Crowd behaviour I

Question 1

What is a crowd?

Answer 1

Groups in which:
- People are face-to-face
- Situation may involve some novelty
- There is no formal means of collective decision-making (unlike an army, for example)
- Act as one

Question 2

What crowds in this lecture?

Answer 2

NOT shopping crowds

Instead:
- Music and sports events crowds
- Mass religious events
- Protests, riots

Question 3

What are the 3 theories of crowd behvaiour?

Answer 3

a) Group mind
b) Group norms
c) Self-categorization theory

Question 4

Group mind:
- when did the earliest ‘scientific’ attemtps to explain crowd behaviour happen?
- a response to ______ and 3 things
- what was the crowd seen as?

Answer 4

Earliest ‘scientific’ attempts to explain crowd behaviour: late 19th century France

A response to the ‘social problem’ of the crowd
1. Revolutions
2. Urbanisation (country to city) and anonymity (in country everyone knows everyone but this changes in the city)
3. Worker organisation

The crowd seen as a ‘threat to civilization’ (this is why a science was developed to understand and combat the crowds)

Question 5

‘Group mind’ theories
- what
- Explain research around Gustave Le Bon (1895)

Answer 5

• A primordial, collective unconscious, which guides sentiments and behaviour

Gustave Le Bon (1895):
- Submerged in the crowd, the individual mind disappears, to be replaced by the ‘racial unconscious’
- Spread of common behaviour enhanced by ‘contagion’

Question 6

What are the problems of ‘group mind’?

Answer 6

1. Problems of assumption:
   Le Bon links crowd psychology with mindless violence- can’t easily explain non-violent crowds (e.g., Martin Luther King’s supporters)

(assumption is that when theres a crowd, theres violence but this is not true)

2. Problem of evidence:
   - Relied on secondary, selective and partial evidence
   –e.g., Taine’s account of bloody acts in the French Revolution
   - Took ‘crowd violence’ out of context
   –Self-defence depicted as meaningless outburst

Question 7

Explain the de-individuation theory

Answer 7

Modern version of ‘group mind’ – same idea that anonymity
→ loss of self
→ loss of self-control
BUT lab experimental

Question 8

De-individuation theory
Whats the evidence?
Postmes & Spears (1998)

Answer 8

Meta-analysis of 60 experiments

Only weak evidence that:
societally anti-normative behaviours typically results from anonymity

Little evidence for:
a ‘de-individuated’ state, or that reduced self-awareness predicts the behaviours

Strong relation between:
anonymity and CONFORMITY to local GROUP NORMS
(Conformity to local group norms is the opposite to what de individualisation predicts as it predicts you abandon norms and just become instinctive but this is saying the opposite.)

Question 9

Groups and norms
Gestalt approach/ interactionism

Asch, 1952

Answer 9

An element takes its meaning from its place in the whole
- Individual behaviour is explicable in terms of group membership

Question 10

Groups and norms
Gestalt approach/ interactionism

Sherif (1936)

Answer 10

• Norms: A group’s ‘code, standards, or rules’ (Sherif, 1961)
• Norms are produced within the group, then internalized by individuals and used as a frame of reference to define social reality and act

Question 11

Turner and Killian’s (1957) emergent norm theory

Answer 11

1. An ‘extraordinary [novel] situation’ or precipitating incident
   = A break from normal life and everyday norms
2. Interaction: People cast around for a definition of the situation and a guide to conduct
3. Eventually a norm emerges
4. The norm allows behaviour to become collective

Question 12

Sherif’s (1936) ‘autokinetic effect’ experiment

Answer 12

• ‘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

Question 13

Explain Sherif’s (1936) ‘autokinetic effect’ in more detail

Answer 13

Optical illusion- when you are in a dark room and there is a single spot of light, even though its not actually moving it appears to move because of the frame of reference

Individuals estimated how far the light was moving

Then he go the same pp’s and put them in a group and he said now I want you to create a group estimate, a collective estimate- how far is the light moving. The people in the group produced a slightly different estimate than the individual ones which was the medium which was the mid point value of the different estimates. Then when the individuals were took out of the group and asked them again to estimate, this time on their own again, their individual estimates were closer to the group estimates than to their previous individual estimates

Thought the group interaction- they come to internalise this action and reproduce it as their own. Sheriff argued that this is how norms work.

