crowd behaviour Flashcards
crowd definition
groups in which:
- people are face to face
- may involve novelty
- no formal means of collective decision-making (unlike an army for example)
- act as one
crowd examples
- music and sports events
- mass religious events
- protests
- riots
three theories of crowd behaviour
- group mind
- group norms
- self-categorisation theory
Why did we feel the need to explain group behaviour?
- earliest attempt to explain crowd behaviour - 19th cent France
- a response to the social problem of the crowd
- saw crowds like revolutions, anonymity and workers unions as a threat to civilisation
- ‘when people come together as a group they lose themselves and become violent’
Group Mind theories
Le Bon 1895
- crowd behaviour = mindless violence
- unconscious group collective action becomes more important than the individual
–> because people become anonymous in crowds
group mind ideologies TAKE OVER the individual mind
primordial - existing from beginning of time
individual mind is replaced by: ‘racial unconscious’
spreads quickly through ‘contagion’
racial unconscious
group mentality, and primitive instincts which are believed to be destructive
problems of group mind: assumption
- Le Bon links crowd behaviour with mindless violence and this can not easily explain non-violent crowds such as MLK’ssupporters
- most crowds are NOT violent
problems of group mind: evidence
- “Arm-Chair Evidence” - found through reading books and taking information out of context from other groups.
- Relied on secondary, selective and partial evidence.
-Took ‘crowd violence’ out of context made it out to be meaningless outbursts
deindividuation theory
- modern version of ‘group mind’ - same but experimented in a lab
- same idea of anonymity –> people lose their sense of ‘self’
- therefore losing self-control
- so are more likely to be violent and dis-inhibited
- main theory:
individuals lose their sense of self when in groups –> more likely to be influenced by group mentality to behave in these primitive and violent ways
evidence for deindividuation theory
Metanalysis
60 experiements
weak evidence that societally anti-normative behaviours result from anonymity
little evidence that reduced self-awareness/deinduviduated state predicts behaviours
STRONG relation between anonymity and conformity to local social norms
Group norms: Interactionism
Asch 1955
- an element takes its meaning from its place in the whole
- individual behaviour is understandable in terms of group membership
Sherif 1936
- norms: a groups code or standards or rules
- produced within the group then INTERNALISED and used as a frame of reference on how to behave
Group norms: emergent norm theory
Turner and Killian
- extraordinary situation or sudden incident = real from normal life/everyday norms
- interaction: people search for a definition of the situation and a guide to conduct
- norm emerges
- norm allows behaviour to become collective
BASICALLY LOOK TO OTHERS TO CREATE A NORM OF HOW TO ACT IN UNCERTAINTY
Autokinetic effect
- ‘Moving light’ in darkened room (uncertainty)
- Estimate the amount of movement individually
- Group (public) interaction and estimate of movement
- Convergence of individual judgements to group median
- Changed individual estimate indicated that group estimate had been internalized
gestalt / group norms key ideas
- Rejecting mindless ‘mob mentality’ assumption
- Norms as shared, internalized representations in each individual enables collective behaviour
- Norms come about through interpersonal interaction – talking to each other
The minimal group paradigm Taijel 1971
what are the minimal conditions for intergroup behaviour
- boys favoured their ingroup over outgroup in allocation of points EVEN THO:
- they didn’t know any of their fellow ingroup members
- the division into ingroup and outgroup was arbitrary
- there was no interpersonal interaction among ingroup members
The minimal group behaviour paradigm LED TO
John C Turner 1982
self-categorisation theory
self-categorisation theory
- process whereby social identities shape collective behaviour
key principles:
1: social identities consist of self-categories –> we identify ourselves in relation to others
2: self-categories exist at different levels of abstraction
- vary from exclusive –> inclusive
e.g. inclusive = staff faculty
e.g. exclusive = John Smith
- prominance of self-categories operates though fit x perceiver readiness
Fit = comparative fit/normative fit
comparative fit: differences within a group = less than differences between one group and another group
normative fit:
do group members act the way we’d expect e.g. academics = scholarly
- social influence - operates through shared self-categorisation
comparative fit
differences within a group = less than differences between one group and another group
normative fit
do group members act the way we’d expect e.g. academics = scholarly
comparative fit and the london bombings
normal train journey:
BEFORE:
low unity
getting from A to B
‘me’ VS ‘others’
AFTER:
unity, together, would have thought we knew each other, earmnes
‘us’
