COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR

PRESENTED BY
Dr PAVAN KUMAR K

C/P Ms PRIYA
12-11-2011
 Definition

The term Collective behavior was used by Robert E

Park.

1.Ian Robertson.“Collective behavior refers to

relatively spontaneous and unstructured ways of
thinking, feeling and acting on the part of a large
number of people”.

2.N.J.Smelser. “The relatively unorganized patterns of

social interaction in human groups”.
 Characteristics

 Centers around a phenomenon which is essentially

temporary in nature.
 Not regulated by any set of rules or procedures
 So it becomes unpredictable also.
 At the spot of accident, street fight etc (unusual
events), people gather without any prior planning
and don’t know one another.
 This anonymity encourages them to behave in an
irresponsible manner.
 Rumors and misinformation normally run rampant
during the course of collective behavior
 Behavior is triggered not only by rumors but also
guided by beliefs, hopes, fears, enmity and hatreds.
 Collective behavior, may, in certain respects have a
close relationship with cultural pattern of the
community.
 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

 A social movement consists of a large number of

people who have joined together to bring about or
resist social or cultural change”. (Ian Robertson).
 Anna Hazare movement, Naxalite movement, “Save
the environment” movement
 Significance – serve as the source of new values and
norms and even sweeping changes in human history.
 Social movements begin as collective
behavior but over time become firmly
established as a social institution.
eg.labor movement, religious sects etc
 Theories of Collective behavior

 Smesler. “ essentially an attempt by people to alter

their environment particularly when they are under
conditions of uncertainty, threat or strain”.
 In conditions of fear, anxiety, boredom, feeling of
exploitation, etc people feel highly stressful and want
to change them.
 The form of collective behavior largely defines on
how they define the situation that is bothering them.
 Smesler speaks six basic “necessary and sufficient”
grounds for collective behavior to occur
 Structural Conduciveness. Structure of society may
encourage or discourage.
rural societies less prone than complex urban
societies.
 Structural Strains. Poverty, conflict, injustice,
discrimination, uncertainty about future, deprivation
..etc encourage collective effort to relieve problem.
 Growth and spread of Generalized Belief. Helps
people ‘to identify the source of threat, the route of
escape, or the adventure of fulfillment’.
 Precipitating Factors. Serve to confirm people’s
suspicion and uneasiness that already exist.
 Mobilization for Action. Precipitating factors or
sometimes leaders encourage people to organize
themselves for action.
 Operation of Social Control. Leadership, police
power, mass media, govt authority etc may be strong
enough to suppress or may be counterproductive and
may magnify
 Smesler’s theory provides analyzing collective
behavior.
 Fads, fashions, and crazes, can be interpreted as a
response to the conditions of boredom;
 Panics to conditions of threat;
 Riots to strain and resentment.
 Categories of collective behavior

 Two categories
crowd behavior
mass behavior
 A crowd is a set of people who are physically close
together and share a common concern.
-spectators watching cricket match
 A mass behavior involves action by people with common
concerns who may or may not have met each other.
-large no of people watching the same game at home on
TV
 Mass and Mass behavior

 Hoult. “relatively large number of persons, spatially

dispersed and anonymous, reacting to one or more of
the same stimuli but acting individually without
regard to one another”
 Mass behavior is the unorganized, unstructured,
uncoordinated, individually chosen behavior of
masses.
 Fans of film star celebrating the release of new movie
of their favorite actor in their own diverse ways.
Mass behavior Crowd behavior

More enduring and arises from the sum Very brief and confined to an event at a
total of many individual actions. particular spot and acted out by people
as a group.

Scattered over a vast area and don’t People are gathered in a place to
have direct communication with one provoke immediate interaction.
another.

