Crowd psychology

“Crowd psychology” also known as “Mob psychology” is a branch of social psychology which appeared in the 19th century. This discipline might be considered as the genesis of studies on collective behaviour. Crowd psyhology’s main focus is to identify the behaviour of large groups and to understand in which situations the group caracteristics take over the behavioral features of the individual being part of that group. One of the first research on that matter was conducted by Gustave Le Bon, author of “Psychology of crowd” in 1895, which is the very publication we will shift our interest on in this essay.

Considering Le Bon’s book is quite dense, we will only focus on the first volume called “Soul of crowd” in the interrest of readability. Therefore, we will briefly approach different themes such as the general characteristics of crowds; sentiments and morality of crowd and finaly on ideas, reasoning power, imagination of crowds.

General characteristic of crowd

By design, a crowd can be described as a gathering of nondescript people, not at all driven by the individualities on the matter of nationalities, religions or even genders. On a psychology basis, a crowd can have an other meaning. On special circumstances a crowd can be seen as a unity in which one’s specificities are slowly erased in the name of an organised group with shared goal(s), feelings and thoughs. In order to be intitled that kind of behaviors, the crowd must be under the influence of strong emotions which will translate the mob into a form of unity, a psychological crowd.

As the psychological crowd is established, it gains some temporary global charateristics (which are shared by all psychological crowds) and some specific characteristics whose distribution are influenced by the setup of the group and the context of the crowd itself. In a crowd as we said earlier, the specifities of individuals are merged into the group and by that the individuality is removed “The heterogene is drown by the homogene”. The “common” qualities and skills explain why the crowd is unable of great and requiring acts. Being in a crowd can also generate new characteristics. For example the feel of being almighty can be explained by the lessened sense of responsability implied by being a part of a large group of anonym. We can also develop the example of the feeling of contagion is also significative, as each act or emotion is likely to be spread to the group.

Sentiments and morality of crowd

As mentioned earlier the crowd is almost exclusively driven by the unconscious. By all mean the crowd is ruled by urge. Usually the individual who feel such desires are able to repress them. Just the thought of being affected by the fallout of these urges is enough to convince him not to fall for them. In a few words the individual is capable of putting down reflexes whereas the crowd cannot. The group can sweep the whole spectrum of emotions but will always fall for immediate urges. It can’t accept something that’d be put between them and the accomplishment of said desire. Furthermore the number empowers it even more giving to the crowd the feeling that everything is possible. Whatever the feeling good or bad driven by the crowd, it displays a dual facet, both simple and powerfull. The violence of those feelings is worsened by the fact that  responsability is dissoluted.

For the morality of the crowd we should split the multiple definition of the term morality. The crowd is not driven by his morality if we define it as the permanent respect of the social laws and methodical repression of transgression toward theses social laws. The crowd is too impulsive and too irresponsable to face morality. However we notice the sudden apparition of certains qualities as abnegation, dedication, selffness or the desire of equality.

Ideas, reasoning power, and imagination of crowds

We can divise the ideas which appear in crowds in two groups. Firstly the accidental ideas which are sudden and temporary. They depend on the immediate context, from the moment. The second group are the fondamental ideas. They are a result of the environment, the heredity or even the opinion. Thoses ideas are stable, durable.

Futhermore it cannot be said that crowds are absolutely unable to think and that they can’t be influenced by any reasonning or thinking process. But complex reasonning are more often than not difficult to incept for them. That is because their logic sense is lessened at the sake of their imagination, as we will expend later on.

The fact that it is difficult for the crowd to think by its own also mean that they can’t have a critical mind. Therefore, we have to understand that it is complex for the crowd to distinguish between truth and falsehood, to evaluate anything. The judgements and opinion which are accepted by the crowd are not debate, they are imposed.

As it have been represented in the crowd, their sense of imagination is very powerful, active and developped. Snapshots, when they are evoked by an individual, an event or an accident prove to be deeply impactful on the crowd’s mind and can be as vivid as true facts, reality. Crowd as they are intellectualy fonctioning only throught snapshots won’t be impressed by anything else than those snapshots. The unreal has almost more grasp on them that reality. They have a remarquable talent as not being able to distinguish them.

Conclusion

Being in a crowd has an remarquable impact on our personality, behavior and reflexion. For example, we tend to minimise our responsability, our critcal mind or even our sentiment of responsability. By being in a crowd we are mean to be part of a whole, as it have positive and negative influence on us. Even if it may seem of the utmost importance to maintain our individuality some situation might impact us way more than we can handle.

Gustave Le Bon started to theorize about the behaviors and reflexions of people in crowd. This studies, even if they’ve been corrected and detailed since then, are still used nowadays, they were the prequel of further studies on the influence of group upon individual. Even if Gustave Le Bon was, as I discovered by reading his book, an archetype of the 19th century’s men, his work is still referential when it comes to approching crowd and group psychology.