Sometimes people can have a disturbance in their nervous system, which causes an illness and the symptoms of this illness can spread rapidly among the members of a certain group (especially in the context of credible threat). However, no organic cause is present. This is the so-called mass sociogenic illness. This illness is often characterised as a ‘somatoform disorder and according to the APA, it can also be subcategorised as a hysterical neurosis, conversion type. Mass sociogenic illness is underreported and it can cost agencies much money. Many books have been on written individual hysteria, but not so many have been written on the history of mass sociogenic illness. The nature of mass sociogenic illness is versatile and changing, because it reflects the historical and cultural world at that time and the social beliefs people have in certain eras. According to Wessely (one of the authors of the article), there are two types of mass sociogenic illness: mass motor hysteria and mass anxiety hysteria. Mass anxiety hysteria has a short duration (often one day) and it presents itself after the perception of a fake threat. The person becomes really anxious. Mass motor hysteria involves changes in one’s psychomotor activity (twitching and shaking) and dissociation. It presents itself after a person has gained a lot of stress and it usually persist for a longer time (e.g. weeks or months).

The middle ages

Before the 20^th century, most reports of mass sociogenic illness were about motor hysteria. In the Middle Ages, religion was a big part of life and people believed heavily in witches and demons. Between the 15^th and 19^th century, many reports about motor hysteria were about nuns who were supposedly possessed by demons. These reported episodes lasted months and in some cases, years. Theatrical performances seemed to be part of the syndrome. During that era, young girls were often mildly forced by elders to join religious orders and this meant that they would be living in an all-female dorm and should comply with the rigid discipline of that place. They had to agree to vows of chastity and poverty and this meant that they had to fast often and take part in diets that made them almost starve to death. The girls were punished severely for even small mistakes. The demons were exorcised by priests and women who weren’t liked were often burnt, locked up or banished. People from the community came to watch the exorcism spectacle.

There are many recorded episodes of demon possessions at nunneries. Some happened in the US, while others happened in different countries of Europe. Sometimes nuns were executed because they bewitched other members of their religious group. There are many examples throughout history, but just to name a few: Spain, 1560, some nuns bleated like sheep and took off their veils and in France during the 18^th century, some nuns meowed together every day at a certain time. People also believed that there were animals with demonic features that could possess you. In France they believed that cats could possess humans and cats were therefore hated there. These cases seem to be caused by anxiety, which caused dissociation and hyper-suggestibility. A couple of decades ago, something quit similar happened in Malaysia. Adolescent Muslim girls who were sent by their parents to isolated, religious, one-gender boarding schools were showing abnormal movements and screaming a lot. Healers were called to remove the demons out of their bodies. The girls even took hostages at knife-point. Luckily, nobody got hurt. It all ended when the girls were allowed to transfer to liberal schools.

The 18^th to 20^th century

In the 18^th, 19^th and early 20^th century, the industry was very important, but the working conditions were poor. Mass motor hysteria could be found in oppressive job settings. At that time, that were often factories. Throughout Europe people reported workers having convulsions and abnormal movements. There were not many reports of motor hysteria during the second half of the 20^th century and this is probably because of the better health and safety regulations of that time. Reports in the Soviet Union disappeared probably because of the rise of anti-capitalist systems.

In the 18^th to 20^th century schools were also affected. Many European schools reported that there were outbreaks of laughter, convulsions and trembling. One example is a girls’ school in Basel, Switzerland. In 1893, girls were shaking and unable to complete their written assignments in school. After school, the symptoms disappeared, but the next day of school the symptoms came back again.

Most epidemic hysteria cases in the 20th century were about the concerns over air, water quality and food. People were afraid of mysterious smells. The episodes had a rapid onset and recovery. These episodes were examples of anxiety hysteria. Most mass sociogenic illness outbreaks in school were caused by strange smells. One popular example occurred in Singapore, in 1985. 65 students and a teacher had trouble breathing, nausea and chills. Medical and environmental tests were done, but nothing seemed to be wrong with the classroom. The whole incident started when some of the students smelled something unusual and after certain rumours were started that a gas from a construction site had infiltrated the school. Researchers found that the people who believed this rumour was true, succumbed to the rumour and those who didn’t think it was true, didn’t show these weird behaviours. Epidemic anxiety hysteria was also triggered by strange smells in other settings. In the job setting, much productivity had been lost because of anxiety hysteria.

Biological and chemical warfare

Mass hysteria arose during the 20th century because of strange odours. The community was afraid of biological and chemical weapons. During the First World War, 90000 people were killed by poison gases and even more were injured. The scare of poison gases created certain episodes of mass sociogenic illness, decades after the First World War had ended. In the United States there were many reports between 1930 and 1945 about someone who had gassed homes. People reported being breathless, nauseas and dizzy. It turned out that nobody had attacked houses with gas, and that it was all due to imagination and anxiety. In the early 1980s, this trend became ‘popular’ again. People from the Jordan West Bank reported having headaches, being dizzy and fainting. This all happened after there were rumours that Jews had released poison gas on Palestinians. There were also reports in the late 1980s in Georgia and reports in 1995 from Japan about mass sociogenic illness. During the modern ages, media coverage has played a large role in the spreading of episodes of anxiety. It also seems that mass sociogenic illness can flourish where threats don’t seem that unlikely or imagined (in war zones, in towns that are attacked by terrorists).

The 21^st century

Terrorism has a big psychological impact and it can also strengthen the response to perceived terrorist threats. Because of the terrorist attacks in the recent 20 years and the use of anthrax as a weapon, people have become more alert and scared. People see the threat of biological and chemical terrorism closer as ever before. Anthrax isn’t seen as an effective way to cause mass physical causalities, but in the 21^st century, it does appear to cause panic in a nation. For example, in the United States more than 2300 anthrax false alarms were reported in the first two weeks of October 2001 (so, just after 9/11). Some examples include opening up letters and fearing a certain chemical came free (causing nausea and feeling chemical burns on the arm) and the so-called World Trade Centre syndrome. This entails the shortness of breath that more than 4000 firefighters of New York have reported after visiting the site of the World Trade Centre. Other New Yorkers that live and work near ground zero have also reported chest pains, shortness of breath and anxiety, despite the New York Health Department reporting that the contaminant levels are below threat level.

Predispositions

Most scientists look at abnormalities of the people affected when they research the causes of mass sociogenic illness. Many findings are conflicting and inconclusive and this is probably due to the fact that mass sociogenic illnesses are influenced by the beliefs and social realities of a certain time. Researchers who investigate modern-day mass sociogenic illness outbreaks, look at personality tests in order to see whether psychological, social and/or physical characteristics influence why a person becomes affected or not. The results are quit inconclusive: some researchers report that affected people score higher on extraversion than those unaffected, while other researchers didn’t find this correlation. Some studies reported that affected people score higher on paranoia, while others didn’t find an association. This shows that there isn’t a predisposition to mass sociogenic illness and it also implies that every person can suffer from mass sociogenic illness in the right circumstances.