Many people acting individually rather

than as a group, move in the same
direction.
 SOME BASIC FORMS OF MASS BEHAVIOR
 Rumours
 Panics
 Mass hysteria
 Fashions
 Fads
 Rumours

 A rumour is a rapidly spreading report unsubstantiated

by fact – Horton and Hunt
 A rumour is information that is transmitted informally
from anonymous sources– Ian Robertson
 The spreading of rumour itself is a form of collective
behavior.
 A rumour may be true, false or a combination of truth
and falsehood.
 Its origin is difficult to trace out and verify.
 Transmitted outside the formal communications system
of TV, govt announcements, radio, news papers.
 Rumours arise where people are deprived of
information or where they do not trust the official
information they are given.
 People want information and rumour fills their need
if dependable information is lacking.
 When there is social strain, rumours flourish.
 Rumours can ruin reputations, discredit
causes and undermine the morale.
 Manipulation of rumour is a common
practice in propaganda.
 Rumour nothing more than the desire for interesting
conversion of the enjoyment of salacious story.
 People spread rumour if it will justify their dislikes
or relieve their emotional tensions.
 Rumour changes continuously as it spreads.
 Cant be dispelled by truthful pronouncements
 Terminated when the situation in which it arose no
longer problematic.
 Rumours that are persistent often become legends
and would be there for generations.
 Fashions and Fads

 Arise mostly spontaneously and tend to disappear

after some time.
 May become permanent component of culture.
 FASHIONS

 “currently accepted styles of appearance and

behavior”—Ian Robertson.
 When some style is termed as “fashion”, it is taken
for granted that it is temporary and will ultimately
replaced by a new style.
 Seen in modern complex societies than in traditional
societies
 Automobile paintings, college students’ hair and
dress styles, for example change
with time.
 Why fashions arise and spread?

 1. ‘novelty is considered desirable rather than

threatening’.
 2. a means of indicating one’s social characteristics to
others.
 3. originates in the desire to decorate one’s body for
greater sexual attractiveness—koenig(1984).
 4.In the open ‘class society’ with considerable mobility
that fashion is important.
 5.No rule as such that fashions always originate among
the upper class or elite and spread downwards to middle
and lower classes. originate at any class levels. eg blue
jeans.
 6.A new fashion is generally more likely to be
accepted if it does not differ too much from existing
fashions.
 7.Spread very fast among people who always wish to
be up-to-date in all respects.
 8.May involve almost all aspect of group life
manners, the arts, literature, philosophy,
methodologies of science.
 Fashions are not entirely silly or whimsical.
Represents the dominant interests and values of a
society at a particular time.
 Fashion-changes often reflect changes in needs,
attitudes and values.
 The Fads

 A fad is a trivial, short lived variation in

speech , decoration or behavior
(Horton and Hunt).
 A fad is a temporary form of conduct that is followed
enthusiastically by a large number of people
( Ian Robertson)
 A fad often provides a means of asserting personal
identity.
 Way of showing worth noticing and one is a little
different from everyone else.
 Fads appeal more to young and rich people who can
afford to spend for the fads.
 Fads differ from fashions in that they are more
temporary and mildly scorned by majority of
population.
 “Faddists” follow a fad simply they are “caught by it”
and not because it has intrinsic value.
 While those who are “fashionable” are more
positively regarded till at least the fashion lasts.
 Panics

 A form of collective behavior in which a group of

people, faced with an immediate threat, engages in
an uncoordinated and irrational response—I
Robertson
 Attempt to flee from an imagined or real threat—
Wallace and Wallace.
 In the event of panic, people’s behavior is
uncoordinated, create fears and dangers, cooperative
social relations break down and people’s action are
not appropriate for goals they wish to achieve.
 Panics contd

 Sudden crisis(flood, earth quake, bomb blast) 

people unprepared to face it  develop intense
tension and great fear  tries to escape 
cooperation breaks  situation becomes more
threatening.
 Mass hysteria

 A form of collective behavior involving widespread

and contagious anxiety caused by some unfounded
belief. ( Ian Robertson)
 Some of irrational, compulsive belief or behavior
which spreads among people. ( Horton and Hunt )
 Generalized anxiety about some unknown situation.
(Wallace and Wallace)
 Rumours play an important role in the development
of hysteria and panic.
 In extreme cases mass hysteria can result in panic, if
source of anxiety is believed to be sufficiently close
and threatening.
 The Martian Invasion of Earth. In 1938 H.G Well’s
novel “war of the world” produced amazing reaction
among its listeners. Its main result was mass hysteria
and even outright panic. Of 6 million people who
heard the broadcast 1 million got panicked and
started going west with their cars.
 Crowd behavior

 Virtually stems from the crowd situations

 “A crowd is a temporary collection of people reacting
together to stimuli” Horton and Hunt
 Crowd is a collectively of substantial number of
individuals responding within a limited space to
some object of attention
 A group of people gathered in hall for
watching cultural activities.
 Characteristics of crowd

