Collective Behavior, Crowds and Social Movements by Milgram & Toch (1969) - Article

Le Bon was an important figure in the study of crowds. One of the other articles is about his book on the crowd. Le Bon wasn’t the first person to study crowds, but he was the first who tried to find principles that are common to all crowds. Many scientists in the 19^th century arrived to somewhat the same conclusions about mobs and crowds at almost the same time. However, it was the work of Le Bon that was viewed as having the most influence. Le Bon stated that crowds are specific to their era and his most important ideas was the people undergo a huge transformation in a crowd. The people in a crowd make way for primitive and irrational elements. People in the crowd lose self-control and do things they would not have done, had they been alone. These actions don’t depend on how many people are present in the crowd, but on the fact that conscious personality disappears and that crowds have a collective mind. Le Bon stated the following effects of crowds:

• It doesn’t matter how much the individuals differ before they come into a crowd, once they are in the crowd, they become alike. This homogeneity in crowds is the effect of rudimentary conceptions of personality and contagion.

• The crowd has a retarded mind and is inferior to the people who compose the crowd

• People become capable of violent actions in crowds, which they would not have performed individually. All the restrains of an individual disappear in the crowd.

• Crowds have exaggerated emotions. They love fanatic leaders and show extreme feelings.

According to Le Bon, the characteristics of a crowd are brought about by three principles: anonymity, contagion and suggestibility. However, his work has been critiqued. Some didn’t like his writing style (no tidy fashion), others stated that the comparison of crowd members to isolated individuals was inappropriate, because there is an equal amount of stupidity and irrationality in individuals. Others didn’t like him shifting from one object to another. Some state that his work was based upon the prejudice of his era and that he was a racist. Lastly, his work was based on anecdotal and unsystematic evidence. The most important question about his work is whether Le Bon’s major assertions are true.

Psychoanalytical view on collective behaviour

Freud was really impressed with the work of Le Bon and he even devoted a part of his manuscript about crowds to the work of Le Bon. Freud did however think that Le Bon hadn’t explained the crowd phenomenon adequately and that psychoanalytical theory was needed to do so. According to Freud, libidinal ties form the unity among members of the crowd and leaders play a crucial part. The libidinal bonds between leaders and members develop. However, the leader can’t love all the members with total love and some members will get frustrated. Because of this frustration, the libidinal relationship with the leader will be based on primitive identity processes. A person denounces his superego. The leader takes charge of the members of a crowd, who have regressed to childlike dependence. Crowds are mostly bound together because the members’ relationship to the leader, but the members also identify with each other (because of the sharing of a leader. The leader is defined in broad terms. A leader can be a god, a person or even an ideal (the French revolution slogan). Violence becomes possible because a person isn’t checked by his own superego. It seems that the leader is a sufficient explanation of crowd violence. Freud also believed that crowds are homogeneous. He thought that his homogeneity was due to the fact that members share a common ego ideal. Freud also states that people in crowds use their energy to foster ties with other members and because of this, they don’t have enough energy to individualize themselves. It’s quite difficult to subjects Freud’s theory to scientific tests. In recent example of collective behaviour, there has been an absence of leadership. In some examples from history, leaders didn’t initiate riots and they also couldn’t stop riots.

Freud’s work is important because it has influences other writers, like E. D. Martin. Martin thought that crowds have repressed impulses they want to release. The release of these antisocial impulses is disguised with slogans and ideologies. Martin also think that there is a pathological component to crowds. The crowd is paranoid and denies a lot of things. One consequence of the latter is that it projects onto others impulses that are unacceptable to the crowd itself. Another writer that used Freud’s psychoanalytical ideas on crowds was Redl. He looked mostly at the leader role and he specified different types of central persons around whom the group processes occur. The difference between these types lies in the role they play and on whether this person is an object of identification, an object of drives or an ego support. Here is the specification:

• Object of identification

  • Patriarchal sovereign: incorporate on the basis of love

  • Leader: incorporated into the ego ideal

  • Tyrant: incorporated on the basis of fear

• Object of aggression drives

  • Love object

  • Aggressive object

• Ego support

  • The organizer: satisfies drives

The frustration-aggression hypothesis is based on the psychoanalytical theory and it can be applied to some forms of collective behaviour. This hypothesis states that aggressive behaviour always occurs before frustration and that frustration leads to a form of aggression. The target of the aggression will be (in correct order): the source of the frustration, another person, a fantasy object and the aggressor himself.

Contagion, convergence and emergent norm theory

Contagion, convergence and emergent norm theory all account for the uniformity of behaviour in crowds, the antisocial behaviour and the strong emotions.