Conclusions

It is difficult to make a prompt diagnosis of mass sociogenic illness. Researchers need time to analyse everything. It might come in handy to close a school or job building when waiting on the test results. This might also help to reduce the anxiety levels, because people will not be present at the perceived pollution site and the symptoms won’t be spread that quickly. The investigators can determine which (of the eight) features of mass sociogenic illness are present. These are the eight features of mass sociogenic illness:

• A rapid onset and recovery of symptoms

• No plausible organic basis of symptoms

• Benign symptoms

• Extra-ordinary anxiety

• It occurs in a segregated group

• Spreading of symptoms via sound, sight and oral communication

• Spreading of symptoms occurs from higher to low status

• Majority of victims is female

An early diagnosis can be made on the basis of these characteristics, before the results of air or food tests are presented. Mass sociogenic illness can be treated by eliminating or reducing the stimulus that causes stress. Because human beings construct their reality dynamically and continuously, nobody is immune from mass sociogenic illness. However, the threat needs to be plausible in order to cause anxiety in a group and ultimately result in mass sociogenic illness.

Both scholars and laypeople use the terms gossip and urban legend interchangeably with rumour. People often rate a rumour and a gossip identically. Also, at conferences, scholars have debated whether rumour and legend and rumour and gossip are two different things. The construct of rumour has been become more clear, but there still remains some ambiguity. According to the writers, important differences do exist. The writers distinguish the three things from each other and they state that the difficulties have arisen because people haven’t paid much attention on the context, the function and contents of these three things. That’s why they will do it in their article.

Rumour

A rumour can be seen as a statement that is unverified and instrumentally relevant and this goes on from one person to the next. It arises in ambiguous, dangerous or threatening contexts and it’s function is to help people make sense out of things. The context looks at the situation or the need out of which the rumour arises, the function looks at what people are trying to accomplish by rumouring and the content looks at the types of statements given.

Contexts of rumours

As mentioned before, the contexts that rumours arise from are ambiguous and threatening, but also contexts in which people feel a need for security or understanding. People want to understand things, otherwise they will feel uncomfortable. When the meaning of a situation is not readily understood, it’s said to be ambiguous. When people think that their well-being is at risk, when they are in danger, when they are afraid to lose their belongings or money and when security is weak they may feel threatened and this is another brewing ground for rumours. The threat may also be psychological in nature: the self is threatened or one’s identity is threatened. The self can be threatened when a person’s self-esteem is reduced, but the collective sense of self (one’s social identity, the group to which one belongs) may also be threatened.

Functions

The functions of rumours are to make sense in ambiguous situations. A person first tries to make sense of a certain situation individually, but when this doesn’t work, he/she will discuss and evaluate ideas with other people. These collective ideas and discussions are rumours. People don’t want to be confused and they use rumours to collectively make sense out of the unclear things happening in their lives. People seek information and as a group, want to be able to interpret their situational contexts. Rumours also have a function to manage threats. When people feel threatened, they try to control the situation. Rumours can offer primary control (when hearing that there is going to be a flood within the next day, one leaves the town) but also secondary control. This secondary control helps the person to interpret the threatening situation in another way. Often, it helps reduce the emotional impact. According to research, rumours primarily offer this type of control: wish rumours. Rumours may give people hope. Rumours also defend one’s self-esteem. This is often done by spreading negative rumours about the threat.

For example, an employee who is upset with his boss for making stupid jokes about him, spreads a nasty rumour about his boss. Rumours defend against harm to your individual sense of self or your collective sense of self. Rumours about the group that is hurting your group, makes you feel better about your own group. These rumours are also called wedge-driving rumours. Rumours can also have other functions, like entertainment, but this is not the rumour’s primary role.

Content

Rumours give information and thus, they are declarative statements. The rumour is an informative idea and it states, describes and tells about something. Also, these informative statements are passed from one person to other persons. A rumour is transmitted. This transmission can have different configurations: serial (Anna tells Bob, Bob tells Claire, and so on, with or without discussion), cluster (Anna tells a cluster of people and this cluster of people tell one or more people) or multiply interactive (active recirculation of the rumour). Participants in rumours see rumours as having a relevant outcome. Rumours are not seen as primary amusing pieces of information (gossip) or tales with a moral lesson (legends). Sometimes they are as news message, as they contain new pieces of information that people can use to deal with their situation effectively. Another characteristic of rumours is that they are unverified. Most rumours don’t have a secure basis of evidence. Often, rumours are also followed by cautionary statements, like ‘I’m not completely sure that this is true, but…’. Some rumours are passed along as facts, so without the cautionary statements. A rumour may turn out to be true, but what qualifies it as a rumour is that the evidence for the rumour’s verification is not that tight.

Gossip

A gossip can be seen as an evaluative social talk about people. Gossips arise in social network formation and also serve social network functions, like entertainment, establishing group norms, group cohesion, group membership and power structure.

Contexts

Gossip often arises in situations of social isolation and the person feels a need to belong. Isolation is not healthy for humans and that’s why we are motivated to belong and to form bonds with others. This can be done by creating and sustaining a network of social relationships for oneself. Gossip helps people to change or maintain their social networks. Gossip is often about some features about the social network, like specific members in the network, bonds in the network or the network as a whole.

Functions

As previously mentioned, gossip can be used to change and maintain social network functions. Gossip can be used to learn information about other people in the network and it enables networks to become larger. You can gossip about someone who you have never met before. Gossip also bonds people to each other and in that way, it helps build the social network. People bond over funny stories or extravagant tales and gossip helps us to gain friendships. However, bonds can also be broken by gossip. Negative gossip can result in the ostracizing of another person. Gossip can also enhance one’s social status.

By telling negative stories about another person, you present yourself in a better light. Research on sororities has found that high-frequency gossipers were more active and influential in the sorority than low- and medium-frequency gossipers.

Gossip also helps us to remain part of the social network by letting us know what the group norms are. This is often done by social comparison with other people. If someone says that Jane is a slut, then you will try to not behave or dress like Jane, otherwise you might also get ostracized.

Content

Gossip is usually a negative social chat. It can be positive, but most gossip is slanderous and derogative in nature. Gossip is often also about an individual behaviour in personal spheres of life.

Rumour and gossip

Both rumour and gossip are unofficial communications and they are both used to get valued assets. Rumours are unverified and useful informative statements, while gossip is a social chat. Rumours are seen as more urgent than gossip, rumours are unverified, while gossip may have solid foundations of evidence and rumours may or may not concern individuals, while gossip is always about the private lives of individuals. However, some forms are hard to categorize as either rumour or gossip, like Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Urban legends

Urban legends are stories about certain events that relate to real life. The senders of the story tell it like it did or may have happened and the story contains some moral rule. Urban legends have to do with modern subjects, not with traditional thins (knights, princesses).

Contexts

People are motivated to find and make meaning out of the world. Urban legends may have a function in meaning-making. So, they arise in contexts where people make meaning through storytelling. Social gatherings, internet chats and campfire stories, among others, give a person the opportunity to tell these kind of stories. The most important use for urban legends, is to make meaning out of something, as opposed to the need to understand (rumours) or the need to belong (gossip).

Functions

Urban legends tell tales that promote moral values. They also amuse us. These stories set examples from which people can draw moral rules, and they sometimes also focus on warnings and promises. Urban legends often contain funny or horrible elements, making it more amusing.

Content

All urban legends contain a setting, plot, climax and the final resolution. The stories are funny, unusual, horrible or a combination of these. Urban legends are always about modern topics. So, they are about things that today’s citizens find interesting (dating, technology, the internet).

