collective hysteria

the spontaneous outbreak of atypical thoughts, feelings, or actions in a group or social aggregate. Manifestations may include psychogenic illness, collective hallucinations, and bizarre actions. Instances of epidemic manias and panics, such as choreomania in the Middle Ages, tulipmania in 17th-century Holland, and radio listeners’ reactions to the Orson Welles broadcast based on H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds in 1938, have been attributed to collective hysteria. Also called group hysteria; epidemic hysteria; mass hysteria.

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Psychology term of the day

November 18th 2024

recessive allele

the version of a gene (see allele) whose effects are manifest only if it is carried on both members of a homologous pair of chromosomes. Hence, the trait determined by a recessive allele (the recessive trait) is apparent only in the absence of another version of that same gene (the dominant allele). The term autosomal recessive is used to describe patterns of inheritance in which characteristics are conveyed by recessive alleles. For example, Tay–Sachs disease is an autosomal recessive disorder.