Contagion can be seen as the spreading of behaviour or emotion from one crowd member to another. Some writers thought that this seeing a member of the same crowd behaving in a certain way could instinctively arouse the same behaviour in the viewer. Some have also suggested circulation reaction. When someone stimulates another person in the crowd, he will hear and see the intensified response that his behaviour has produced in another person and because of this, he will be stimulated to a higher level of activity. The process of milling facilitates the process of contagion. Milling is the moving around of each other in an aimless fashion, like sheep. They are each other’s stimuli. Milling homogenizes the crowd. However, the process of contagion can’t account for everything. Sometimes feelings spread through crowds, but often they don’t. Researchers need to find out under which conditions resistance develops.

Convergence theories state that a crowd consists of unrepresentative groupings of people who came together because they share common qualities. These qualities were present before the crowd formatted. Different causes will also attract different groups of the population. If you accept convergence as the proper mechanism, you don’t have to look for mechanisms in the crowd that bring about homogeneity. Convergence can cover different collective episodes. The theory states that decent individuals are not converted into the lawless when they join crowds. Aggressive people will be drawn to aggressive events and this will make an aggressive crowd. People who don’t have aggressive qualities, will not go to an aggressive event. One limitation of the convergence theory is that it doesn’t account for the shift in the purpose of crowds.

Studies have shown that when a group of people is allowed to interact freely among themselves, in time, standards of behaviour will develop. This developed norm will have constraining effects on members. People want to adhere to the norm and don’t want to violate it. Emergent norm theory thinks that the ideas about homogeneity of crowd action are false. During the establishment of norms, the actions of some crowd members are seen as the most important courses of action and these actions will constrain other members to act in a way consistent with these. According to norm theory, people behave in crowds in the way that they do because they think it is required or appropriate. The differences between norm theory and contagion are that, (1) according to norm theory there is no complete uniformity of crowd action, while contagion argues there is, (2) contagion argues that people are unknowingly affected with the emotions of others, while norm theory states that people don’t participate in crowd emotion, (3) contagion works best in situations with a high emotional arousal, while norm theory works in excited and sombre states, (4) contagion theory suggests that most communication in the crowd is about the dominant emotion and suggestion for actions, while in norm theory this is not the case, (5) contagion theory doesn’t account for some limits found (on crowd excitement) and (6) norm theory states that a person must have a social identity in order for group norms to be effective over him/her, in contagion theory, anonymity is important.

Emergent norm theory is really different than the psychoanalytical analysis.

The sociological approach of Smelser

Smelser’s theory is based on the notion of value-added determinants and the components of social action. Smelser thinks that collective behaviour occurs when people want to act in order to change something in society. However, the collective action can only arise when there is no way of attaining the desired goal though normal ways. Smelser wanted answers on two questions: what determines the occurrence of a collective behaviour and what determines what type of collective behaviour will occur? According to Smelser, six determinants lie behind every episode of collective behaviour:

• structural conduciveness: the general conditions of social structures that are necessary for a collective episode

• structural strain

• the growing and spreading of a belief

• mobilization

• precipitating factors

• social control

These are organized according to value added logic. The sequences must occur in boundaries established by the first element, than the second, and so on. These six determinants are found in each form of collective behaviour and all determinants can appear in a number of forms.

Smelser has also four components of social action that describe the features of society:

• values (what is desirable in a society)

• norms (rules of behaviour, guidelines)

• mobilization of motivation into organized action

• situational facilities (what facilitates and what hinders the attainment of goals)

There has been critique on Smelser’s theory. For one, some examples don’t fit into Smelser’s form of collective action, he has an outlook on collective action that is too easy, his theory doesn’t meet some critical features of a scientific explanation and the levels of his determinants are empty categories.

Mathematical theories of crowds

In 1898 scientists tried to apply mathematics to crowd behaviour. One of the theories at that time was about mob energy. It was suggested that energy filtered down from the leader to his followers. It was suggested that the energy awakened each follower was half that emanating from the leader. The process of contagion has been put to many mathematical tests. Mathematicians treat contagion as something similar to the diffusion principle of biology. To construct a model of contagion processes, one must list all the states that members of the population could be in. It also needs to be known whether it’s possible to transition from one state to the other and how individuals can influence each other and the states that they are in. It’s really hard to take into account all elements that can are present during contagion.

Rashevsky has developed two models of mass contagion. These models are parallel and based on imitation. His simple model has two classes and in each class there are a group of actives (probability of engaging in competing behaviour small) and passives (behaviour is determined by imitating others). Rashevsky thinks that the number of actives of each type is constant at values X_o and Y₀. The number of passives engaging in each behaviour varies. dX/dt is the time rate of change in the number of passives exhibiting X-type behaviour. The formulas can be found on 564 and 565 of the article. According to the model, stable configuration of behaviour only exists when all the passives have gone to one behaviour pattern, either X or Y. It seems that the initial condition determines the behaviour of the system. Only outside forces can move the system once it has entered equilibrium.

