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• Crowd behaviour is an emotional issue– Some see them as agents of
change– Some see them as unruly mobs
• A crowd is any group which performs collective action– As if one thing with a purpose
• These actions can be of any character– Celebration– Mourning– Anger– Satisfaction
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• Crowds can vary in many respects– Size– Type of leadership (defined or
loose)– Homogeneity– Degree of manipulation– Many others!
• In general, people have a negative view of crowds– Seen as primitive, destructive– Media feeds into this perception– “Mob mentality” view is quite
common– Permits required to form crowds
(they are dangerous?)
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• Crowds are interesting to psychologists
– Occurs in the middle of the individual-group levels
– How do so many people behave in a similar without overt co-ordination?
• Many psychologists have tried to explain how crowds work
• We will look at several explanations for this phenomenon
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• The Classical view (Le Bon, 1895)
• Le Bon collected the views of several earlier authors– Basic idea: being in a crowd
transforms you
• Proposes the psychological law of the mental unity of crowds– A collective mind that forms
spontaneously
– Different from the “normal” mind
– Affects thought, emotion, and action
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• LeBons theory:
• Crowds are irrational / primitive, dominated by unconscious elements
• Being in a crowd affects you:– Homogeneity of action
– Capacity for violence increased
– Reduction responsibility
– Lowering of the intellectual
– Exaggerated emotions (easily swayed by rumours, images, etc)
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• How does the “collective mind” take over someone joining the crowd?– Anonymity causes a sense of
power
– Emotions, images etc spread via contagion
– Leads to an increase in suggestibility (swayed by simple images etc)
• The central idea is regression to a barbaric state – change of motivation to the more
primitive
– To the level of “women, children and savages”
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• Being in a crowd is like being hypnotised– LeBon thought the spinal cord
took over
• Le Bon’s book was very influencial– Bestseller when released
– Influenced Freud, Hitler, etc.
– Spread into lay thought
– Most people still believe some form of this idea about crowds
• Sees no good elements in a crowd– Crowd == Mob
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• Criticism of Le Bon
• Hardly a “scientific” work– Le Bon was a member of the
ruling elite “explaining” the lower peons
– No “method” – no research, no subjects, no observation
• Only seems to apply to a small set of crowds– What about peaceful crowds?
• Le Bon’s theory no longer used by psychologists– Some Lebonian thought still
hangs around
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• Deindividuation theory
• American psychologists look at the crowd in the 1960s-1970s– Zimbardo (1969),Diener (1980)– Vietnam war era -- many
protests, some violent
• A group of theories, slight variations on a basic theme
• All share the notion of deindividuation– Reduction in self-awareness/
self-control– Occurs automatically on being in
a crowd
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• When you join a crowd– You are perceptually immersed
(sights, sounds, dancing, etc)
– Leads to an increase in arousal
– Leads to attention shifting to the outside (away from the self – reduced self-monitoring)
– Leads to more responsiveness to emotional cues, lack of planning & impulsivity
• You are now in a state of deindividuation– Will continue until arousal
decreases and attention shifts again
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• Deindividuation is both– The process and– The product
• Deindividuation is seen as an altered state of consciousness– Greater feeling of togertherness
with the group
– Time seems to pass faster
– Concentration on now
– Disinhibition which can lead to amoral behaviour
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– You are blocked from monitoring yourself
– Loss of self-control can lead to aggression, violence etc
• Derived from observations of real crowds– Chanting, singing, etc common
– Evidence for increase in arousal
– Only some crowds turn violent
– Post-hoc reports of a different mental state
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• Criticisms of deindividuation theory
• A bit too similar to Le Bon– Being in a crowd “transforms”
you into a less responsible creature
• Still explains crowds as destructive or dangerous things
• Has a fair deal of empirical support
• One of the most influencial of the modern theories
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• Le Bon’s theory and deindividuation theory are reductionistic– “lay the blame” on the individual
– “contagion” – being in a crowd is like a disease
– Occurs automatically
• The crowd is essentially still seen as an irrational mass– Le Bon – regression
– Deindividuation – self-control is blocked
• Much evidence against this idea– Even violent crowds target specific
groups, etc
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• A different take on crowds – emergent theories– Focus on the crowd as a group
entity
• Crowds are seen to emerge from particular conditions– Narrow conditions (rumours,
milling, etc)– Wider conditions (unrest
deprivation, etc)
• The central process is conformance– People tend to behave in
accordance with social norms
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• Reminder: a norm is a shared set of information in a group– Affects behaviour– Affects beliefs– Affects social perceptions
(justice, prejudice, etc)
• In emergent theory, crowds are seen as situations which cause new norms to emerge– Each crowd situation is unique– Norms are defined “as you go
along”
• Individuals behave communally due to– social pressure to conform– desire to conform to the group
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• Opposite of contagion theories– Contagion: uniform, anonymous,
excitable, uncontrolled
– Emergent: communicating, socially defined, with prescribed limits to behaviours
• How does communality spread then?– Not through “contagion”
– Through rumours
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• What makes rumours special?– Products of interest and
ambiguity (hear what you want to)
– Certain things are included, others left out
– Define a relevant collective definition of what’s happening
• Rumours communicate the new norms– These norms emerge because
none others seem to apply to collective action
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• Smelser’s value added theory (1962)– An example of an emergent
norm theory
• You begin with particular conditions– People want change of a social
structure
– This leads to a situation of strain
• A new norm then arises:– A belief arises that the change
cannot occur via normal channels (“generalized belief”)
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• The existence of the norm then drives the crowd
• Game theory – another example– Special branch of maths used by
economists & political scientists
• People choose targets/actions based on const-benefit decisions
• The more each person thinks the others will support him, the more likely the actions are
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• What can we say about emergent theories?
• Less deterministic than contagion theories– Crowd behaviour occurs with
rational people who make decisions
• Crowd beaviour is seen to have purpose– No more “rampaging random
mob”
• Crowds are not mindless– Self-controlling, self-justifying
structures
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• Social Psychology does the crowd
• Reminder: a person’s identity tends towards the social side when – categories become salient
– You categorize yourself in terms of these categories
• When you self-categorize, you adopt properties of the group– Power differences
– Perceptions of justice, legitimacy, etc
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• Crowd action occurs when– Power relations are seen as
illegitimate
– No possibility of social mobility is evident
• Under these conditions, crowd behaviour is used as a means of addressing social inbalances
• Still left with things to explain:– How does “leadership” work in
crowds
– Who sets the limits on behaviour?
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• Reicher explains this:– It has to do with norms
– We self-stereotype into a particular category
– We use the information from the stereotype to tell us how to behave
– BUT: crowd situations are often novel and unfamiliar
– may not have a norm, or may not know which to use