Rumours and urban legends

Both rumours and urban legends are verbal expressions that have come into existence through collective processes. They are also both unofficial information pieces. However, rumours may be useful information statements that arise in threatening or confusing situations and people use rumours to make sense of these situations. Urban legends are used to give meaning to the world. Rumours try to make sense of more specific and urgent things than urban legends do. Rumours are short bits of information, specific to a date and time, while urban legends are like stories.

On February the 1^st in 1960, four black college students sat at the counter of a lunch place in a town in North Carolina. At that time, the seats were only to be used by white people and black people were allowed to only use the stand-up snackbar at one end. One of the students asked for a cup of coffee, but the waitress said that they don’t serve negroes there. The four students stayed there until the end of the day and when they left, a small crowd had gathered. One of the people in the crowd was a photographer for the local newspaper. The students stated that they would be back the following day.

The next day, 27 men and 4 women came to the place. The men were dressed in suits and ties and all of them sat at the counter and were they were doing their schoolwork there. The following day, black students from Dudley High joined them, and the number of protesters was 80. The fourth day, the protesters reached 300, including 3 white women and the fifth day, there were 600 protesters. Not everyone fitted in the lunchroom, so some stood outside. Some white students waved Confederate flags.

A week after the first day of the protest, sit-ins were also happening in places that were twenty to fifty miles away from Greensboro. In the following days, the protesters were growing in number and the protest even crossed state lines. By the end of the month, many places in the South had sit-ins. 70.000 students eventually took part. Many were arrested and many radicalized. All these events took place without texting, Facebook and Twitter.

Nowadays, we are in a so-called revolution. Social media has reinvented social activism. It’s easier for powerless people to collaborate and coordinate together, via social media. In Moldova 2009, ten thousand people took the streets to protest against the regime. Their action was called the Twitter Revolution, because they had been brought together by Twitter. The same thing happened in Tehran (Iran) in the same year. It seems that activists are now defined by their tools. People go on Facebook to push for their rights.

The writer of this text thinks that these are puzzling claims. Some scholars have pointed out that there are only a few twitter accounts in Moldova, and that the significance of Twitter in that country was quite small. Some even say that it wasn’t a revolution, but a stagecraft ordered by the government. Also, there wasn’t a Twitter Revolution in Iran. The ones tweeting about the demonstration were almost all in the West. Some state that the new communication technology is making big claims and producing a false story about the past. They are claiming that communication before television and the Internet has no history and that nothing significant has happened in the area of activism before Internet.

Danger

In the 1960s, it was quit dangerous to protest and not agreeing with the racial rules was often met with violence. The four students who first sat down at the counter in Greensboro stated that they were terrified. On the first day, two police officers were sent to the lunchroom and by the end of the week, a gang of white toughs and the leader of a local Ku Klux Klan showed up and there was even a bomb threat. In Mississippi, white volunteers registered black voters and raised civil-rights awareness. In that time, everyone was told not to go alone anywhere and especially not in a car or at night.

Three white volunteers were kidnapped and killed, 37 black churches were set on fire, safe houses were bombed and volunteers were beaten, shot and arrested. Some people started dropping out of the activism. It seems that activism that attacks deeply rooted problems isn’t that easy.

A sociologist (McAdam) compared the people who stayed and who dropped out of the program. He stated that the difference could be found in the personal connection to the civil-rights movement. All the volunteers were required to give a list of personal contacts in it turned out that the people who stayed were more likely than dropouts to have a close friend who was also protesting in Mississippi. McAdam stated that high-risk activism is a strong-tie phenomenon. This seems to be the case for many protests throughout history (e.g. East Germany, during the time of the Berlin Wall and mujahedin to Afghanistan). The four young men who sat at the counter in Greensboro, were also really good friends.

Ties

Activism associated with social media isn’t like the activism from history. Social media is built around weak ties. People who follow each other on Twitter may have never met each other. Facebook is a way of keeping up with people you would normally not be able to stay in touch with. In real life you can’t have a 1000 friends, but on Facebook you can. However, this isn’t a bad thing. Weak ties have also strengths. Our acquaintances can be a big source of information and ideas. However, weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism. Weak ties can lead someone you don’t really know do something or your behalf, only if you don’t ask too much of them (no high-risk). You can’t ask someone you barely know to take a financial or personal risk. The big supporters of social media don’t understand the difference in risk. According to the writer, the supporters think that a Facebook friend is the same as a friend in real life and that think that Facebook can move people to do risky things for others. They see the signing of a petition as the same thing as sitting at that lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960. Supporters state that social media is effective in increasing motivation, but that’s not true. It’s effective at increasing participation, and that can only be done by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires in the first place. Facebook doesn’t motivate people to make a real sacrifice, but it motivates them to do something that doesn’t require much motivation.

Hierarchical organizations

The civil-right movement of the 1960s could be seen as a campaign. The four young men that took place at the counter were members of the N.A.A.C.P. (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People). That organizations wanted to organize sit-ins at the end of the 1950s. locations were scouted and members were told about other sit-ins. The sit-in movement that spread from Greensboro throughout the South spread only to those cities which already had a pre-existing movement core and trained activists. The civil-right movement was also strategic activism. The N.A.A.C.P. was a centralized organization and it had certain operating procedures. Each group of the movement coordinated the activities through authority structures. It seems that traditional activism has a hierarchical organization. Social media activism doesn’t have this. Facebook is for building networks, not hierarchies. Hierarchies have rules and are controlled by a central authority, while networks aren’t controlled. Because of this, networks are resilient and adaptable in low-risk situations.

Also, because they don’t have a centralized leadership structure or real authority, it’s difficult for them to reach consensus and setting goals. Networks can’t really be strategic and conflict and error will eventually arise. An example is Al-Quida. It was a dangerous group when it was a hierarchy, but now it has turned into a network, it is less effective.

These drawbacks don’t matter if the network doesn’t want to be involved in systematic change. Sit-ins are high-risk strategies and there shouldn’t be any chaos or error. Supporters of social media state that it would have been easier for Martin Luther King, Jr. to organize a boycott through social media. But, social media is messy and there isn’t a tight structure. The only thing that Martin Luther King, Jr. needed were strategy and discipline, both that social media couldn’t provide.

Some supporters of social media state that social media provide speed and ease with which a group can be mobilized to fight for a good cause. They see social media as an upgrade for activism. However, the writer of this text doesn’t agree and he states that social media are a form of organizing the weak-tie connections. Unlike traditional activism, it doesn’t promote discipline and strategy, but it promotes resilience and adaptability. Activists can express themselves more easily, but their expressions won’t have that much impact as they would have in the traditional way. Social media are not an enemy of the status quo and if you want real change, you should use other means to your end.

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.

Policing is often related to the maintenance of public order, but most of the times, public order policing refers to crowd events. Why is that? People have the assumption that crowds could be a threat to order. Crowds are often associated with public disorder, and this also reflects on the ways in which crowds are policed. Many people think that the cause of violence lies with the crowd, not with the interaction between police and crowd. They don’t look at the possibility that the police can contribute to the conflict and because of this, there are also no strategies developed that might minimise this possibility. Strategies focus on how to contain a crowd and the crowd is treated like a problem. However, this approach results in two problems: the creation of a self-fulfilling prophecy (thinking that someone is hostile will lead to you acting if that person was hostile and this will lead to the person acting hostile in response) and the missing out of an opportunity. In the latter it’s meant that police could interact with the crowd in ways that reduce conflict and improve bonds between each other. Crowd policing could have a positive effect on general policing. The writers of this article want to show that having a good understanding of crowd psychology can lead to develop forms of policing that promote reconciliation (instead of conflict).

