Trust, faith and the traffic light button

This morning after emerging from the train station onto the very busy street I did as every person does when they want to cross the road, I pressed the pedestrian/walk button. However, whilst standing there waiting for the little green man to appear I noticed that around half a dozen other people who were waiting to walk safely across also pressed the button.
Some of these people did it only seconds after another person had leaving the poor metallic button with more individual hand prints than Paris Hilton's breasts.
Many of these people saw that the button had been pressed by other pedestrians but chose to press it anyone. Perhaps it was in the hope that doing so would shorten the delay to the walk signal (a myth that should be tested and debunked).
What interested me wasn't so much the fact that everyone was pushing the button but that they kept doing so even once they knew it had already been pressed. It seemed that the button wouldn't work for them unless they themselves had pushed it.
Whilst this would seem a strange thing to talk about it ties in with a thought i've been having for quite some time. We, as a people, have become much more suspicious of everyone else.
It seems to have only happened in the last 10/15 years and i believe that one of the primary reasons behind this is the introduction and adoption of 24 hour network news. There's only so much news a channel can report before they simply start to repeat themselves and so they've got to fill up any gaps with as much 'must watch television' as possible.
It's often been noticed by sociologists and anthropologists alike that fear is one of our primary responses and so cable news plays with the human brain to keep us addicted to their programs.
A browse of cable news programs show such ominous titles as "To Catch a Predator" (NBC) and these highlight and create fear and panic, forcing us to watch.

Cable News is the new cocaine :)