This article is about the general phenomenon of crowds. For the psychological and sociological term referring to adolescent peer groups, see Crowds (adolescence). For other uses, see Crowd (disambiguation).
This article may lend undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies. The specific problem is: Individuals' thoughts are mentioned, but it's not demonstrated that these are the mainstream views. Please help improve it by rewriting it in a balanced fashion that contextualizes different points of view.(May 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Generally speaking, a crowd is defined as a group of people that have gathered for a common purpose or intent such as at a demonstration, a sports event, or during looting (this is known as an acting crowd), or may simply be made up of many people going about their business in a busy area. The term "the crowd" may sometimes refer to the lower orders of people in general.
A crowd of people returning from a show of fireworks spills into the street stopping traffic at the intersection of Fulton Street and Gold Street in Lower Manhattan
A crowd watches the Battle of the Beach 2 - Far Rockaway Skatepark - September - 2019
The term "crowd" is sometimes defined in contrast to other group nouns for collections of humans or animals, such as aggregation, audience, group, mass, mob, populous, public, rabble and throng. Opinion researcher Vincent Price compares masses and crowds, saying that "Crowds are defined by their shared emotional experiences, but masses are defined by their interpersonal isolation."[1]
In human sociology, the term "mobbed" simply means "extremely crowded", as in a busy mall or shop. "Mobbing", carries a more negative connotation associated with bullying. In animal behaviour, mobbing is a technique where many individuals of one species "gang up" on a larger individual of another species to drive them away.[citation needed] Mobbing behaviour is often seen in birds.
Social aspects are concerned with the formation, management and control of crowds, both from the point of view of individuals and groups. Often crowd control is designed to persuade a crowd to align with a particular view (e.g., political rallies), or to contain groups to prevent damage or mob behaviour. Politically organised crowd control is usually conducted by law enforcement but on some occasions military forces are used for particularly large or dangerous crowds.
According to Gustave Le Bon, an individual partaking in a crowd adopts certain characteristics such as a decreased ability to think consciously, a predominance of unconscious motives, succumbing easily to suggestion or contagion of feelings and ideas in a similar direction, and tend towards immediately bringing suggestions to action.[2] In his view, most crowds are impulsive, irritable, incapable of reasoning, lack judgement and are fueled by an exaggeration of sentiments.[2] Crowds typically follow an individual or an individual that supports an idea or belief that they deem superior or credible. Le Bon identified two classes of leaders: those that are energetic and have a strength of will and those whose strength of will is enduring, though the latter is thought to be the most impactful.[2] His ideology suggests that the leader should affirm, repeat the affirmation, and foster contagion within the crowd in order to have lasting effects.[2]
Psychological aspects are concerned with the psychology of the crowd as a group and the psychology of those who allow their will and emotions to be informed by the crowd (both discussed more comprehensively under crowd psychology).
Many studies on crowds have given insights on how crowds respond to different situations. One 2009 report highlighted many observable behaviors of crowds,[3] including evidence that crowds are able to make united decisions regarding their direction and speed of movement, even if only a few of its members have the information required to make such decisions.[3] The degree to which informed members can affect the crowd depends on their position within the group, with those in the crowd's core likely to have a greater influence.[3]
Generally, researchers in crowd psychology have focused on the negative aspects of crowds,[4] but not all crowds are volatile or negative in nature. For example, in the beginning of the socialist movement crowds were asked to put on their Sunday dress and march silently down the street. A more-modern example involves the sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement. Crowds can reflect and challenge the held ideologies of their sociocultural environment. They can also serve integrative social functions, creating temporary communities.[5][4]
There is limited research into the types of crowd and crowd membership and there is no consensus as to the classification of types of crowds. Two recent scholars, Momboisse (1967)[6] and Berlonghi (1995)[7] focused upon purpose of existence to differentiate among crowds. Momboisse developed a system of four types: casual, conventional, expressive, and aggressive. Berlonghi classified crowds as spectator, demonstrator, or escaping, to correlate to the purpose for gathering.
Other sociologists distinguished four types of crowds: casual, conventional, expressive, and acting.[8][9] Casual crowds consists of people aggregated in the same place informally such as a coffee shop. There are also conventional crowds or those that come together for a regularly scheduled event including a church service and expressive crowds that meet to partake in an emotional time together like a wedding or funeral. Lastly, there are acting crowds that join to achieve a common goal or action, which could involve participating in a protest or riot.
Crowds can be active (mobs) or passive (audiences). Active crowds can be further divided into aggressive, escapist, acquisitive, or expressive mobs.[5] Aggressive mobs, which are common in riots, are often violent and outwardly focused. Examples are football riots and the L.A. Riots of 1992. Escapist mobs are characterized by a large number of panicked people trying to get out of a dangerous situation. Acquisitive mobs occur when large numbers of people are fighting for limited resources. An expressive mob is any other large group of people gathering for an active purpose. Civil disobedience, rock concerts, and religious revivals all fall under this category.[5]
^Public Opinion By Carroll J. Glynn, Susan Herbst, Garrett J. O'Keefe, Robert Y. Shapiro
^ abcdLe Bon, Gustave (1897). The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. T.F. Unwin.