Principles

The classic view of crowd psychology is one that sees crowds as irrational, aggressive and primitive entities. Some psychologists from the first half of the 20^th century stated that crowds are homicidal in their tendencies and that one could expect anything from crowds. A crowd may seem peaceful, but violence can erupt at any time. This also means that crowd members must be treated with suspicion. However, other psychologists at that time thought that this approach to seeing crowds was controversial. Allport couldn’t see the reversion to primitive entities and he started a new movement: explaining crowds in terms of the traits of the people who are drawn to the crowd. Violent crowds are not violent because the people in crowds are transformed in the mass, but because violent people are drawn to events where they can express their true feelings. The classic approach could be seen as the mad mob approach and this newer approach could be seen as the hooligan approach. Both approaches do share the view that crowds are inherently mindless. They also share the view that crowds are aggressive, their actions are meaningless and the responsibility lies completely within the crowd.

Psychology has changed and the ways of thinking about a crowd have also changed. Over the last 40 years, the social identity research has become the most dominant approach when it comes to ingroup psychology. This approach has also tried to show that the view of the classic approach to crowds isn’t the correct one. More specifically, the social identity approach rejects the idea that people have one single personal identity. According to the approach, people have different identities and all these identities are salient in different contexts. Sometimes we think of ourselves as unique individuals, while at other times we think of ourselves as part of certain groups. When we think of ourselves as part of groups, we also think about what makes us unique compared to other groups. This way of thinking is in terms of our social identities. According to Turner, group behaviour is only possible if people shift from their personal identity to a social identity.

There are certain points that need to be made for the argument of Turner. First, a distinction should be made between a psychological group of people and a physical group. The physical group is often called an aggregate and it refers to a couple of people who are present at the same location. The psychological group refers to a couple of people who think of themselves as belonging to the same social category. An aggregate can contain one or more psychological groups and these groups can shift after certain events occur. The second point that needs to be made is that one’s relationship changes with a person when they don’t think of that person as an individual anymore, but as the member of a group. People who belong to the same group as you will probably be treated with respect and trust by you. Members of the outgroup probably not so much. Once you define yourself in terms of a group membership, the well-being of the group and the reputation of the group will become your own well-being and reputation. The third point that needs to be made is that people may do things in groups that they probably would not do on their own. However, this doesn’t immediately refer to bad things, because a person can be more generous to others when in a group. Also, people don’t lose control over their actions when they are in a group, but they just conform to the beliefs that are associated with that group identity. So the classic view thinks that people lose their identity and also their control, but the new view beliefs that people shift identity and therefore also shift the behavioural control in groups. It depends on the group on what further actions will be taken.

Much literature shows that crow actions are not random and there is also not a lack of control in groups. Crowds reflect the beliefs of the groups involved. This means the violent crowds are violent because that belief system is relevant for the community of the crowd. Crowds and groups are often seen as the same thing, but there is one difference between these two. The difference is that groups have formal discussions and meetings about group norms. Crowds don’t have that. It’s difficult to discuss something during a riot. Crowds also don’t have an authority structure. Another difference is that in groups, the physical presence of other groups isn’t needed to make the social identity of the own group salient. In crowds, face to face contact between the crowd and another party often takes place.

Crowd conflict and dynamics

The writers of this article think that the relationship between the groupings in the crowd depends on the interaction between the crowd and outsiders. They base this statement on three arguments:

• The fate of crowd members is determined by what the outside world (government, police) allows them to do. This will have an immediate effect on the group formation in crowd settings. So, if a crowd exists of different subgroups and the police treats all the members of the group the same (e.g. throw a gas-bomb in the crowd), then this will create a common experience for all the people in the crowd and they will feel like one group.

• When the outgroup imposes a certain fate on the crowd which goes against the ingroup conceptions of legitimacy, then the crowd will act as one with anger and hostility towards the outgroup. The events that pre-occur to this violence differ between groups (because different groups also have different concepts of legitimacy).

• Not all crowd members will get into direct conflict with the outgroup after a perceived outgroup illegitimacy. There is a whole spectrum of behaviour between violence and non-violence and the outgroup has an influence on all the points along this spectrum.

When you look at all three arguments, you can see that the classic crowd psychology approach is counterproductive. If the outgroup beliefs that all crowd members are dangerous, they will:

1. Treat all crowd members in the same way and this will increase the unity amongst the members

2. React in the wrong way to violence of one or a couple of crowd members by punishing all members and in that way violating the ingroup conceptions of legitimacy. This will unity the crowd and make them hostile towards the outgroup

3. Increase the influence of hostile crowd members who want conflict. This will undermine self-policing in the crowd

The three points above show what is understood as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The police needs to understand the processes in a crowd and this will allow them to deal better with crowds. This will hopefully result in minimal conflict.

Practices

The writers of this article have come up with some general guidelines for policing crowds. The first guideline looks at the information. police look mostly at criminal intelligence of members with a known a history of violence. But if you look at this in isolation, you can’t understand how the violence of a few people becomes collective. Police need to understand the social identities of crowd members. In order for public policing, you need to have information about the social identities. The second guideline is that the focus of police strategies during crowd events should be to maximise the facilitation of crowd aims. Most groups in a crowd have legal aims and fair intentions, and only a few groups in the crowd might want to act in ways that are not allowed. By facilitating the peaceful majority, violence from them will be avoided. However, all of this is only possible when the police has information about the priorities of the groups in a crowd. The third guideline is about the centrality of communication with crowd members. Police action that is taken for the interest of crowds will only be effective if the crowd sees these actions as in their best interest. A good communication strategy is needed. So, before an event, strategies need to be planned and the collective aims should be communicated to all participants. During the event, it’s important to develop a way to address the crowd members in case something goes wrong. Uncertainty is never good and often starts conflicts. The fourth strategy is to maintain a differentiated approach with the crowd. It is important to not see all crowd members as the same and to treat them all with respect. If conflict arises, police must make sure to let it not drag on.

Examples

The writers state that their approach is beginning to be applied in practice and they give two examples of this in the text.

Example 1

One of the fastest growing forms of protest in the United Kingdom has been the anti-globalisation movement. For the last 20 years, there have been annual demonstrations in London. The police was kind of challenged by these protests, because they were different than the traditional marches the police was familiar with. One of the differences was that the protest doesn’t have clear leadership and a specific aim. The anti-globalisation protest brings together different groups with different aims and different targets. Any building in London could be seen as a target. The police used to make use of the so-called corralling tactic, which means that they surrounded the protesters and didn’t allow them to leave. This tactic became controversial as it brought about much anger. Crowd members became angry because all members were corralled, irrespective of who they were. This means that innocent people were treated as guilty people. Because of the corralling, the members had the same experiences and a shared perception of police illegitimacy. These things led to conflict escalation. The police force asked the writers of this article for help. The writers told that the officers had to see the tactic from the perspective of the participants. Also, the writers told them that it was crucial to communicate to the crowd why they were being contained and how actions from a minority of the crowd led to this. The third thing they told was that procedures of selective filtering should be developed, so people with specific needs could exit the containment area. This should also be communicated towards the crowd. Once the special needs members have left, it should be communicated by the police that they would like the other members to also leave, but that it can only occur under safe conditions. The writers’ advices has been taken up by the police and the police has applied the advice on a number of occasions. It seems to be effective.

