Sociology – Chapter 21
How the crowd transforms the
individual
Collective behavior  extraordinary activities
• Carried out by groups of people
• Examples: lynching, rumors, panics, urban legends
• Charles MacKay
– MacKay noticed people “when mad” and did “disgraceful and violent
things” when formed in a crowd
– People have a “herd mentality”
• Gustave Lebon
– People feel anonymous in crowds
– People feel less accountable for what they do in crowds
– People develop feelings of invincibility and think they could do
anything
– Collective mind: Gustave’s term for the tendency of people in a crowd
to fee, think and act in extraordinary ways
How the crowd transforms the
individual (cont.)
• Robert Park
– Circular reaction: Robert Park’s term for a back-andforth communication between the members of a
crown, whereby a “collective impulse” is transmitted
• Collective impulse dominates all members of the crowd
• Herbert Blumer
– Identified five stages that precede what he called an
acting crowd
– Acting crowd: an excited group moving towards a goal
• Models today’s police manuals on crowd behavior
Blumer’s 5 Stages of an Acting Crowd
• Five Stages of an Acting Crowd
1. Tension or unrest (people become apprehensive,
which makes them vulnerable to rumors and
suggestions)
2. Exciting event (an event occurs)
3. Milling (people talk about the exciting event)
4. A common object of attention (attend forms
around the event)
5. Common impulses (people form an agreement
about the event
A SHORT Time to Ponder:
• Why do you think people behave differently in
a collective setting?
• Why do you think people feel less responsible
for their actions during collective behavior?
• How do you think the collective mindset of a
person comes to be?
The Contemporary View: Rationality of
the Crowd
• Everyone is collected in a mob in is organized
(not chaotic)
– Minimax strategy – people make effort to
minimize their costs and maximize their rewards
• Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian
– Emergent norms – idea that people develop new
norms to cope with a new situation
• used to explain crowd behavior
• In a group, not normal behavior can become normal
Emergent Norms
1. ego involved – people feel personal stake in the
unusual event
2. concerned – personal interest in the event, but
care less than the ego-involved
3. insecure – care little about the matter, but they
join the crowd because it gives them power
4. curious spectator – care little about the issue,
but they are inquisitive
5. exploiters – don’t care about the event, but
their for their own purpose
A SHORT Time to Ponder
• How could collective behavior involve unusual
norms?
• How does Pettie’s mob include the different
players in a collective group?
• Do you agree with the analysis of these 5
groups? Do you think they should take one
away? Add a category? Why?
Forms of Collective Behavior
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Riots
Rumors
Panics
Mass hysteria
Moral panics
Fads & Fashions
Urban legends
Forms of Collective Behavior: Riots
• Riots – violent crowd behavior directed at people and/or
property
– Who: any group
– Causes: frustration & feelings of deprivation
• Precipitating events bring up all the feelings to a boiling point and it
bursts or erupts in collective violence
– Example: A while police officer in Los Angeles was caught on
video beating an African American traffic violator.
• The case went to trial (for beating the man), and was found not guilty.
– Jury: 11 whites, 1 Asian
• Anger led to people setting fires (rioting)
– 54 people died,
– 2,328 insured
– 4,000 fires set to properties
Forms of Collective Behavior: Rumors
• Rumors – unfounded information spread
among people
– About: Rumors deal with a subject that is
important to an individual, and they replace
ambiguity with some form of certainty
– Example: Disney and supposed subliminal
messaging (The Little Mermaid containing a
bishop with a boner)
Forms of Collective Behavior: Panics
• Panic (condition of being so fearful that one cannot
function normally and may even flee)
– People react to widespread anxiety about world conditions with
anxiety
– Many times influenced by media
– Most times people are frightened but not in a panic
– Panic can be caused because of rumors
– Seeing people panic causes others to panic
– Not everyone panics: parents often help children, men often
women in disasters (Example: fire)
– In life threatening situations, when panic is expected, there is
actually order
• Many works take responsibility to help people when on the job
Forms of Collective Behavior: Mass
Hysteria
• Mass hysteria (imagined threat that causes physical
symptoms among a large number of people)
–
–
–
–
Explained by saying “it happens”
Mass hysteria follows basic principles of human behavior
Happens in many cultures
Does not have a found explanation for cause
• Example 1: tarantula bits in Italy hundreds of years ago
• Example 2: people sick after drinking Coke in France
and Belgium
Forms of Collective Behavior: Moral
Panics
• Moral panics (a fear that grips a large number of
people that some evil threatens the well-being of
society, followed by hostility, sometimes violence,
toward those thought responsible)
– Fueled by the mass media and center around a sense
of danger, and/or by rumor
– Fed by rumors and thrive on uncertainty and anxiety
• Example: In 1990 a rumor swept the country that
thousands of kidnapped children were sold to
Satanist who ritually killed them.
