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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

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• Answer: we look to see what other people are doing

• Look for exemplary members– Those who most closely fit the

stereotype

• Observe the behaviour and induce what we should be doing

• The exemplary members are not “leaders” (but they could be)– Simply used as guides to how to

act