Theories of Collective Behaviour

Question 1

What are the theories of collective behaviour?

Answer 1

Group mind theories
Individualism
Interactionism
Self-categorization theory

Question 2

What do individuals act as?

Answer 2

A group - protest march, Mexican wave, spontaneous queue

but if we are all individuals, how is collective behaviour possible

Question 3

Why are we concerned with group behaviour?

Answer 3

Revolutions
Factories built in cities
People moving out of villages and into cities
Urbanization and anonymity
Working organisation
crowd - threat to civilisation

Question 4

What is the legal problem of the crowd?

Answer 4

Early debate - in a riot is the individual responsible or are the swept up by a mob mentality

Question 5

Who introduced group mind theories?

Answer 5

First theory - LeBon

Question 6

What are group mind theories?

Answer 6

There is an unconscious group mind which people have in common, guiding sentiments and people’s behaviour
submerged in a group, peoples mind disappears and is replaced by the racial unconscious (primate drives left over from our ancestors). so collective behaviour occurs as all have this heritage in common, and through contagion - spreading behaviour
Labon - isolated he is an individual, in a crowd, creature acting in an instinct

Question 7

Who introduced individualism?

Answer 7

Allport

Question 8

What is individualism?

Answer 8

Collective is a nominal fallacy - you can’t trip over a group
there is no psychology of groups which is not a psychology of individuals - groups are made up of individual people
Collective behaviour possible:
sighele - crowds are compromised of people who are criminal in nature - hence commonality of violence, converge these all together
allport - convergence of similar individuals and social facilitation of each others behaviour - lots of similar people which act together

Question 9

What are the problems of group mind and individualism theories?

Answer 9

1. Problems of assumption:
   both linked collective behaviour with violence, can’t explain non violent (Martin Luther king). Think people are violent
2. Problems of evidence: both relied on secondary, selective and partial evidence (accounts of acts in the French Revolution). this evidence took crowd violence out of context - self defence as a meaningless outburst

Both theories discredited

Question 10

Why were group mind / individualism discredited?

Answer 10

Le bon denies the individual
Allport denies the reality of group
They were both one sided

Question 11

Who came up with interactionism?

Answer 11

Gestalt

Question 12

What is interactionism?

Answer 12

The whole is different than the sum of its part - an element takes its meaningful from its place in a whole. Individual behaviour can be explained in terms of group membership - they use a framework from group norms of how to act

Question 13

Who supported interactionism?

Answer 13

Sherif - group norms are produced within the group, then internalised and used by individuals as a frame of reference of how to define social reality and act

Question 14

What evidence supports interactionism?

Answer 14

The auto kinetic effect from Sherif - moving light in darkened room - illusion it had moved but it hadn’t
Estimate the amount of movement individually and then group interaction and estimate movement
Convergence of individual judgements to the group medium. When the individuals then did it alone, their estimate had changed indicating that the group estimate had been internalised - through talking

Question 15

Key ideas from interactionism

Answer 15

Don’t need to assume the mindless and violent crowd as a basis for collective behaviour

It is a shared, internalised representation of the group in each individual enables collective behaviour - people thinking about a group product and what it is

Representation comes about through interpersonal interaction - talking to each other

Question 16

Is interpersonal interaction itself necessary for collective behaviour?

Answer 16

Minimal group paradigm - do we need interaction at all?
put boys in different groups, and asked them to allocate rewards
Results: boys favoured their own group over the outgroup in the allocation of points, even though they didn’t know anyone, the division of groups was arbitrary and their was no interpersonal interaction among in-group members

Question 17

From the minimal group paradigm, what came about?

Answer 17

Turner - A new hypothesis about when and how we act as group members - not interpersonal interaction, but shared social identity is the cognitive mechanism which makes group behaviour possible

self categorisation theory explains the process where social identities shape collective behaviour

Question 18

Who came up with self-categorisation theory?

Answer 18

John Turner