– How would you react?
Forms of Collective Behavior: Fads and
Fashions
• Fads (novel form of behavior that briefly
catches people’s attention)
– there are many forms of fad
• Craze (a short and intense fad) – Ex. Tickle Me Elmo
dolls and Beanie Babies
• Fashion (a fad that lasts, such as furniture & clothing)
• What are some common fads that you know?
Forms of Collective Behavior: Urban
Legends
• Urban legends (stories with an ironic twist
that are usually not true
– Jan Brunvand
• passed from “friend to friend”
• Gain credibility by naming specific people or events
• Urban legends = Modern morality stories (teaches
moral lesson about life)
• What are some urban legends that you know?
Social Movements
• Social movement (a large group of people who are
organized to promote or resist some social change)
• Famous Examples
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Abolitionist (anti-slavery) crusade
Civil rights movement
White supremacist
Woman's movement
Animal rights movement
Environmental movement
Social Movements: Motivations
• Proactive social movement
– Change something in society
• Reactive social movement
– Fight social change
• Social movement organization (an organization
people develop to further the goals of a social
movements)
– Head social movements
– Examples: NAACP, KKK
Types of Social Movements
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•
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Alternative – change one specific thing about people
Redemptive – change people totally
Reformative – change specific aspect of society
Transformative – everything in society
Millenarian – change something based on the
prophecy of coming social upheaval
• Tranformational – change on condition around the
world
– New type of social movement
– Metaformative – changing everything
A SHORT Time to Ponder
• Is all social change positive?
• Is social change good for the world?
• Do groups like the NAACP and KKK even out?
Tactics of Social Movements
• Levels of Membership and Publics (6 levels)
1.
“The inner core”
–
2.
3.
4.
“the committed”
“the less committed”
“the sympathetic public”
1.
5.
6.
Tactics chose largely depend on the predisposition and backgrounds of the
inner core
Recruitment ground
“hostile public”
“indifferent public”
• Public (in this context, a dispersed group of people relevant
to a social movement)
Tactics of Social Movements
• Relationship to authorities
– Institutionalized – authorities accept the
movement
• Influences whether movement peaceful or violent
• Other factors
– Friendship
– Race-ethnicity
– Size of town
A SHORT Time to Ponder
• How would you react if your authorities
approved of a violent movement?
• Would you be willing to join a movement if
your friends or family joined?
Why People Join Social Movements
• William Kornhauser
– Mass society theory (an explanation for why people participate in a social
movement based on the assumption that the movement offers them a sense
of belonging)
• Mass society (industrialized, highly bureaucratized, impersonal society)
• Alexis de Tocqueville
– Relative Deprivation theory (in this context, the belief that people join social
movements based on their evaluations of what they think they should have
compared with what others have)
• James Jasper and Dorothy Nelkin
– Moral issues and ideological commitment
• Agent provocateur (someone who joins a group in order to spy on it an to
sabotage it by provoking its members to commit extreme acts)
• People most commonly join a social movement because they have friends
and acquaintances already in it.
Success and Failure of Social
Movements
• Stages of Social Movements
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Initial unrest and agitation
Resource mobilization
Organization
Institutionalization
Organizational decline / possible resurgence
• A rocky road to success
– Five stages do not work unless the movement is very
broad
A SHORT Time to Ponder
• What changes could be made to make the
stages work?
• What movement would you think would be
successful in using these steps?
• When has a social movement been
successful? How were they successful?