There are different types of mathematical models. Distinctions can be made between deterministic (predicting the specific values which quantities will assume) and stochastic (probabilities) models. Mass behaviour seems to fit best with deterministic models.

Irrationality and violence

What is meant by rationality? Rationality means that a person has an appropriate human goal, that a person performs with internal consistency and that once a person has decided on a goal, intelligence means are used to achieve the goal. Some other definitions of rationality were applied back in the days. Most scientists used to say that crowds were irrational, because of their emotionality. They think that emotion and rationality don’t go together. However, Turner argues that emotion and reason don’t exclude each other. Many well-reasoned plans can be executed by emotions.

When people used to think of crowds, they usually thought of negative features, like violence. Nowadays, crowds are still associated with destruction and panic. Some bad events did occur in history by the hands of crowds, but a few points of analysis need to be considered. The first thing is that acts of cruelty resulting from crowds have often been carried out by organized institutions (nations and religions). Institutions have destroyed cities and killed populations, not crowds. The question arises whether violence is disproportionately represented in crowds, compared to individuals and institutions. There may have been instances in which crowds suppressed violence, but these are hard to see. Suppressed violence is invisible, but overt violence results in a lot of data and media coverage.

Case study: Whatts riot

The civil rights movement of the 1960s will be used as a case study. The Watts riot took place in an area in Los Angeles where a lot of Blacks have lived. Many Blacks in that area were underprivileged. Many people living there were migrants from the South and they didn’t have real skills, nor did a large proportion of them go to school. The unemployment rate was high as well as the crime rate. The riot occurred during a hot period at the end of summer and the humidity in the area before the riot was high. Observers viewed the following events as a causation for the Watts riot:

• Recent occurrence of significant civil rights victories in the country

• The civil right movement was strong

• Rioting had occurred in other places in the preceding year

The precipitating event of the riot was when a white officer arrested a Black young man on a drunk driving charge. The suspected resisted and a crowd had gathered to look. The officer thought that the crowd was hostile and the officer showed his pistol and called for back-up. He drove away with the young man, his mother and brother and he had arrested them all. The officer forced the young man into the police car and the spectators looked on and got mad. Some stated that the police officer used his stick on the young man. The Watts riot developed in several stages:

• There were rumours that police was acting horribly circulated among the crowd. After the police had left, the crowd kept growing

• The destruction of the crowd become intense and it also spread to other neighbourhoods

• The following day, young men discussed the events that had occurred and homemade bombs were prepared.

• In the evening, a riot broke out and white people in the area got attacked

• Rioting continued the following day and it covered a big area

• The riot turned into the looting and burning of white-owned stores. Women, children and older people also took part in the riot

• On the third day there were some bands that walked outside the Watts area. The sale of guns in white neighbourhoods increased

• Watts was occupied by the National Guard and small acts of destruction by the rioters were committed

• 32 people were killed and 1032 injured. The damages raised in the 40 million dollars. 4000 people were arrested. Because of the unfavourable publicity, federal agencies put some money into the improvement of the conditions of the area where the Blacks lived. Employment opportunities were created and scientists wanted to study the cause of the riot.

There have been a couple of psychological explanations that have been given as to why people participated in the Watts riot. Many stated that they participated because of the police brutality. Not just of the police officer in the preceding event, but because of the behaviour of police officers to Blacks in general. There was an antipolice sentiment. Another explanation was retaliation against white exploitation. During the riot, protesters shouted a lot of denigrating things about Whites. Especially the businesses of white people who had a history of bothering black people were attacked. Unemployment was also seen as a cause of the riot, because rioters talked about their economic problems when they were asked why they joined the riot. Hopelessness has also been seen as one cause of the riot. Many people mentioned that they felt they couldn’t actively determine their fate. They used to have hopes, but most people failed. Many people came from the South to LA to find jobs and a better future, but they ended up with shattered dreams. Another condition under which people wanted to join the riot was anonymity. People wanted to be visible, they wanted their problems and conditions to be visible. Some thought that their problems could only become visible by collective action. One other cause could be the lack of identity. Joining the riot gave people a strong identity. They felt like heroes and they felt proud.

The writer of this text argues that the rioters wanted to change the situation they were in, but that a riot isn’t a good way of doing this. Social movements arrive at remedies, but a riot is an expression of grievance. Riots emphasize the problem, rather than solving it. Riots indicate that the rioting group has given up on institutions. Many people didn’t want to hold a social movement, because they couldn’t express their grievances to any institution, because it were these institutions that mistreated them. So, the riot was seen as a last resort. Another thing the writer states we should be wary of, is the fact that it’s hard to separate the feelings that emerge in a riot from the motives that originate a riot. A distinction should also be made between initiating motives and sustaining mechanisms. Feelings of resentment and helplessness can be prerequisites for a riot, but they are probably not enough to maintain a riot.