^ abcChallenger, R., Clegg, C. W., & Robinson, M. A. (2009). Understanding crowd behaviours. Multi-volume report for the UK Government’s Cabinet Office. London: Cabinet Office.
^ abReicher, Stephen (2000). Alan E. Kazdin, editor in chief (ed.). Encyclopedia of psychology. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. pp. 374–377. ISBN1-55798-650-9. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
^ abcGreenberg, M.S. (2010). Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology.
^Momboisse, Raymond. Riots, Revolts, and Insurrection. Springfield, Ill. Charles Thomas. 1967.
^Berlonghi, Alexander E. "Understanding and planning for different spectator crowds". Safety Science. Volume 18, Number 4, February 1995, pp. 239–247
^Blumer, Herbert (1939). Collective Behavior (In Robert E. Park, Ed., An Outline of the Principles of Sociology. ed.). New York: Barnes & Noble. pp. 219–280.
^Henderson, L. F. (1974-12-01). "On the fluid mechanics of human crowd motion". Transportation Research. 8 (6): 509–515. doi:10.1016/0041-1647(74)90027-6. ISSN 0041-1647.
^Helbing, Dirk; Molnár, Péter (1995-05-01). "Social force model for pedestrian dynamics". Physical Review E. 51 (5): 4282–4286. arXiv:cond-mat/9805244. Bibcode:1995PhRvE..51.4282H. doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.51.4282. PMID 9963139. S2CID 5771125.
^Helbing, Dirk; Farkas, Illés; Vicsek, Tamás (2000-09-28). "Simulating dynamical features of escape panic". Nature. 407 (6803): 487–490. arXiv:cond-mat/0009448. Bibcode:2000Natur.407..487H. doi:10.1038/35035023. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 11028994. S2CID 310346.
^Castellano, Claudio; Fortunato, Santo; Loreto, Vittorio (2009-05-11). "Statistical physics of social dynamics". Reviews of Modern Physics. 81 (2): 591–646. arXiv:0710.3256. Bibcode:2009RvMP...81..591C. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.81.591. S2CID 118376889.
^Helbing, Dirk (2001-12-07). "Traffic and related self-driven many-particle systems". Reviews of Modern Physics. 73 (4): 1067–1141. arXiv:cond-mat/0012229. Bibcode:2001RvMP...73.1067H. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.73.1067. S2CID 119330488.
^Tennenbaum, Michael; Liu, Zhongyang; Hu, David; Fernandez-Nieves, Alberto (2015-10-26). "Mechanics of fire ant aggregations". Nature Materials. 15 (1): 54–59. doi:10.1038/nmat4450. ISSN 1476-4660. PMID 26501413.
^Liu, Zhongyang; Hyatt, John; Mlot, Nathan; Gerov, Michael; Fernandez-Nieves, Alberto; Hu, David (2013-11-01). "Ants cushion applied stress by active rearrangements". APS Division of Fluid Dynamics Meeting Abstracts: R11.004. Bibcode:2013APS..DFDR11004L.
Borch, Christian. "The exclusion of the crowd: The destiny of a sociological figure of the irrational." European Journal of Social Theory 9.1 (2006): 83-102 .
Feldberg, Michael. "The crowd in Philadelphia history: A comparative perspective." Labor History 15.3 (1974): 323-336.
Hoggett, James, and Clifford Stott. "Crowd psychology, public order police training and the policing of football crowds." Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management (2010).
Rudé, George (1964), The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730-1848, Wiley
Rudé, George. "The London 'Mob' of the Eighteenth Century." Historical Journal 2#1 (1959): 1-18. online
McClelland, John S. The Crowd and the Mob: From Plato to Canetti (Routledge, 2010).
McPhail, Clark (2017), The Myth of the Madding Crowd, Routledge, ISBN9781351479073
External links
Look up crowd in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Understanding crowd behaviours
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Crowds.
