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Crowd psychology, also known as Mob Psychology, is a branch of social psychology. Social psychologists have developed several different theories for explaining the ways in which the psychology of the crowd differs from and interacts with that of the individuals within it. Major theorists in crowd psychology include Gustave Le Bon, Gabriel Tarde, Sigmund Freud, and Steve Reicher. This field relates to the behaviors and thought processes of both the individual crowd members and the crowd as an entity. Crowd behavior is heavily influenced by the loss of responsibility of the individual and the impression of universality of behavior, both of which increase with the size of the crowd. The Occupy Movement, as well as the London Riots show the ongoing need for study of crowd phenomena. Given the potential security issues, this is an important field for continued research.

Origins of the Field
Modern crowd psychology emerged as a field of interest in mid-19th century France. With increased industrialization came increased separation between the working class and the social elite. The study of crowd psychology began primarily to address the real concern of mass social uprising. Psychologist and historian Hippolyte Taine’s view of the Revolutionary crowds in 1789 France also contributed to the development of the field. The founding of the Second International Workingmen’s Association lead to unprecedented worldwide strikes and demonstrations on Labor Day, which scared the new bourgeois elites and increased interest in the field. Additionally, Mobs were a major theme at the first international conference on criminal anthropology (criminology).

In 1841, Charles MacKay wrote his “Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”. However, it was in the latter half of the century that interest in the field gained momentum. The early 1890s saw the publication of many articles on the subject, starting with Scipio Sighele’s “La Folla Delinquente” (1891). In 1892, Gustav le Bon wrote "La Psychologie des Foules". Another essay was written in 1892 by the French provincial judge and early social psychologist Gabriel Tarde, and was later included in his collection L’opinion et la foule. These years of work inspired arguably the most influential early theorist on the subject, French physician and popular science writer Gustave Le Bon, to write "The Crowd” in 1895.  While crowds have existed since man began to gather, the study of the psychological underpinnings of the phenomenon is rather new. French intellectuals spent half of a century just getting the ball rolling on this field of study, and the 20th century ran with it.

Types of Crowds
While crowd psychology has largely focused on the negative aspects of crowds, not all crowds are volatile or negative in nature. Crowd action can serve as an important agent for social change. An example of this would be the sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement. It has been found that crowds can both reflect and challenge the held ideologies of their sociocultural environment. They can also serve integrative social functions, creating temporary communities.

Crowds can be active (mobs) or passive (audiences). Active crowds can be further divided into aggressive, escapist, acquisitive, or expressive mobs. Aggressive mobs are often violent and outwardly focused. These are the ones you hear about on the news – the L.A. Riots of 1992, football riots, etc. Escapist mobs are characterized by panic. A large number of people trying to get out of a (usually dangerous) situation. These types of mobs are why it is illegal to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Acquisitive mobs describe the looting after Hurricane Katrina. They occur when large numbers of people are fighting for limited resources. Expressive mobs is the catch-all term for any other large group of people gathering for an active purpose. Civil disobedience, rock concerts, and religious revivals all fall under this category.

Gustave Le Bon
Le Bon held that crowds existed in three stages: Submergence, Contagion, and Suggestion. During Submergence, the individuals in the crowd lose their sense of individual self and personal responsibility. This is quite heavily induced by the anonymity of the crowd. Contagion refers to the propensity for individuals in a crowd to follow the predominant ideas and emotions of the crowd unquestioningly. In Le Bon’s view, affect is capable of spreading between “submerged” individuals much like a disease. Suggestion refers to the period in which the ideas and emotions of the crowd are primarily drawn from a shared racial unconscious. This behavior comes from an archaic shared unconscious, and is therefore uncivilized in nature, and is limited by the moral and cognitive abilities of the least capable members. Le Bon believed that crowds could be a powerful force only for destruction. Additionally, Le Bon and others have indicated that crowd members feel a lessened sense of legal culpability, due to the difficulty in prosecuting individual members of a mob.

Le Bon’s idea that crowds foster anonymity and generate emotion has been contested by some critics. Clark McPhail who points out that some studies show that "the madding crowd" does not take on a life of its own, apart from the thoughts and intentions of members. Norris Johnson, after investigating a panic at a 1979 The Who concert concluded that the crowd was composed of many small groups of people mostly trying to help each other. Additionally, Le Bon’s theory ignores the socio-cultural context of the crowd, which some theorists argue can disempower social change. R. Brown disputes the assumption that crowds are homogenous, suggesting instead that participants exist on a continuum, differing in their ability to deviate from social norms.

Freudian Theory
Sigmund Freud's crowd behavior theory primarily consists of the idea that becoming a member of a crowd serves to unlock the unconscious mind. This occurs because the super-ego, or moral center of consciousness, is displaced by the larger crowd, to be replaced by a charismatic crowd leader. McDougall argues similarly to Freud, saying that simplistic emotions are widespread, and complex emotions are rarer. In a crowd the overall shared emotional experience reverts to the least common denominator, leading to primitive levels of emotional expression. This organizational structure is that of the “primal horde” – pre-civilized society - and Freud states that one must rebel against the leader (re-instate the individual morality) in order to escape from it. Moscovici expanded on this idea, discussing how dictators such as Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin have used mass psychology to place themselves in this “horde leader” position

Theodor Adorno criticized the belief in a spontaneity of the masses: according to him, the masses were an artificial product of "administrated" modern life. The Ego of the bourgeois subject dissolved itself, giving way to the Id and the "de-psychologized" subject. Furthermore, Adorno stated the bond linking the masses to the leader through the spectacle is feigned: "'When the leaders become conscious of mass psychology and take it into their own hands, it ceases to exist in a certain sense. [...] Just as little as people believe in the depth of their hearts that the Jews are the devil, do they completely believe in their leader. They do not really identify themselves with him but act this identification, perform their own enthusiasm, and thus participate in their leader's performance. [...] It is probably the suspicion of this fictitiousness of their own 'group psychology' which makes fascist crowds so merciless and unapproachable. If they would stop to reason for a second, the whole performance would go to pieces, and they would be left to panic.'"