Example 2

The most systematic application of the writers’ approach occurred at the 2004 European Soccer Championship in Portugal. The writers worked together with the Portuguese Public Security Police (PSP) to produce a model of policing practice. The model was used in every area the PSP was active at. The model has also been evaluated by sixteen observers and English fans filled in questions about their perceptions, behaviours and feelings. The model consisted of four levels of policing interventions:

1. Paired officers in normal uniforms, spread throughout the crowd. Their function was to establish an enabling police presence. The officers were supposed to be friendly and open and they would also interact with the crowd and support the aim of Euro 2004. This allowed the officers to also keep an eye out for arising conflicts or tensions.

2. These larger groups of officers were active were disorder escalated. They wore standard uniforms and moved in on groups to talk to them in a non-confrontational manner. They talked about shared norms, how these norms were violated and the consequences that could arise from the norm violation. When this failed, it was up to officers of level 3 to sooth things.

3. Officers at this levels had protective gear and drawn batons, but they would try to seek their target as precisely as possible.

4. If the third level failed, then the PSP’s riot squad from the fourth level showed up. They had full protective equipment and water cannons.

The approach appeared to be highly affective and there were few conflicts. Even more surprising, there were instances of self-policing among fans. Some people mentioned that one group of England fans attempted to assault the police, while the other English fans confronted the first group and prevented the attack.

This all suggests that a positive attitude towards the crowd is effective in reducing the number of incidents. It also appears that the facilitative relationship is effective in promoting self-policing amongst fans. Police-crowd interactions also determine the longer relationships between the police and crowds. The big question is, could these findings be extended to other settings? The writers think that it should be possible, but that one needs to keep in mind that one crowd isn’t the other crowd. As mentioned before, the police needs to have information and intelligence of the social identities of the groups involved in the crowd. So the police should know what the groups’ aims and notions of legitimacy are.

Summary of the article On crowds by Van de Sande (2005)

The writer of this text doesn’t think that people will eventually lose their negative characteristics. Stupidity and crowd behaviour have existed throughout the most part of our history and he think that they will exist as long as there is mankind. That’s because they are part of human nature. The writer thinks we are in a calm time of crowd behaviour, but we will soon come in a more turmoil situation.

People have always been fascinated and willing to participate in crowds and this fascination probably has caused many misperceptions about crowds. People often draw wrong conclusions out of true data, because they are more motivated to reach quick and welcome conclusions than the unfriendly truth they need to put in more effort for. If people don’t have the true facts, they often make up a plausible truth about the statements. One important bias is the observer bias. When people see something happen, they try to seek the causes for the behaviour of the person they are observing, because this person is the most salient to us. The actors look at their surroundings to find causes, because the situation is the most salient for him. Observers looking at the crowd will see the as a causal factor for conflict, while the crowd will see the surrounding, like the government, as a causal factor. The observer bias is often accompanied by thee Fundamental attribution error. This refers to the tendency of humans to seek the causes of behaviour in characteristics of persons instead of in the context a person is in. another common bias is the self-serving bias. This means that a person wants to maintain a positive image of himself/herself and his/her group. Another bias is that people make simple inferences. Causes of behaviour are ascribed to factors a person is aware of. These are often unstable and obvious factors. These four biases and some other ones create a certain idea that people have about crowds. These ideas are that crowds are seen as uniform in their behaviour and as a unity, crowd behaviour is seen as primitive and irrational, crowd action is seen as negative, the influence of personality is overestimated, the influence of situational and physiological factors is underestimated and the believe that behaviour should be accounted for by one theory.

History, types and occurrences

Crowds could be found in ancient Greece, Egypt and Persia and also during the Middle ages and modern times. Their occurrences are diverse. The different occurrences throughout history can be found on page 9 of the book. There have been crowds that can also be found today, there have been crowds against rulers, classifications, sport, economy and poverty. But our knowledge on crowds is incomplete and may be incorrect on some points. There are conflicting descriptions and facts about crowds in different sources. An account about what happened isn’t always correct. A person might be biased by something. There is a difference in the amount of data that is available between the different ages. Also, it’s hard to figure out how reliable the data on crowds of ancient times is. The amount and quality of the information that we have is variable and we also need to integrate the information that we do have into what we already know. However, people tend to judge historical facts in the light of their present situation and so the smaller the common sense for the information. People now think differently about a certain thing than people in history did. The ease with which information can be spread differs between modern and historical times. Because of all these differences, it’s difficult to interpret the historical information that we have.

Regularities in crowd behaviour

It seems that history has its logic and periodicity in human history has been studied by many. Toynbee stated that the rise and fall of civilisations occurred in regularity and that a civilization didn’t survive because of the inability to respond to religious and moral challenges. However, a person must have reliable and complete historic sources to detect whether there have been regularities. Examples of these historic resources are newspapers, which have only existed in recent times. With the help of newspapers, one researcher has looked at the instances of violence in France from 1830 to 1960 and he has discovered that the mean number of years between peaks (a lot of violence) was approximately 25 years. You can see the figure on page 12 of the article. This same time of research was performed in the Netherlands and there it was also found that the mean number of years between peaks was 26. This is quite remarkable, but one must remember that this pattern maybe only holds for western European countries and maybe even just these two countries. The regularity that has been found has to be proved valid, but some explanations for the regularity can be suggested. For instance, the interval of 25 years is suggestive of a generation effect. It’s not weird to believe that each generation has a cause that it wants to propagate. Another explanation is that the competence of governments and police forces to deal with misbehaved citizens becomes forgotten in calm periods. Maybe every 25 years officials need to find new strategies and tactics to deal with citizens.

Names

Crowd phenomena have different names. Large groupings of people are often called crowd, mass, mob, horde, huddle and meute. We also have names from the animal world: herd, pack and flock. Names for crowd phenomena can also be derived from the military world: army, cohort, squad and body. There are also names that imply a disposition in the group (examples of negative ones): plebs and scum. Some names imply a form of organization, like congregation, nation, public, audience and party. Each name seems to point to a different type of grouping and most of us are ware of these differences. We have also names for the activities that these groups undertake: riot, revolution, demonstration, strike, looting and panic.

Crowd behaviour

Some scientists don’t want to use the term crowd behaviour, because the definition of a crowd are not clearly defined. They rather use the term collective behaviour. The lack of a clear definition of what crowds are or aren’t leads to misrepresentation about crowd behaviour. That’s because many writers concentrate on certain classes of crowd behaviour and not on all. Writers that normally use the term collective behaviour, are concerned with organized and institutionalized forms of crowd behaviour, like protest movements. Results of studies can vary because this lack of definition. Also, most scientific studies focus on the more sensational incidences of crowd behaviour, that involve causalities. Most crowd gatherings are peaceful and the conclusions on the sensational crowd can be misleading. Is it possible to find a definition of crowds that takes these different types of crowds into account?

