I recollect a brawl of classmates happened in my student days while two rival groups in our college campus; they were fighting tooth and nail over a trivial issue. One group was trying to get hold of the other with improvised weapon while the other group, which was smaller in size, had to flee away from scene to defuse the situation. One fellow of smaller group hid himself behind a nearby bush. Incidentally he was found by one of his opponent group. Then everyone cornered him for a final assault. He came out saying “come on hit me and beat me to death”.
All students in that group got baffled, being not able to decide action on him who has just now surrendered. Finally, all agreed to let him go without any scratch.
The incident renders two things
1. The group dynamics of the mob: They picked up iron rods for a tiny issue which can never be thought to fight for by an individual. Even a trivial issue may get emphasized and fuelled by wrong perception and can hurt the group’s self esteem which turned into raising the alarm to fight.
2. Individual conscience: When the victim surrendered, individual conscience prevailed which overwhelmed the group’s decision. When he screamed “beat me to death”, the group’s ego got raised again feeling that he is at the mercy of the group. The individuals in that group recovered the lost esteem and forgave the opponent.
If we look deep into the scenario and understand the psychology of the person described above, we'll see he was fighting against negative emotions with negative logic which produced positive result! What is negative logic exactly? Learn more from the attached file.