 1.Suggestibility: people in crowd are highly

suggestible. An individual in crowd is susceptible to
interstimulation of suggestions. Emotions and
excitements always add to suggestibility.
 2.Anonymity: the individuals feel their identities will
remain anonymous and relatively insignificant and
unrecognized  irresponsible behavior
 3.Spontaneity: a crowd behaves spontaneously and is
highly temporary in nature  impulsive.
 4.Invulnerability: lacks self-consciousness. personal
identities not recognized  behave freely without
inhibitions and not bother about social control
mechanisms.
 Types of Crowd

 1.Casual crowds: most loosely structured, little

interaction with one another, least emotional
involvement and easily dispersed.
eg: crowd at the spot of car accident.
 2.Conventional crowds: deliberately planned and
relatively structured. Called ‘conventional’ as its
behavior follows established social norms and
conventions. Eg: gathering for a socially sanctioned
purpose.
 3. Expressive Crowds: for purpose of letting out
emotions. to permit the personal gratification of their
members. Eg: holi festival, ‘camp fire day’ at end of
N.C.C. camps.
 4. Acting Crowds: focuses its attention on specific action
or goal. Members angry at some force or person outside
the group and want to act against it. action mobbing,
rioting or engaging in other extreme forms of behavior.
least common but most significant.
 5. protest crowd: people gathered to protest a political,
social, cultural or economic issue like in demonstration,
march, rally etc.
 Theories of Crowd behavior

 1. The Contagion Theory: Gustave Le Bon in 1895.

 “collective mind” forms in a crowd and with this the
conscious personality of the individual members almost
disappear.
 People susceptible to ‘suggestion’ in crowds,
 People ‘melt into the group and become anonymous’.
 Less capable of rational thought and since nobody
notices what anyone says or does.
 Collective belief is formed from “contagious growth of a
belief that is suggested and spread throughout the
crowd”.
 Le Bon was aristocrat and disliked crowds and he
firmly convinced “ Isolated, he may be a cultivated
individual ; in a crowd, he is a barbarian ; a creature
acting by instinct”; he claimed civilization achieved
by small intellectual aristocracy never by crowds
‘philosophy of number’
 All others of suggestibility, contagion nature of
growth, less critical and more irresponsible behavior
of crowd told by Le Bon accepted but there is no
‘group mind or collective mind’ with its independent
existence.
2. The Emergent Norms Theory: Turner and Killian (1972).
 Most accepted theory
 Supporters of this theory suggest ‘contagion theory’
exaggerates the irrational and purposeless components
of crowd behavior. Crowds are not entirely like-minded.
 Turner argues considerable differences in motives and
actions of crowd members.
 Some more impulsive, while some passive supporters.
Some paly role of onlookers, some opportunistic
individuals seek own gratification from crowd situation.
 The unanimity of the crowd is only an illusion.
 Contd..

 “crowds are guided by norms, just as other groups in

society are, but the norms are devised as the crowd
goes along rather than assumed from the beginning
as they are in most social situation”
 “Norms are improvised on the spot” the crowd itself
evolves the norms and then enforces them on it
members.
 MOBS AND RIOTS as forms of crowd behavior

 MOBS
 A mob is an emotionally aroused crowd bent on
violent action – I.Robertson
 Mobs have their own leaders and ‘ are single minded
in their aggressive intent’
 Has its own limited but immediate objectives and
concentrates on its realization.
 Two types of mobs

 1.The Purposive and Active Mobs. deliberately planned

by some interested parties to achieve their own pre-
decided purpose.
 Eg: opponents of political leader purposefully attacking a
big rally
 2. The Confused and Random mobs. Not deliberately
created nor attempt on the part of leaders to give
direction to their followers.
 Due to confusion a crowd may get converted in to mob
 Eg: sudden outbursts of people and
unanticipated communal disturbances
 The Riots

 A riot is the action of a violently aggressive,

destructive crowd– Horton and hunt.
 Less structured, less purposive and less unified
compared to mobs
 Mobs usually have some specific target, attacking a
police vehicle, burning down a foreign embassy etc
 Riot involves behavior which has the main objective
of creating nothing but disorder.
 Audience

 An audience is a crowd with centered on stimuli

outside themselves –Horton and Hunt.
 People assemble at a particular place to share some
common or similar interest.
 Expected to conform to the universally accepted code
of con duct. For eg people are not expected to talk
aloud when speaker talking on stage and expected to
clap at appropriate times only.
 But this code differs with type of audience.
 Audience contd..