Question 14

Gestalt and group norms: Key ideas

Answer 14

1. Rejecting the assumption of mindless ‘mob mentality’ as basis for collective behaviour.
2. Norms as shared, internalised representations in each individual enables collective behaviour
3. Norms come about through interpersonal interaction – talking to each other

Question 15

Is interpersonal interaction actually necessary for collective behaviour?
The Minimal Group Paradigm (Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament,1971)
Study and results

Answer 15

Research question: What are the minimal conditions for intergroup behaviour?

Got two groups of Bristol school boys and asked them to allocate points across various conditions

Results:
The boys favoured their ingroup over the outgroup in the allocation of points (i.e. acted in a group way), even though:

(i) they didn’t know any of their fellow ingroup members
(ii) the division into ingroup and outgroup was arbitrary
(iii) there was no interpersonal interaction among ingroup members

Question 16

John C. Turner (1982)
- a new hypothesis- what is the cognitive mechanism which makes group behaviour possible
- theory and ellaborate

Answer 16

Not ‘interpersonal interaction’, but social identity is the cognitive mechanism which makes group behaviour possible (Turner, 1982, p. 21)

Self-categorization theory (‘self-cat’) explains the process whereby social identities shape collective behaviour

Question 17

What are the self-cat key principles?

Answer 17

1. Cognitive representations of self take the form of self-categories (grouping of self with other stimuli in relation to others)

Social identities consist of self-categories.

2. Self-categories exist at different levels of abstraction
   …from exclusive to inclusive
3. Salience of self-categories (identities) operates through fit x perceiver readiness
4. Social influence operates through shared self-categorization

Question 18

Explain the self-cat key principle - Salience of self-categories (identities) operates through fit x perceiver readiness

Answer 18

Fit =

1.Comparative fit (‘meta-contrast’):
- differences within a group are less than the difference between the group and another group (or outside thing)

2.Normative fit: do group members act the way we’d expect – e.g., academics being scholarly?

‘Perceiver readiness’ variables = Memory, knowledge, commitment…

Question 19

What is an example of from ‘me’ to ‘we’

Answer 19

Comparative fit at the July 7th London 2005 bombings

Question 20

London bombings, July 7th 2005
(Drury, Cocking, & Reicher, 2009)

Answer 20

• Four bombs
• 56 people died
• 700+ injuries
• Commuters- (people that didn’t have a connection with other people they had at that time)
• Interviews with survivors

Question 21

Interviewer and respondent example conversation of before the bomb

Answer 21

Int: “Comparing to before the blast happened what do you think the unity was like before?”
LB 1: “I’d say very low- three out of ten, I mean you don’t really think about unity in a normal train journey, it just doesn’t happen you just want to get from A to B, get a seat maybe”
(LB 1)

Meta-contrast: Me in relation to other individuals

Question 22

After the bomb…

Answer 22

Interviewees’ references to ‘we-ness’:
‘unity’,
‘together’
‘similarity’
‘affinity’
‘part of a group’
‘everybody, didn’t matter what colour or nationality’
‘you thought these people knew each other’
‘teamness’[sic]
‘warmness’
‘vague solidity’
‘empathy’

Meta-contrast: ‘Us’ in relation to the bomb blast

Question 23

Explain self-cat key principle: Social influence operates through shared self-categorization

Answer 23

–We follow others’ behaviour to the extent that they are ingroup members

–The most influential are those that best embody the category (‘us’) relative to a salient outgroup (‘them’/other) – ‘prototypes’

Question 24

Q1 How is collective behaviour possible?

Answer 24

‘Social identity is the cognitive mechanism…’ (Turner, 1982, p. 21)

Collective behaviour is a function of people self-stereotyping = applying shared social category characteristics (including the group norms) to themselves

Self-stereotyping is also known as ‘depersonalization’

Question 25

The English riots, August 2011
What language do media use?

