Crowd Psychology

 

A crowd is a chaotic, but still not devoid of a certain organization, a large gathering of people. Most often, it occurs due to the fact that some circumstances, events, incidents, etc. attract mass attention. However, this is not the only thing that unites people in a crowd, because the general mental state, tension, emotions, motives and other features come into force. All this, including the behavioral reactions of social groups and individuals within them, is studied in a separate field – crowd psychology. This article is dedicated specifically to her. We will try to consider crowd psychology briefly, but as objectively as possible. The crowd: the definition and nature of its formation

For the first time, the famous French sociologist Gustave Le Bon tried to give a scientific explanation of the crowd phenomenon at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. His first articles on this topic were published in the Revue Scientific in 1885, and then his book The Psychology of Crowds was published, after which the ideas began to gain popularity in scientific circles. The very problem of studying crowds has become the object of attention of many scientists, including domestic ones (V. M. Bekhterev, G. M. Andreeva and others). The concept of "crowd", by the way, became part of social psychology when mass revolutionary unrest was taking place in the world (again, this is the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries). For this reason, at first, the crowd was understood as poorly organized proletarian demonstrations against the ruling class. Currently, psychology interprets the term "crowd" as follows: a crowd is a structureless and disorganized cluster of people united by a single object of attention and the same feelings about it. One of the distinguishing features of a crowd is the absence (or loss) of a conscious and clear common goal. A classic example of a crowd in social psychology is the gathering of people during traffic accidents, mass events, pickets, protests, rallies, natural disasters, military exercises, etc. Surely you yourself have been a member of a crowd or observed this phenomenon at least once in your life. Actually, it's simply impossible to ignore the so-called crowd effect, because people who find themselves in a crowd almost instantly convey their mood and behavioral reactions. They join this mass and become a part of it, even if it goes against their own principles and desires. Crowd behavior can be very unpredictable, and its moods can pose a potential threat to individuals and society as a whole, as well as to the infrastructure of localities (organizations, buildings, cultural facilities, etc.) By the nature of crowd formation, its composition can be easily determined. Usually the crowd consists of: - The instigators. This is the core of the crowd. It is made up of people who form it, set it up correctly and correctly, and use it for specific purposes.

- Participants. These are people who join the crowd and take an active part in its actions. Easily suggestible and sympathetic people (with a heightened sense of justice), ordinary people, and people who do not have a specific purpose for their current actions can be influenced by the crowd. It should be noted that the latter category often contributes to the creation of mass appeal, but does not actively participate in the activities of the crowd. The most dangerous participants are people who use the crowd to unleash negative energy, anger, and aggression.

Gustave Le Bon's research has made a huge contribution to crowd psychology. In many ways, it is thanks to them that this scientific field identifies two main mechanisms of its formation today. The first is a growing emotional contagion, and the second is rumors. The process of crowd formation itself takes place in several stages: - Forming the core of the crowd. Despite the fact that a crowd arises spontaneously, its formation is impossible without a core. Such a core can be instigators who are aware of their actions and pursue specific goals, or some kind of event (incident). Then banal curiosity begins to act, attracting even more people to the center. Interest leads to the fact that people join the crowd, and there can be as many such "infusions" as you like, and each of them heats up emotions, which is why people are attracted again and again.

- Circling. When a crowd has formed, tension begins to accumulate inside it, which makes people's perception of any external influences worse. There is a circular reaction and the excitement is getting stronger. This leads to the fact that the whole mass of people is ready to react with lightning speed to incoming information.

- The emergence of a new object of attention. The processes taking place inside the crowd (gossip, gossip, conversations, fueled by the intensity of feelings) change the cause that served as the source of the crowd, i.e. the core. The image created by the people themselves from the crowd comes into play. Everyone accepts him, and therefore he captures the attention and captures the feelings of people, as well as sets the direction for further action.

- Activation of individual people. As one might expect, the tension that has accumulated inside the crowd needs to be defused. It is achieved through additional stimulation of the crowd members. To do this, their imagination is warmed up, suggestion is made. The result is certain actions of people, and they may well defy logic and be unsafe. The instigators or a specific leader add fuel to the fire. This is how they strive to achieve their goal.

It is important to note that an already formed crowd can be very dangerous, especially if it is controlled (and inside) by aggressive people. The consequences of the actions of such a crowd can be the most devastating. Curbing an unruly crowd is extremely difficult. But let's not exaggerate, but watch a short video about how the behavior of even a small number of people can affect the behavior of one person. Types of crowd

After we have briefly reviewed the main characteristics of the crowd and the features of its formation, it's time to talk about what types of it exist in general. The psychology of the masses cannot be considered as something unchangeable, and then you will understand why. You can divide the crowd by type based on different criteria. The first sign is manageability, and the crowd can be: - Spontaneous – when its formation and manifestations occur by themselves and no one controls it.