Another thing that might be taken up into the definition of crowds is the lower boundary of participants a crowd should have. Can two people form a crowd? Some studies have looked at crowds that involved 5 or 6 people. It seems that rather small groups can act in a crowd-like fashion and this suggests that crowd-like behaviour depends upon the crowd-like context and embeddedness in a crowd. And also, is there an upper limit? The answer to this last question is no, but it seems weird that the whole population of the world would gather in one big crowd. It appears that only any size will do for a crowd, but small groups (from 2 to 10 people) will only show crowd-like behaviour in a larger crowd-like context or in special situations. Larger crowds create their own contexts. What is important in the definition of crowds, is the co-presence of members. People really have to be at the same space and time in order to be seen as a crowd.

In crowds, normal rules of behaviour partly lose their power and new and simple norms and organisations emerge. Many sociologists state that crowd behaviour is emerging behaviour, because the norms and organisations emerge during the interaction of the crowd. Van Sande has his own definition of crowds: ‘crowds are impermanent groupings of people in one place and time where the usual norms and organisation forms have lost at least part of their power’ (page 17 of the article).

Scientists have long debated whether a crowd is a unity or a aggregation. The view that the group is a unity is the oldest view. This view holds that a group makes its plans and reactions as a unity. The question that arises is to what degree are these behaviours of crowds coordinated and what causes their coordination. Some say that crowds are not just random samples of a population, but that they consist of people who have some characteristics in common. People who are alike, also more attracted towards each other. This is called the similarity/attraction effect. When someone has a similar belief as you do, you will feel assured that your belief is correct. The chances of a conflict with this person will be small and you will also feel more united with this person. Crowds are more homogenous and they are therefore seen as more probable to feel and act in similar ways. Linguistic and methodological reasons also suggest that crowds can be seen as unities. The mental unity of a crowd is another compelling reason for seeing the crowd as a real unity.

Taxonomies

Different taxonomies in crowds can be distinguished. One taxonomy is based on entities. Entities that fall in the same class, form a category. Another taxonomy is the one of properties. This results in a dimensional system. All entities have certain values on every dimensions. The latter taxonomy is better for empirical work and it has no boundaries, so there is no confusion like there is in categorical taxonomies. An important question that arises is what should be the content of the taxonomy. Many different taxonomies can be made, some more convenient than others. Le Bon made a distinction between heterogeneous and homogeneous crowds and a further distinction in heterogeneous crowds was that of anonymous crowds and non-anonymous crowds. He also made a distinction between unorganized and organized crowds. In table 2 on page 21 his taxonomy can be found.

Brown made a classification system for collectives. He looked at four dimensions:

• Size (room size, public hall size, or too large)

• Congregation ( never, temporary-irregular and periodic)

• Polarisation (not focused, temporary focused and periodically focused on an object)

• Identification (never, temporary and enduring identification)

His taxonomy encompasses many different collectivities. His taxonomy of crowds can be found on page 21 in figure 3. According to Brown, corwds are at least public hall sized congregated collectivities that are polarized on a temporary-irregular basis and that are involving temporary identification. Many other taxonomies from other researchers have been devised. One is the taxonomy of Smelser, which is based on four components of social action and mention in another article. Brown’s taxonomy has had the most influence, but many have criticized his choice of dimensions. Many other dimensions have been proposed and some of which could be found in table 3 on page 22. The most difficult part in making dimensional taxonomies is the choice of appropriate dimensions. All depends on the goal of the taxonomist. Three dimensional taxonomies are even possible. A taxonomy can be based on the way situations are perceived. An example of a three dimensional taxonomy on perceived situation can been found in figure 4 on page 24.

Older theories

Throughout history, people have been fascinated by crowds. The books that were written about crowds before the scientific period, were purely for amusement. Mackey was one of these writers. In the second half of the 19^th century, Marx began writing his book ‘Das Kapital.’ He stated in this book that society was becoming more like a mass in every way: mass production, massive number of workers and mass capital. Marx saw a qualitative change produced by mass society. He therefore thought that if the workers would unite, they could bring about change in the power distribution. However, Marx didn’t describe crowds, he prescribed them. One of the consequences of his view was that riots were seen as a positive step. In the end, Marx had a big influence on society and social science. Especially sociology and economics were influenced by his work.

During the same period that Marx worked on his famous book, many other scientists were studying crowds and trying to come up with theories about crowds. Many criminologists and sociologists in Italy were interested in crowd behaviour. Sighele was a lawyer-criminologist and the first to write something about the crowd phenomena in Italy. His main focus was on complicity and he stated that complicity in normal crime, like in the mafia, was different from complicity in crowds. He thought that these differences were brought about by imitation, hypnotic suggestion and contagion. These three elements would work stronger in crowds, because crowds were seen as primitive. These processes would result in a crowd mind and this crowd mind was responsible for the behaviour of the crowd. Sighele thought that people in a crowd could not be held completely responsible for the offences they had committed and that not every person was susceptible in the same way to the crowd mind. He also mentioned that it were often the naïve ones that got caught and punished, instead of the cunning ones. This work led to some acquittals of strikers.

Le Bon’s theory on crowds kind of resembled the work of Sighele. His work was very popular and it has been an inspiration for some of the biggest dictators, like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. His ideas about the crowd were more based on ideology than on real observations. Le Bon believed that the crowd was a unity and he explained this unity through the mechanisms of a collective mind. Because of the group mind, people in a crowd act differently than they would have on their own. People in crowds become more emotional, more suggestible, less rational and more impulsive. Basically, crowds regress to a primitive level. People transform when they come in crowds. Even intelligent individuals regress to a lesser level when they come into crowds. He also states that people in crowds feel more powerful, less observable and less responsible and they therefore let their impulses take the upper hand. This was later called the deindividuation theory of Zimbardo. Le Bon also thinks that hypnosis and suggestion result in the loss of personality. Le Bon’s book was very popular, but it has been criticized. Most criticism is about the impossibility of the group mind and the transformation of crowds. People should keep in mind that crown phenomena could have changed in accordance with the cultural changes. Dekker compared crowds of the 17^th century to the ones of the 18^th century and he saw that crowds in fact had changed. Another thing Le Bon was criticized upon were his ideas about race. However, many theories that were formed in the first half of the 20^th century evolved around this group mind. So, the ideas by Le Bon were quite popular for some time.

Some other theories about crowd behaviour were more individualistic than the group mind theory. These theories did use the concept of group mind, but in these theories it wasn’t the crowd that reasoned or had emotions, it was the individual. Sometimes this was under the form of collective consciousness. One of these theories was the theory of imitation (Tarde). He saw imitation as a fundamental process and crowds could be seen as a gathering of people who imitated each other in different ways, like coming to the same place and showing the same behaviour. He also thought that more factors had an influence on crowd behaviour. However, he did see opposition as the negative of imitation, so he still kept the idea of imitation present. Eventually, imitation and opposition would merge into adaptation. This was also a form of imitation. Tarde was not clear about how imitation worked, but he stated that the somnambulism mechanism was a hypnotic state that could be held responsible for this. Ross agreed with the main ideas of Tarde about imitation, but he thought that suggestibility was the main mechanism behind imitation. In the first half of the 20^th century, Miller and Dollard also tried the explain the traits of crowd behaviour with imitation and learning. They called this imitation modelling. They also stated that the behaviour of crowds was repetitive and that this contributes to the homogeneity of crowds. They also developed the frustration-aggression hypothesis, which states that aggression is an automatic reaction to frustration. Allport opposed the idea of a group mind and he stated that individuals in crowds behave just as they would have alone, but just more extreme. He tries to explain this through the process of social facilitation, which means that action is facilitated through the presence of the crowd.