Deindividuation Theory
Deindividuation theory argues that in typical crowd situations, factors such as anonymity, group unity, and arousal weaken personal controls (e.g. guilt, shame, self-evaluating behavior) by distancing people from their personal identities and reducing their concern for social evaluation. This lack of restraint increases individual sensitivity to the environment and lessens rational forethought, which can lead to antisocial behavior. More recent theories have stated that deindividuation hinges upon a person being unable, due to situation, to have strong awareness of their self as an object of attention. This lack of attention frees the individual from the necessity of normal social behavior.

American social psychologist Leon Festinger and colleagues first elaborated the concept of deindividuation in 1952. It was further refined by American psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who detailed why mental input and output became blurred by such factors as anonymity, lack of social constraints, and sensory overload. Zimbardo’s famous Stanford Prison Experiment is a strong argument for the power of deindividuation. Further experimentation has had mixed results when it comes to aggressive behaviors, and has instead shown that the normative expectations surrounding the situtaions of deindividuation influence behavior (i.e. if one is deindividuated as a [Ku Klux Klan|KKK] member, aggression increases, but if it is as a nurse, aggression does not increase).

A further distinction has been proposed between public and private deindividuation. When private aspects of self are weakened, one becomes more subject to crowd impulses, but not necessarily in a negative way. It is when one no longer attends to the public reaction and judgement of individual behavior that antisocial behavior is elicited.

Convergence theory
Convergence theory holds that crowd behavior is not a product of the crowd, but rather the crowd is a product of the coming together of like-minded individuals. Floyd Allport argued that “An individual in a crowd behaves just as he would behave alone, only more so.” Convergence theory holds that crowds form from people of similar dispositions, whose actions are then reinforced and intensified by the crowd.

Convergence theory claims that crowd behavior is not irrational; rather, people in crowds express existing beliefs and values so that the mob reaction is the rational product of widespread popular feeling. However, this theory is questioned by certain research which found that people involved in the 1970’sriots were less likely than nonparticipant peers to have previous convictions.

Critics of this theory report that it still excludes the social determination of self and action, in that it argues that all actions of the crowd are born from the individuals’ intents.

Emergent Norm Theory
Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian put forth the idea that norms emerge from within the crowd. Emergent Norm Theory states that crowds have little unity at their outset, but during a period of milling about, key members suggest appropriate actions, and following members fall in line, forming the basis for the crowd’s norms.

Key members are identified through distinctive personalities or behaviors. These garner attention, and the lack of negative response elicited from the crowd as a whole stands as tacit agreement to their legitimacy. The followers form the majority of the mob, as people tend to be creatures of conformity who are heavily influenced by the opinions of others. This has been shown in the conformity studies conducted by Sherif and Asch. Crowd members are further convinced by the universality phenomenon, described by Allport as the persuasive tendency of the idea that if everyone in the mob is acting in such-and-such a way, then it cannot be wrong.

Emergent Norm Theory allows for both positive and negative mob types, as the distinctive characteristics and behaviors of key figures can be positive or negative in nature. An antisocial leader can incite violent action, but an influential voice of non-violence in a crowd can lead to a mass sit-in.

A major criticism of this theory is that the formation and following of new norms indicates a level of self-awareness that is often missing in the individuals in crowds (as evidenced by the study of deindividuation). Another criticism is that the idea of emergent norms fails to take into account the presence of existent sociocultural norms. Additionally, the theory fails to explain why certain suggestions or individuals rise to normative status while others do not.

Social Identity Theory
Social identity theory posits that the self is a complex system made up primarily of the concept of membership or non-membership in various social groups. These groups have various moral and behavioral values and norms, and the individual’s actions depend on which group membership (or non-membership) is most personally salient at the time of action. This influence is evidenced by findings that when the stated purpose and values of a group changes, the values and motives of its members are shown to also change. Crowds are an amalgam of individuals, all of whom belong to various conflicting groups. However, if the crowd is primarily related to some identifiable group (Christians, Civil Rights Activists, Packers Fans, etc.) then the values of that group will dictate crowd action. In crowds which are more ambiguous, individuals will assume a new social identity as a member of the crowd. This group membership is made more salient by confrontation with other groups (police, rival team’s fans, etc.) – a relatively common occurrence for crowds.

The group identity serves to create a set of standards for behavior – for certain groups violence is legitimate, for others it is unacceptable. This standard is formed from stated values, but also from the actions of others in the crowd, and sometimes from a few in leadership-type positions.

A concern with this theory is that while it explains how crowds reflect social ideas and prevailing attitudes, it does not explain the mechanisms by which crowds enact social change.

Conclusion
The study of crowd behavior can tell us much about social change and collective decision making. The transitive nature of crowds can aid in the study of in-group bias formation. Many different theories have emerged over the century to explain crowd behavior, and we have yet to reach a consensus on an explanation. Each theory speaks to different mechanisms of crowd action, and likely two or more theories interact to explain the mechanisms of crowd behavior. Regardless, applying theory and research to crowd behavior is an important step in mitigating the negative implications of crowds while cultivating the social benefits of integrated, cohesive group action.