17 Crowds and Collectives

1. 17Crowds and Collectives • What is collective behavior? • What theories explain collective behavior? • How different are collectives from other types of groups? A detailed study of groups would be incomplete if it did not consider the dynamics of larger social collectives. For centuries people have wondered at the seemingly inexplicable actions that people undertake when part of a large mass of humanity. Juries, teams, squads, clubs, and cults are all intrig-uing, but so are riots and rumors; crowds and crazes; and mobs and movements. This unit describes collectives, explains their dynamics, and seeks to repair their reputation.

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3. Relatively large aggregations of individuals who display similarities in action and outlook. Examples………….. What are collectives? Queue

4. Characteristics of Collectives • Size: large rather than small • Proximity: together or disbursed • Duration: form and disband rapidly (but not always) • Conventionality: sometimes members’ actions are atypical, unconventional, or aberrant • Relationships among members: weak associations rather than cohesive What are collectives?

5. Forms of Collective Behavior What are collectives?

6. Gathering Group Crowd Gatherings Social order in gatherings: Milgram’s line jumping study

7. Crowds: street crowds, mobs, panics formation processes and crowd crystals Crowds

8. Milgram’s Study of Crowd Formation

9. McPhail, Schweingrube, & Turner’s observation system Crowds

10. Mobs • celebratory mobs • lynch mobs • hooliganism • riots • flash • Panics • escape • acquisition Crowds

11. Queues sometimes break down into crowds, mobs, and panics • The Who Concert tragedy • The Love Parade disaster Crowds

12. Rumors as collective processes • Mass delusions • The War of the Worlds broadcast • Psychogenic illness Collective movements

13. Collective movements

14. The “Arab Spring” as a social movement The surprising events of the Arab Spring are still being discussed and debated, but some political scientists have suggested that these were high-tech rebellions. The protesters became what technology expert Howard Rheingold (2002) calls a smart mob: a social movement organized through the use of information technology, including cell phones and the Internet.

15. Collective Dynamics

16. Le Bon’s crowd psychology • Contagion: The spread of behaviors, attitudes, and affect through social collectives Social network analyses of collective processes • Gladwell’s analysis of connectors, mavens, salespeople Contagion

17. “Every man has a mob self and an individual self, in varying proportions” D. H. Lawrence • Similarities among those who join crowds and collectives • Relative deprivation: people whose attainments fall below their expectations are more likely to join social movements. Convergence van Zomeren et al., 2004

18. Deindividuation

19. reduced responsibility (diffusion of responsibility) • membership in large groups • heightened state of physiological arousal Deindividuation

20. The Deindividuated State • Research suggests that the deindividuated state has two basic components: • reduced self‑awareness (minimal self‑consciousness, etc.) • altered experience (disturbances in concentration and judgment, etc.) • Support for this model is limited

21. Turning the strange into the normal Turner and Killian’s emergent norm theory • Crowds often develop unique standards for behavior and that these atypical norms exert a powerful influence on behavior. Example: Baiting Crowds Emergent norms

22. Collective behavior is sustained by identity processes • collectives sustain rather than undermine individuals’ identities • ingroup/outgroup processes increase self-categorization • individuation: collective behavior in some cases represents an attempt to reestablish a sense of individuality Social identity

23. Collectives are groups The “crowd‑as‑mad” assumption: Collectives differ from more routine groups in kind rather than in degree This view of collectives is questionable: Like groups in general, collectives are often misunderstood and mismanaged

24. Collectives are groups Collectives, like many groups are misunderstood and mismanaged. Fortunate, the scientifici study of groups provides a means to gain a deeper understanding of groups and their dynamics.

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