McDougall lay the foundations of evolutionary psychology. He thought that humans, just like animals, have primary driving forces and these driving forces were called instincts. These instincts are the foundations of our social and cultural behaviour. Cognition and other psychological faculties are only seen as helpers of instincts. However, many didn’t agree with this view on instincts, because it’s monocausal. This means that only one concept is seen as the cause for behaviour. Some of his ideas about instincts, like the idea that instinctive processes are integrated in psychological function (learned cues, more instincts activated at the same time and the tendency of instincts to become organised around a certain object) turned out to be pretty close to what we believe. What was also special about McDougall, was that he didn’t see the crowd as dangerous and criminal, but as a source of attraction for people. He doesn’t explain how certain instincts work, but he sees emotions as important forces of the process.

Freud also looked into collective behaviour and he agreed with a lot of things that Le Bon had to say. However, he did put more emphasis on elements of the psychoanalytical theory, like unconsciousness, hypnotism and impulsivity. Freud goes further than Le Bon by presenting an analysis of the causation of group processes. Freud thinks that people in crowds can shed their defence mechanisms. This is the same as repression in psychoanalytical theory. The behaviours that an individual shows in crowds are unconscious drives which the person would normally repress. According to Freud, the most central drive is the libido. This can be seen as the strong willingness to fuse with other people. However, this is not only in the sexual sense, but also in the unsexual one and the people don’t have to be real, they can also be imaginary. Libido also doesn’t have to refer to people, but it can also refer to inanimate things, the self and ideas. The non-sexual form of being in love is called identification. In crowds, the libido needs strong focus and it should focus on an identifiable entity, like a leader. If all the people in the crowd identify themselves with the leader, then this will lead to the unity of the crowd. Their ego-ideal is focused on the leader. The power of the superego (what is good and what is bad) is given to the leader. All of the above shows that Freud thinks that all mass phenomena strip a person of his or her self-control and independence. The group think that occurs is because of the libidinal ties to the group’s leader. The leader must have certain characteristics in order to become a leader. Freud thinks that narcissism is high in these leaders. The leader hasn’t loved anyone besides himself. When this leader is loved, he will be acknowledged in his standpoint and he will become even more stronger. This will, in turn, result in more identification from the group members.

Canetti also had a history in psychoanalytical theory and his ideas about the innate drives resembled those of Freud. Canetti stated that every person had a fear of being touched. Out of nowhere, this fear can change and become a wish for being touched and for touching others. This is what happens in crowds, according to Canetti. Being in a crowds means letting go of the fear. It can be seen as a discharge. The distances that are normal felt between individuals, are lessened in a crowd. Power differences disappear and therefore also a part of the culture of groups (one’s property and rank). Crowds do things differently than normal and that’s why destruction is quite common in crowds. Crowds always consider someone or something an enemy. There are two distinctions Canetti makes in crowds: closed crowds and open crowds. Closed crowds are for the temporary release of the restrictions that people have and these crowds do not want to change the state of things permanently. In closed crowds, there is not much destruction. These type of crowds also don’t grow that much, because they are only open for members of their culture. Open crowds are larger and open to anyone and they want to change the state of things in a culture. Examples of open crowds are revolutions and demonstrations. Closed crowds can turn into open crowds, but the other way around doesn’t really work. According to Canetti, a small dedicated group of people can be the beginning point of a crowd. This beginning point is called a Mass crystal by Canetti. The presence of crowd symbols can also result in crowd formation. According to Canetti, the crowd has four characteristics: there is equality in the crowd, the crowds wants to grow, the crowd needs a direction and the crowd wants to be very dense. Canetti offers a couple of ideas on how to control a riot. Because crowds need an enemy, it is a good idea to give in to some of their demands. That way, they will see you less as an enemy and the group will stop growing. A crowd that stops growing, will eventually perish. He also states that it would be wise to see things from the viewpoint of the crowd, in order to understand the emotions that dominate the crowd.

Participants, processes and motives

Many processes take place when people assemble in crowds. Some people wonder whether these processes are coupled to time. They seem to be in fact coupled to time in different ways. As mentioned before previously, it seems that there are periods of relative calm alternated by periods of unrest. Also, some crowd phenomena happen quite regularly. Examples of these are pilgrimages. There is even a regular pattern over the seasons of the year, which will be discussed later. Not all crowds last a day, some can last more days and still occur at a certain period of time, like the pilgrimage (Haj) to Mecca. It might be handy to place crowd phenomena on a dimension of development, which on the one end a sudden development and on the other the gradual development. Periods of civil unrest and crazes developed gradually and riots and panics appear to develop very quickly.

Many stage or phase models of crowd phenomena have been proposed. Van de Sande (the writer of this article) and Wortel developed a three stage model:

1. Planning: the whole period before the day that the crowd phenomenon takes place. The people act on their own or in small groups and they try to prepare for what there is to come. They make plans about what to do. They also want to get to know about the plans of others.

2. Mobilization: the day the crowd phenomenon takes place. People need to meet up with friends and discuss what’s happening that day.

3. Action: the main part of the day. The phenomenon at question takes place, like a demonstration or a parade.

This last phase often doesn’t offer problems, but sometimes tensions can form and problems can arise in crowds. These problems come in three different kinds. The first kind is that the chance of accidents is higher in crowds. People drink or get aroused and do foolish things. The second problem is that of fights. This usually occurs when an incident has taken place and the police takes measures that are not well liked by the crowd. The most dangerous problem is a problem in the locomotion. People can fall and others might stand on them. Also, people might get squashed. Some scientists also state there is another phase, the Violence phase. This is the phase in which antisocial behaviour takes place. Example of these are looting, fighting and aggressive behaviour. Luckily, the violence phase is seldom reached. Some researchers see the dissolution phase as a fourth phase. It is often thought that crowds are more violent later on the day. This is not really far-fetched, because the tendency towards violent crowd action gets stronger during the day. Some special cases of crowds concentrate on certain times of the day. Dancehall parties happen during the night and hooliganism happens around soccer games.

Researchers have also wondered whether there is a specific place that is related to crowd behaviour. A crowd can only be seen as one if the members are assembled in a certain space. It seems that a lot of crowds start when something attracting is happening. Examples of attracting forces are free concerts, accidents or chases. Places with a high valence are soccer stadiums, city squares with statues with symbolic meanings and pilgrimage places. These high valence places are more common in big cities than in the country. In big cities, it’s usually the centre of a town or a neighbourhood that forms the beginning stage for crowd action. In rural areas there are often not enough people to form a crowd before the attraction has gone away. Crowd action that does take place in rural areas is often planned ahead, like a musical festival. When people see something interesting, they will roam around it until they are held up by some push-factor (fear). This is the approach-avoidant conflict.