May 04, 2023
crowd, this, article, about, general, phenomenon, crowds, psychological, sociological, term, referring, adolescent, peer, groups, adolescence, other, uses, disambiguation, this, article, multiple, issues, please, help, improve, discuss, these, issues, talk, pa. This article is about the general phenomenon of crowds For the psychological and sociological term referring to adolescent peer groups see Crowds adolescence For other uses see Crowd disambiguation This article has multiple issues Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page Learn how and when to remove these template messages This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Crowd news newspapers books scholar JSTOR May 2018 Learn how and when to remove this template message This article may lend undue weight to certain ideas incidents or controversies The specific problem is Individuals thoughts are mentioned but it s not demonstrated that these are the mainstream views Please help improve it by rewriting it in a balanced fashion that contextualizes different points of view May 2018 Learn how and when to remove this template message Learn how and when to remove this template message Generally speaking a crowd is defined as a group of people that have gathered for a common purpose or intent such as at a demonstration a sports event or during looting this is known as an acting crowd or may simply be made up of many people going about their business in a busy area The term the crowd may sometimes refer to the lower orders of people in general A crowd of people returning from a show of fireworks spills into the street stopping traffic at the intersection of Fulton Street and Gold Street in Lower Manhattan A crowd watches the Battle of the Beach 2 Far Rockaway Skatepark September 2019 A crowd leaves the Vienna station on the Washington Metro in 2006 Contents 1 Terminology 2 Social aspects 3 Psychological aspects 3 1 Types of crowd 4 Movement dynamics 5 See also 6 References 6 1 Citations 6 2 Sources and further reading 7 External linksTerminology EditThe term crowd is sometimes defined in contrast to other group nouns for collections of humans or animals such as aggregation audience group mass mob populous public rabble and throng Opinion researcher Vincent Price compares masses and crowds saying that Crowds are defined by their shared emotional experiences but masses are defined by their interpersonal isolation 1 In human sociology the term mobbed simply means extremely crowded as in a busy mall or shop Mobbing carries a more negative connotation associated with bullying In animal behaviour mobbing is a technique where many individuals of one species gang up on a larger individual of another species to drive them away citation needed Mobbing behaviour is often seen in birds Social aspects Edit A crowd in front of the Presidential Palace on July 21 1924 in Helsinki Finland Social aspects are concerned with the formation management and control of crowds both from the point of view of individuals and groups Often crowd control is designed to persuade a crowd to align with a particular view e g political rallies or to contain groups to prevent damage or mob behaviour Politically organised crowd control is usually conducted by law enforcement but on some occasions military forces are used for particularly large or dangerous crowds According to Gustave Le Bon an individual partaking in a crowd adopts certain characteristics such as a decreased ability to think consciously a predominance of unconscious motives succumbing easily to suggestion or contagion of feelings and ideas in a similar direction and tend towards immediately bringing suggestions to action 2 In his view most crowds are impulsive irritable incapable of reasoning lack judgement and are fueled by an exaggeration of sentiments 2 Crowds typically follow an individual or an individual that supports an idea or belief that they deem superior or credible Le Bon identified two classes of leaders those that are energetic and have a strength of will and those whose strength of will is enduring though the latter is thought to be the most impactful 2 His ideology suggests that the leader should affirm repeat the affirmation and foster contagion within the crowd in order to have lasting effects 2 Psychological aspects EditMain article Crowd psychology Psychological aspects are concerned with the psychology of the crowd as a group and the psychology of those who allow their will and emotions to be informed by the crowd both discussed more comprehensively under crowd psychology Many studies on crowds have given insights on how crowds respond to different situations One 2009 report highlighted many observable behaviors of crowds 3 including evidence that crowds are able to make united decisions regarding their direction and speed of movement even if only a few of its members have the information required to make such decisions 3 The degree to which informed members can affect the crowd depends on their position within the group with those in the crowd s core likely to have a greater influence 3 Generally researchers in crowd psychology have focused on the negative aspects of crowds 4 but not all crowds are volatile or negative in nature For example in the beginning of the socialist movement crowds were asked to put on their Sunday dress and march silently down the street A more modern example involves the sit ins during the Civil Rights Movement Crowds can reflect and challenge the held ideologies of their sociocultural environment They can also serve integrative social functions creating temporary communities 5 4 Types of crowd Edit Main article Crowd psychology Types Anarchist crowd during a protest in Mexico City There is limited research into the types of crowd and crowd membership and there is no consensus as to the classification