Answer 25

When riots happen, the media uses the language that sounds remarkably like the group mind explanation, they talk about a mog mentality and characterise behaviour as uncontrolled and vicious. This derogatory language obscured the psychology

Question 26

The St Pauls riot
(Reicher, 1984, 1987)

Answer 26

• The first of the wave of urban riots of the 1980s.
• The event which was suggested to have set it off was a police raid on a local café in the St Pauls district of Bristol
• The café had symbolic and practical importance to the local community
• There were several incidents of violence between police and a crowd outside the café
• Police were forced to flee.
• Some police were trapped in the cafe
• Police returned with reinforcements
• More and more people joined in attacking them
• Police vehicle set alight
• Running battles
• Eventually, the police had to leave the area entirely, ‘in disarray’.

Question 27

The St Pauls riot
Second phase

Answer 27

• After the police had left
• The crowd took charge of traffic control, stopping suspected police cars entering the area.
• Certain property came under attack and there was some looting.

Question 28

St Pauls riot
Statistics

Answer 28

• Of 60 police, 22 were injured, 27 minor injuries
• 21 police vehicles damaged

Question 29

Methods (Reicher, 1984, 1987)
- sources
- 2 methods used

Answer 29

Sources:
–Interviews
–Media sources
–Witnesses
–Pictures

1. Triangulation to create a consensual account of what happened
2. Thematic analysis of participants’ perceptions to explain what happened

Question 30

• what did the participants in the riot share?
• defined in terms of?

Answer 30

Participants in the riot shared a social identity:

‘Members of the St Pauls community’.

Defined in terms of:
1. Locality
2. Desire for ‘freedom’
3. An antagonistic relationship with police

Question 31

What was crowd behaviour in this riot?
+ limits

Answer 31

Limited and patterned in line with this identity

Limits included:
1. Geographical limits
2. Limits to behaviour:
- targets of attack
- who got involved?

Question 32

Limits of St pauls riot:
Explain geographical limits

Answer 32

The rioting remained within St Pauls
The crowd directed traffic flow, controlling entry to the area

Question 33

Limits of St pauls riot:
Explain targets of attack

Answer 33

• People:
  – Only the police
  – Passers by moved safely through the crowd
  – Fire service were helped in phase 1
• Property
  – Banks, the benefits office, the rent office and the post office were attacked: ‘these were not just symbols but the very agents of their continued powerlessness’
  – Expensive shops owned by ‘outsiders’ and chain-stores were looted
  – Disapproval when someone threw a missile at a bus
  – Homes and local shops were actively protected

Question 34

Limits of St pauls riot:
Who got involved?

Answer 34

• Only those who shared the identity
  – participated
  – were influenced by other crowd participants
• The most influential were those seen by crowd members as prototypical of the St Pauls crowd – older Rastafarians

Question 35

Crowd behaviour in the St Pauls riot
explanations? (1)

Answer 35

Group mind

• Le Bon would predict indiscriminate (mindless) violence and ‘contagious’ influence

–But there were clear limits to behaviour

–Only certain behaviours spread through the crowd

–Only certain people were influenced or influential

Question 36

Crowd behaviour in the St Pauls riot
explanations? (2)

Answer 36

Group norms?

Yes, behaviour was normatively structured.

• But extended interaction wasn’t necessary: group norms (attacking the police) arose quickly
• New ‘situational’ norms were constrained by the superordinate social category definition
• What do I do as a member of St Pauls in this context?

Question 37

Crowd behaviour in the St Pauls riot
explanations? (3)

Answer 37

Reicher’s (1984) social identity model (self-cat theory):

• Rioters shared the new group norm of getting the police out of St Pauls, based on their shared social identity
• This norm came from self-stereotyping themselves as ‘members of St Pauls community’): They shifted from personal identity (‘me’) to shared social identity (‘us’, ‘we’)

– Evidence: nature of targets reflected features of shared social identity

Question 38

1- How is collective behaviour possible?
2- What do people do when they’re in a crowd?

Answer 38

1- Collective behaviour is a function of shift from personal to shared social identity (hence applying group characteristics, including group norms, to self)

2-
- Group mind theory unable to explain the social form (i.e., limits) of collective behaviour.
- Behaviour is normative and reflects the particular social identity