- Led – when it is formed and directed by a specific leader.

The second sign of a crowd is behavioral reactions, and a crowd can be: - Occasional – it is based on an interest in some reason (event, incident) that arose spontaneously. This reason may be a fight, emergency, fire, etc.

- Conventional – formed due to interest in a mass event (concert, sports match, etc.) Such events are usually planned in advance, announced, advertised and expected by people. A conventional crowd can be controlled because it operates within a set set of rules. But management is always temporary, and the regulations themselves have no clear boundaries.

- Expressive – where people unite due to the same attitude towards events or incidents (rejoicing, condemning, protesting, indignant, etc.), an ecstatic crowd can be attributed to the same type, the excitement of the participants of which is transformed into ecstasy. Such crowds can be observed at concerts, carnivals, during religious events, plunging people into euphoria.

- Acting – forming due to emotional unity. A crowd of this kind is either already performing specific actions, or is preparing for them.

An active crowd, in turn, can also be divided into several types: - Possessive – participants are united by the struggle for material values such as goods, money, food, seats in public places, etc. This type of crowd can form during discount promotions, new products on sale, shortages of food, rush hours, bankruptcy of financial organizations, natural disasters, disasters and terrorist attacks.

- Panic – the participants are united by mass panic moods, motivating them to escape from danger. People's panic may be related to either a real (evacuation alert, etc.) or an imaginary (rumors of a terrorist attack, etc.) threat.

- Aggressive – the participants are united by aggression directed at a specific object. So, people can hate a specific person, a race of people, a subculture, a social movement, a structure, etc.

- Insurgent – the participants are united by dissatisfaction and indignation with the work of state structures and the government. Such mobs often become the most powerful weapon in the political struggle.

The variability of the crowd determines its characteristics such as the fickleness of the structure, the presence, absence and clarity of goals. Therefore, one type of crowd (as well as a subspecies) can easily turn into another. So crowd management (including crowd deactivation) requires an accurate understanding of the intricacies of its formation and behavior. For the same purposes, as well as for general development and one's own safety, one also needs to know the psychological properties of the crowd, which will be discussed in the article below. Psychological properties of the crowd

The psychology of the masses is explained by a whole range of features that are characteristic of large gatherings of people. These features relate to the most important areas of a person's personality: cognitive, moral, emotional-volitional, and temperament. Let's look at them briefly. In the cognitive sphere, we can distinguish the following properties: - Contagiousness and suggestibility. People in a crowd easily pick up on the general mood and are overly susceptible to suggestion. It is extremely easy to introduce a certain idea or image into their consciousness.

- Lack of awareness. Reason and logic are completely out of character for a crowd. She is controlled by emotions. Even in ordinary life, people don't always think rationally, let alone in situations where they succumb to the herd instinct. In a crowd, the unconscious begins to dominate the conscious.

- Imagery of thinking. In large and spontaneous crowds, people think figuratively – their thinking is extremely simplified. Because of this, subjective information ceases to differ from objective information, people do not perceive complex ideas, lose the ability to reason, discuss, delve into details and make choices. It turns out that events can only develop like this: the crowd either fully accepts the idea or rejects it. And, tellingly, more often people choose not truth and reality, but misconceptions and illusions.

- Conservatism and categoricality. Any crowd is always attached to the traditions (of a country, society, subculture, etc.) and negatively perceives all kinds of deviations and innovations. In addition, the judgments that she has accepted (or has been indoctrinated into) are not subject to any doubt or modification.

- Stimulating the imagination. People in the crowd begin to share not only common emotions, but also images. Due to their increased sensitivity, any information in their minds becomes extremely vivid. The mass imagination works in such a way that all events are seriously distorted (but this is also influenced by the way they are presented to the crowd).

Now let's touch on the moral sphere. Here, the psychology of the masses is manifested in the fact that the crowd actively demonstrates lofty feelings such as dedication, a sense of justice, devotion, religiosity (by the way, it is the latter that is very important, because it requires complete submission, intolerance and propaganda), etc. It can also be added that the crowd influences all its participants in such a way that they lose their identity, becoming faceless "cogs of the mechanism", controlled only by their instincts. A person in a crowd is suppressed by the environment, and the interests of this environment become more important than his own. As a result, he begins to gravitate towards arbitrariness and aggression, begins to feel impunity and permissiveness, and degrades intellectually and behaviorally. A little more can be said about the emotional-volitional sphere. This is where the following properties come into effect: - Increased sensuality. Due to reduced responsibility and hypersensitivity, the strongest unidirectional impulses appear in the crowd (they are shared by each participant in the crowd). It doesn't matter if these are positive or negative impulses, but the feelings people experience go to extremes. And not only a person's own interests and rationalism fade into the background, but also his instinct for self-preservation.

