotoShop a ladder into that picture...

I make up my own mind based on the evidence I have at the time. Sometimes that is the same as other people, sometimes it is not. what is interesting to me is.. if my the only information i have available at the time is information from the 'herd' and i come to the same conclusion (which isnt necessarily the case).. is that effectively herd mentality?

Something for me to ponder while i sleep anyway.

Susceptibility to herd behaviour hasn't got that much to do with asperger's in my opinion.
I think it depends on personality traits, upbringing. and the ability to think independently if one is easily influenced by herds or not.

I have always disliked not only herd behaviour but herds in general. I want to keep as far away from that as I possible can. Luckily enough I have learned to go my own way, no matter what people may think. That is one of the few aspects of my personality I'm actually happy with.

Where else can you get delicious steak from? moo.

The supermarket? A butcher's?

I've encountered more "herd behaviour" on smaller fora for those with Asperger's/Autism, than I've encountered anywhere else, on-line or off. I've not seen it on WP, but I think that's because it's a larger community.

You can get Quorn meat now. I've herd it's not much different from the real thing.

No, they are much less susceptible.


LINK

I have no idea about others (I do not personally know anyone who was diagnosed with either autism or Aspergers)

For me, I have always been a bit skeptical of the following the herd. Doing it, just to do it, never made sense to me. I always ask the question, “what makes sense?”

I always thought herd was spelt hurd up until this day.

This is what I think. Most people (NTs) think that they do their own thing and don't just go along with the crowd. I don't think most people tend to think of themselves as sheep. There does seem to be a need to belong to a group and come up with group criteria and exclude those that don't meet that criteria on this site. It would be interesting to do experiments with groups of people diagnosed with ASD and control groups of people without ASD and get some empirical data on this.

Last edited by daydreamer84 on 22 Feb 2014, 3:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.