Structure

Crowds can take different shapes. The general stereotype we have about crowds are that of a large mass of people, tightly packed together. However, crowds are often dispersed over the available area. The form a crowd can take is obviously determined by the surroundings. In the animal world, there seems to be a nice formation of animal crowds. Swarms and shoals keep a certain natural formation. Crowds gathered in cities usually don’t have natural formations. Buildings and other things in the surrounds prevent this from happening. Also, usually people hold to the norms about public space, but for crowds these norms cease to work. Normally, people respect all kinds of territories, but people in crowds lose respect for territories. Usually, everyone wants to keep his or her personal space, especially when it comes to stranger, but in crowds, people can be really close to strangers. In everyday life, most people don’t try to attract attention and they keep up a good appearance, but in crowd events, it seems that they love this attention and are demanding it.

Many crowds gather to attend a performance and these crowds are called polarised (by Milgram and Toch). Because people want to see something special, they are directed towards this special attraction. There is a centre of attention and the further you are of this centre, the more you will get distracted by other things. These crowds will form arc-shaped assemblies. Non-polarized crowds are crowds that are without a common centre of attention. In these types of crowds, different groups interact at the same time. These crowds may be a bit more boring than polarized ones, because nothing attractive is happening. Specific people have a certain place in crowds. People who have some official function are placed in front of the crowd, while trouble makers try to hide somewhat in the crowd. Also, in peaceful crowds there are a lot of different people and all these people are not recognizable as nice or naughty. In violent crowds there are sheep and wolves. The wolves look for confrontation, while the sheep move to the outside of the crowd to watch what is happening. The structure of crowds can change once some action starts happening.

Communication and organisation are often restricted in crowds. Studies on violent crowds show that more than 90% of the people present are not involved in aggressive action. These people are labelled as onlookers or sheep. Approximately 10% acts aggressively and most of these people start if others have started. These are labelled the followers. Only 1% is really a rotten apple and arranges aggressive behaviour. These are labelled the hard core. Crowds do not exist of homogenous individuals.

Factors influencing crowd processes

There are some factors that seem to influence crowd processes or that are thought (by lay-people) to influence crowd processes. Many people think that long, hot summers influence crowd processes. Research has shown that riots and crimes happen more during summer than in winter. Temperature can have a direct and an indirect influence on this. Studies have shown a curvilinear relation between temperature and domestic political violence. Hot countries (30 degrees show a bit less domestic political violence than warm countries (24 degrees). Both show more violence than cold countries (17 degrees). One explanation that has been given is the opportunity explanation. People just tend to go out more when temperatures are high and going out facilitates crowd behaviour, interactions and aggression. Studies have also shown that hot temperatures have an influence on physiology, which results in greater irritability. One study in Holland showed that there are more riots in the summer months than the other months. A figure of this can be found on page 43 of the article. In the months May to October, there are more riots than in the other months.

The presence of static electricity (positive ions) has an influence on behaviour in crowd settings. It has the same influence as heat. It heightens irritability and negative affect. Aversive weather conditions like rain, wind and fog dampen the influence on aggression in crowds. This is because there are less participants in aversive weather conditions and because a shift of attention to other problems (cold feet, finding a sheltered place) takes place.

Another factor that has an influence on crowds is crowding. Crowding is seen as a negative experience and this causes negative affect. Negative affect is related to aggression and thus crowding is a factor that promotes aggression in crowds. Noise levels also increase aggressive behaviour under certain circumstances. These circumstances are that a person must be frustrated in a sense and he/she can’t control the amount of noise (the dog of a cop is barking, sirens of police car). Alcohol is also a factor that influences the behaviour of a crowd. Alcohol influences affective states and narrows attention. Alcohol is associated with aggression. The effects of alcohol are greater if you take more and the effects are mainly physiological, not due to suggestion. Some state that alcohol blocks response inhibitions and because of this, people who have drunk a lot of alcohol show social behaviours that are more extreme than normal. Drugs also seem to have these kind of effects. Another factor is the presence of aggressive cues in the environment. The mere presence of aggressive cues (like a visible gun) in the environment heightens people’s tendencies to aggress when a person is already frustrated or has a negative arousal. This is called the weapon effect. Police should think about displaying certain guns or other elements that might heighten aggressiveness in crowd members. Another factor that has influence on crowd behaviour is the use of cell phones and internet. Many people all over the world use cell phones. Whenever something interesting is going on, people call their friends or make a picture of it and place it on social media. Also, when a person gets into a fight, he can call his friends to come immediately. Internet can also be used as a mobilising force. A person can post the data and place for a protest rally. The attitudes and opinions are expressed on social media and a sense of community can be created.

Participants

Different happenings will attract different people. This is called the convergence hypothesis. This effect will be stronger when people better know what to expect from a happening. When the expectations are cleared, the composition of crowds will be more uniform. The media and hearsay can give more information about what to expect from the event. The types of people that are interested in crowd events differ according to the events planned. Many crowds present something sensational and new and so for every crowd, people who seek sensation and novelty can be expected to join. Research has found that people who participated in unruly behaviour score higher than the average person on aggression, sensation seeking and risk orientation.

Many studies have shown that the average age of crowd participants is 18 years. But there seems to be more to this over representation of young people in crowds. Some state that it’s not the age per se that determines the participation in the crowd, but the fact that youth characteristics are associated with aggression and the need for sensation. Also, younger people have not really build a life for them and so they don’t have much to lose (that’s at least what they think). No definite conclusion has been found on other factors, like social class.

Motives

There is much debate on what motivation consists of. In this text, motives are seen as factors that contribute to the formation of behaviour. Many scientists state that needs, drives, instincts and goals are the four psychological factors that motivate people. These four concepts have a temporary influence on behaviour. People can have different goals, needs, drives and instincts. All these different elements can be differed according to strength. Some needs, goals et cetera are continuously active and the strength of them determines which one gets the upper hand. Some motivations seem to be conscious, while others work in unconscious ways. Unconscious processes are important determinants of one’s ideas and therefore also of motivation. An implication of this is that actors and observers present accounts of the actor’s motivation that differ from each other.

When the achievement of a goal or a need is prevented, it’s referred to as frustration. Frustration can work as a motivator. People in crowds have their own interests and motivations. If the motivations are hindered, then the extra motivational factor of frustration can heighten levels of arousal and aggressive behaviour. Motivation plays a big role in crowds. One of the most important roles it plays is probably deciding whether one will attend a gathering that will probably become a crowd in the first place. Crowds gather different people and these people all have their own motives of joining crowds. Some scientists think that people who join crowds have the conscious or unconscious experience of missing something. The thing that they feel they are missing differs from person to person. It can be sensation, food, rights and so on. The things that can be missed fall in two categories: power motives and sensation motives. The former has to do with control. It can be about gaining control over others (dominance motives), gaining control over circumstances, over confusion, government or one-self. The power of a citizen often relates to his age and his position in society. Powerlessness and deprivation are often seen as the main sources of societal unrest. People can also have less serious motives to join crowds. These motivates fall into the category of sensation motives. Some people want new experiences or amusement. This motivation is also called internal motivation: a person doesn’t strive for an external goal, but for an egocentric one. People with these motives are often, but not always, more amused by the awful things that are happening in crowds. But overall, it seems that these people want to have a good time, especially when they go to festivals and sports games. Aggression is scarce in these events, but there are some conditions that can be hazardous. Some of these are boredom, alcohol and a too relaxed order enforcement.