- Poor motivation. Despite the enthusiasm with which people in the crowd perceive events and ideas, their interest is short-lived and unstable. This can explain the lack of will and lack of judgment. Lack of responsibility. People in the crowd, as we said, feel impunity and permissiveness, which means they do not think at all about responsibility for their actions and deeds. Besides, it is this irresponsibility that makes people very cruel.

- Emotionality. Emotional resonance is one of the most striking behavioral properties of a crowd. The participants constantly exchange emotions with each other, the emotional charge, constantly fueled, reaches its peak, and it becomes almost impossible to control the manifestations of the crowd.

- Extremism. In the vast majority of cases, crowds are considered destructive, i.e. destructive. Passions and instincts that are hidden in ordinary life somewhere in the hidden corners of consciousness are released. That's why it's so common to see people in the crowd violently reacting to all the obstacles in their path.

As for the sphere of temperament, here we can only say that people in a crowd can adopt each other's temperament traits with incredible speed, but at the same time the perception of images and ideas always remains fickle. Also, in this regard, the crowd differs in that it is ready to act at any moment. And with that, it would be appropriate to move on to the final section of the article on the actions of the crowd. But we will not consider the options for her actions, but how these actions can be controlled. How to manage a crowd

Naturally, we will not consider all the subtleties of mass consciousness management in one article, but it is still possible to study this issue briefly (in general, we recommend reading books on crowd psychology – at the end we will offer a small list of them). The behavior of a crowd is influenced by various factors, including the events taking place, their direction and speed, the psychological state of people in the crowd, ideological influences, the form of their presentation, prejudices, illusions, superstitions and much more. We have already said that initially the crowd is uncontrollable and spontaneous, but nevertheless it will strive to obey the will of others. The leader she listens to may arise spontaneously or take control of her on his own. But such subtleties don't matter to the crowd, and it will obey anyway. The peculiarity of the crowd is that it is unquestioning, blind and instinctive in its subordination, as well as the fact that it will reject a weak leader and worship a strong one. It is possible and necessary to control a crowd harshly, and it is precisely this kind of power that serves as the most effective management tool for it. However, to manage a crowd, a person must have a set of special skills and qualities. Let's name the most important of them: - Charm. A leader should be charming and charismatic, and it does not matter what serves as the basis of charm and charisma – admiration for a person or fear of him, success in any field, wealth or the skillful use of psychological methods of influence. The main thing is that the crowd perceives the leader and listens to him.

- Mastery of crowd management techniques. Any competent leader should understand that achieving power over a crowd involves going through several stages. Initially, you need to infiltrate the crowd, then understand what worries it and how it lives, then gain trust and convince it that you share its interests, and only after that make attempts to manage. Plus, the leader needs to understand the mechanisms of the formation and "work" of the crowd.

- Activity. Leading a crowd is always acting, not thinking. To do this, he uses energy or willpower, which allows him to do things that others do not do.

- Moral substance. The most important goal of a leader is to develop an idea and sow its seeds in the mass consciousness. If we turn to history (watch documentaries or read books), we will see that very often at the top of power are people with beliefs that simply cannot be refuted or challenged, even if they are absurd, ridiculous or terrifying.

- Public speaking skills. A strong and authoritative person should realize that the crowd understands only direct, loud and strong phrases. At the same time, it is necessary to use different speech techniques: statements, repetitions, exaggerations, etc.

An interesting fact is that crowd management is almost always dual in nature: on the one hand, it is controlled by the leader, and on the other, by law enforcement agencies. The objectives of these parties are different: if the former uses the crowd to achieve their goals, the latter seeks to disband the crowd. To do this, law enforcement agencies use special methods, for example, they distract people's attention in order to separate them, deprive her of her leader, or awaken her mind. But this is the topic of another article, so let's summarize. A crowd can have a serious impact on its members, outsiders, political processes, and the life of society and the state. This is the main reason why many leaders (including political ones) often resort to using the crowd. But even ordinary people who can become part of a crowd at any moment should know the psychology of the masses and apply this knowledge in life. At a minimum, to have a general understanding of the crowd and the behavior of people in it, as a maximum, to know how the crowd can affect consciousness, and to be able to protect yourself if necessary.