Crowds & Behavior Reading + Analysis PDF

Crowds and Crowd Behaviour Name: [ ] ================================================ Family relationships and friendships usually last a long time. Even organizations may provide us with companionship and other rewards. By contrast, we often engage in collective behaviour with people we hardly kno...

Crowds and Crowd Behaviour Name: [ ] ================================================ Family relationships and friendships usually last a long time. Even organizations may provide us with companionship and other rewards. By contrast, we often engage in collective behaviour with people we hardly know, or never meet, and these interactions are usually short-lived. (Sproule, 201) A crowd is a group of people temporarily gathered together. You have, no doubt, been part of several crowds recently. How do you think being in a crowd affected your behaviour? As part of a crowd, would you have done things that you would not otherwise have done? Sociologists classify crowds into the following four main types. Type 1: Casual Crowds --------------------- Toronto gave the child the least help, while those in the suburbs gave somewhat more. Passersby in a small Ontario town were even more willing to help the child. Another experiment showed that there was a better chance of one or two people coming to someone\'s assistance than a large crowd. Why? It may be that people in a crowd think someone else will help. In addition, individuals in a crowd may not want to draw attention to themselves. The case studies that follow show differing responses to similar, violent situations. Case Study: Kitty Genovese -------------------------- Late one evening in March 1964, Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old New York woman, was coming home from work. She was attacked close to her apartment building. She screamed for help and struggled with her attacker. The assailant stabbed her twice and fled. Genovese was left crawling along the street, trying to make it to the safety of her building. She continued to scream for help, but no one came to her rescue. At one point, Genovese called out to someone by name, but he passed by and did nothing. No one even called the police. Over the next hour the attacker returned twice more, stabbing her again. She died at the foot of the stairs to the entrance of her apartment building. Police investigations revealed that at least 38 people in the surrounding buildings heard or saw the attack but failed to react. Interviews with these people later revealed that they were not necessarily uncaring. In fact many were concerned and angry over what had happened but did not want to get involved. Some people had even pulled down their blinds and turned up the volume on their television sets so they could not see or hear what was going on. But what determines whether or not people in the street will help? Psychologists tried a series of experiments simulating emergencies and found that an individual alone is more likely to help someone in distress than is a person in a crowd. It seems that the person in a crowd waits to see what others are doing. If no one else helps, the person fears being different and looking foolish in front of others. It is also easier for a bystander to evade a sense of responsibility in a group. The bystander in a crowd can see that others are not acting, so the responsibility for failing to help is spread around. The person alone, however, has no one to provide cues to correct behaviour. That person must make the choice alone, If this lone bystander does not help, he or she may suffer guilt and public disapproval later. Psychological and social pressures encourage the lone person to act while discouraging the individual in a crowd from acting. Case Study 2: Reginald Denny ---------------------------- In May 1992, a trucker named Reginald Denny unknowingly drove his truck into the midst of a riot in the city of Los Angeles. Rioters stopped the truck. They pulled Denny from his truck and beat him. He was also shot and left lying on the street. Denny\'s attack was recorded by a television camera in a helicopter overhead and broadcast live. Shocked by what they were seeing, four viewers drove to the intersection where Denny lay. They managed to drive him out of danger and get him to a hospital. Type 2: Conventional Crowd ----------------------------------------------- Type 3: The Expressive Crowd ---------------------------- speaking or gesturing to them. Effective speakers and performers know how to work the crowd to get enthusiastic responses. An acting crowd is fuelled by a single purpose. The crowd may have a political or social goal in mind. An acting crowd may behave aggressively, by rushing the doors of a political institution, or it may behave affectionately, by trying to get closer to a person or group. In either case, an acting crowd can become dangerous. People in acting crowds often think in simple and divisive terms. They may believe they are clearly right while those who oppose them are clearly wrong. As a result, reasoned arguments are not usually successful in directing these crowds. Emotional appeals, on the other hand, can be very effective. Consequently, these crowds can be vulnerable\--as history has shown\--to unscrupulous leaders who appeal to people\'s emotions in order to achieve their own goals. When an acting crowd turns violent, it can become a mob, a highly emotional crowd that pursues some violent or destructive goal. Mobs may attack people or property but they tend to form and break up quickly. In 1985, a conventional crowd assembled to watch the European Cup Final soccer match between Italy and England. As the game was starting, however, English fans began to taunt Italian fans in adjacent stands. Both sides began to throw bottles. The English fans then surged toward the Italians. People tried to scramble over a wall to escape the violence. The wall collapsed under the weight of the fans and within minutes, 39 people were dead and 400 injured. A frenzied crowd without any particular purpose or goal is a riot. People in a riot are unorganized, emotional and often aggressive. A riot may be made up of a number of mobs pursuing specific goals. It may form as a result of a particular incident that has left people angry or excited. Rioters indulge in apparently random violence. They may destroy or set fire to buildings, loot stores or attack people. Some individuals might join a riot simply to take advantage of a chaotic situation to loot and vandalize. (Sproule 202-204) Sometimes even people who are not in the same geographical place can engage in collective behaviour. This kind of behaviour is known as mass behaviour and it can involve people who are widely dispersed. While ideas, feelings and calls for action can be communicated directly to a crowd, mass behaviour relies on personal communication between individuals. The media are also used to promote mass behaviour. Examples of mass behaviour are rumours, gossip, public opinion, panic and mass hysteria. The term also includes fashions and fads.