of types of crowds Two recent scholars Momboisse 1967 6 and Berlonghi 1995 7 focused upon purpose of existence to differentiate among crowds Momboisse developed a system of four types casual conventional expressive and aggressive Berlonghi classified crowds as spectator demonstrator or escaping to correlate to the purpose for gathering Other sociologists distinguished four types of crowds casual conventional expressive and acting 8 9 Casual crowds consists of people aggregated in the same place informally such as a coffee shop There are also conventional crowds or those that come together for a regularly scheduled event including a church service and expressive crowds that meet to partake in an emotional time together like a wedding or funeral Lastly there are acting crowds that join to achieve a common goal or action which could involve participating in a protest or riot Crowds can be active mobs or passive audiences Active crowds can be further divided into aggressive escapist acquisitive or expressive mobs 5 Aggressive mobs which are common in riots are often violent and outwardly focused Examples are football riots and the L A Riots of 1992 Escapist mobs are characterized by a large number of panicked people trying to get out of a dangerous situation Acquisitive mobs occur when large numbers of people are fighting for limited resources An expressive mob is any other large group of people gathering for an active purpose Civil disobedience rock concerts and religious revivals all fall under this category 5 Movement dynamics EditStudies have shown that human crowds move in ways that resemble fluid 10 11 and can be modeled by such methods as particle simulation and statistical physics 12 13 Similar observations have been made for car traffic 14 and the movement of ant aggregations 15 16 See also Edit Society portalAgent based social simulation Collective animal behavior Crowd counting Crowd crush Crowd funding Crowd manipulation Crowd simulation Crowdsourcing Flocking behavior Group behaviour Herd behavior CommunityReferences EditCitations Edit Public Opinion By Carroll J Glynn Susan Herbst Garrett J O Keefe Robert Y Shapiro a b c d Le Bon Gustave 1897 The Crowd A Study of the Popular Mind T F Unwin a b c Challenger R Clegg C W amp Robinson M A 2009 Understanding crowd behaviours Multi volume report for the UK Government s Cabinet Office London Cabinet Office a b Reicher Stephen 2000 Alan E Kazdin editor in chief ed Encyclopedia of psychology Washington D C American Psychological Association pp 374 377 ISBN 1 55798 650 9 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a editor has generic name help a b c Greenberg M S 2010 Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology Momboisse Raymond Riots Revolts and Insurrection Springfield Ill Charles Thomas 1967 Berlonghi Alexander E Understanding and planning for different spectator crowds Safety Science Volume 18 Number 4 February 1995 pp 239 247 Blumer Herbert 1939 Collective Behavior In Robert E Park Ed An Outline of the Principles of Sociology ed New York Barnes amp Noble pp 219 280 Turner Ralph Killian Lewis 1993 Collective Behavior 4th ed Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall Henderson L F 1974 12 01 On the fluid mechanics of human crowd motion Transportation Research 8 6 509 515 doi 10 1016 0041 1647 74 90027 6 ISSN 0041 1647 Helbing Dirk Molnar Peter 1995 05 01 Social force model for pedestrian dynamics Physical Review E 51 5 4282 4286 arXiv cond mat 9805244 Bibcode 1995PhRvE 51 4282H doi 10 1103 PhysRevE 51 4282 PMID 9963139 S2CID 5771125 Helbing Dirk Farkas Illes Vicsek Tamas 2000 09 28 Simulating dynamical features of escape panic Nature 407 6803 487 490 arXiv cond mat 0009448 Bibcode 2000Natur 407 487H doi 10 1038 35035023 ISSN 1476 4687 PMID 11028994 S2CID 310346 Castellano Claudio Fortunato Santo Loreto Vittorio 2009 05 11 Statistical physics of social dynamics Reviews of Modern Physics 81 2 591 646 arXiv 0710 3256 Bibcode 2009RvMP 81 591C doi 10 1103 RevModPhys 81 591 S2CID 118376889 Helbing Dirk 2001 12 07 Traffic and related self driven many particle systems Reviews of Modern Physics 73 4 1067 1141 arXiv cond mat 0012229 Bibcode 2001RvMP 73 1067H doi 10 1103 RevModPhys 73 1067 S2CID 119330488 Tennenbaum Michael Liu Zhongyang Hu David Fernandez Nieves Alberto 2015 10 26 Mechanics of fire ant aggregations Nature Materials 15 1 54 59 doi 10 1038 nmat4450 ISSN 1476 4660 PMID 26501413 Liu Zhongyang Hyatt John Mlot Nathan Gerov Michael Fernandez Nieves Alberto Hu David 2013 11 01 Ants cushion applied stress by active rearrangements APS Division of Fluid Dynamics Meeting Abstracts R11 004 Bibcode 2013APS DFDR11004L Sources and further reading Edit Le Bon Gustave 1895 The Crowd A Study of the Popular Mind online Borch Christian The exclusion of the crowd The destiny of a sociological figure of the irrational European Journal of Social Theory 9 1 2006 83 102 Feldberg Michael The crowd in Philadelphia history A comparative perspective Labor History 15 3 1974 323 336 Hoggett James and Clifford Stott Crowd psychology public order police training and the policing of football crowds Policing An International Journal of Police Strategies amp Management 2010 Rude George 1964 The Crowd in History A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England 1730 1848 Wiley Rude George The London Mob of the Eighteenth Century Historical Journal 2 1 1959 1 18 online McClelland John S The Crowd and the Mob From Plato to Canetti Routledge 2010 McPhail Clark 2017 The Myth of the Madding Crowd Routledge ISBN 9781351479073External links Edit Look up crowd in Wiktionary the free dictionary Understanding crowd behaviours Wikimedia Commons has media related to Crowds Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Crowd amp oldid 1153076501, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