 There may be significant 2-way stimulus and response even

though audience situation discourages communication.
 The most successful performers cultivate a 2-way
communication which makes the performer a part of group.
 Members of the audience participate in communication when
they cheer, applaud, boo, whisper, mutter, doze, or snore
during performance,
 Social contagion still operates here, mild during a religious
discourse and highly expressive at a political rally or a sports
event.
 Audiences may become unruly and may even becomes
riotous.
 Types of audience

 Kimbal Young- 3 kinds

 A) Information seeking: listening to scholarly
lecture.
 B) Recreation Seeking Audience: watching a match,
a theatre to witness a drama
 C) Conversional Audience: attending meetings
wherein they can dispel some doubts they have
regarding some beliefs or ideologies etc, eg: religious
discourses or political meetings
 Disaster and disaster behavior

 An accident or natural catastrophe that causes many

deaths and much property destruction.
 Behavior that occurs during and after a disaster is
called ‘disaster behavior’
 During impact, individuals confront and cope with
fear and come up with socially and collectively
reasoned solutions.
 Few people experience emotional shock
 Grief, depression and psychological
consequences do occur.
 Publics and public opinion

 Most of the forms of collective behavior involve some

amount of direct contact and contagion among the
participants.
 Individuals are mostly dispersed and likely to have their
own individual opinions and decisions.
 Unorganized aggregation of persons ‘who are bound
together by common opinions, desires, but are too
numerous for each to maintain personal relations with
others’.(Ginsberg)
 A public is a substantial number of people with a shared
interest in some issue on which there are
differing opinions– Ian Robertson.
 ‘Public’ doesn’t mean entire population as there is no
issue for which entire population is interested.
 Public would for a single issue such as secularism, love
marriage, reservation to SC and ST.
 It’s a dispersed crowd with communication with each
other not directly but indirectly through mass media.
 More rational than those of crowd and doesn't act
together.
 Publics are created by cultural complexity. In simple
culture there would be few, but complex cultures
produces many interest groups and publics.
 Public opinion

 Wallace and Wallace “ public opinion consists of the

views of the members of a public on a certain issue”.
 Ian Robertson “ public opinion is the sum of the
decisions of the members of a public on a particular
issue”.
 Horton and Hunt “public opinion has two decisions,
1.an opinion held by a substantial number of people
(so there can be many public opinions),
2.the dominant opinion among a population.
 Since people don’t hold the same opinion always there
can’t be a permanent public opinion as such, public
opinion is therefore valid for a particular time and place
in which it was made.
 In democratic societies, public opinion plays a
considerable role.
 Huge amount of money is spent every year to make
market surveys, to conduct public opinion polls and to
develop favorable opinion polls through mass media.
 Attempts are made in a systemic manner to build up
public opinion through what is known as “propaganda”
 Public opinion changes so rapidly, public opinion
polls ( gallop polls) may not actually reports the
trends in the society, but only how some people feel
about one issue at one particular time.
 Propaganda and its techniques

 Techniques of influencing human action by the

manipulation of representations– Harold D Lasswell
 It is very often an attempt to win people over to an
unpopular cause or to influence them to follow a
generally disapproved course of action,
 Generally understood as a means of influencing
others, often towards a desirable end.
 Difficulties

 1. collective behavior is unstructured. highly

challenging to find underlying regularities or to
make generalizations on the basis of one or the other
study.
 2.Occurs as a spontaneous outbursts, cant artificially
created or reproduced.
 3.Has a wide range of meaning.
 conclusion

 Just as the individual psychotic evades reality by

withdrawal, rationalization, projection, aggression,
repression, substitution and symbolization, so do we find
similar mechanisms at work in various mob and
"movement" activities. As symbolization is used by the
psychotic for the purpose of psychic economy, so does
the leader of the mob depend on the same
principle.(Edward A. Strecker)
 The enduring psychiatric complications of persons that
arise from intense fear-producing situations--threat,
anxiety, suggestion, contagion, flight are sustained
depressions, psychoses, traumatic neuroses, and
psychosomatic disorders.
Thank u