Lecture 11 - Crowds and collective action Flashcards
What is the ID?
Seeding, primitive instinct that we’re all born with. Animalistic drive to satisfy our most primitive desires.
‘If it feels good to u just do it’
It doesn’t care about the consequences.
What is the SUPEREGO?
It keeps the ID in check, and oversees control
What are the theories of crowd behaviour/riots?
De-individuation
Emergent norm theory
Social identity theory
What is the de-individuation hypothesis?
(1) the anonymity implied by the crowd means people lose responsibility for their actions
(2) unconscious antisocial motives are released
(3) ideas and behaviours spread rapidly and unpredictably through the crowd (“contagion”)
What is the process of crowd behaviour according to de-individuation hypothesis?
Environmental conditions (anonymity, high arousal, close group unity, )
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Reduced self-awareness
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DE-INDIVIDUATION
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SYMPTOMS
Impulsivity
Emotionality: increased responsiveness to emot states
Low self-regulation
Lack of concern about social desirability
IrrationalityWhat studies support the de-individuation hypothesis?
Festinger et al. (1952) Jaffe & Yinon (1979) Zimbardo (1970) Siegel et al. (1986) Diener et al. (1976) Watson (1973) Mullen (1986)
What did Festinger et al., (1952) do?
De-individuation and comments
They had participants engage in a group discussion about their parents. Some Ps wore ordinary clothes and were placed in normal lighting.
Other Ps were de-individuated, they had to were lab coats and were placed in dimly lit rooms.
In this de-individuation condition people made more negative comments about their parents than in a control condition.
What did Jaffe & Yinon (1979) do?
Electric shocks by individuals or groups
Ps were given electric shocks to themselves and they had to decide how much of an electric shock they would give back as revenge. They did this either individually or in groups of three.
They compared the mean electric shock administered in the lab by individuals compared to groups of three. Participants in groups gave consistently more intense shocks than did participants on their own.
What did Zimbardo (1970) do?
Cloaks and shocks
He had people give strangers electric shocks in the laboratory.
Some participants were made to wear cloaks and hoods and other participants wore their ordinary clothes.
Deindividuated participants gave up to twice the duration of electric shock as did control participants.
What did Siegel et al., (1986) do?
COMPUTER AND FLAMING
They recorded exchanges between groups of people engaging in group discussion either face-to-face or over computer.
Computer-mediated communication was characterized by higher incidences of swearing, name-calling and insults (“flaming”).
People weren’t so nice when they were anonymous.
What did Diener et al. (1976) do?
Halloween and de-individuation
They observed the behaviour of 1352 children trick-or-treating in the US.
Experimenters in 27 homes invited children in to “take one of the lollies on the table”. Children were either alone or in groups.
Half the children were first asked their names and where they lived, to reduce de-individuation.
They found that when children were individuated, hardly any children took extra candy.
However, when they were deindividuated (which is default cos of costume) almost everyone did.
What did Watson (1973) find in relation to cultures?
studied archival records and found that cultures in which people change their appearance before battle (e.g,. body painting, masks) engage in more aggressive warfare.
There are norms in how to engage in warfare, such as engaging in torture or mutilation.
They found that those who deindividuated before battle engaged in a higher percentage of torture and mutilation than those who had no deindividuation.
What did Mullen (1986) find?
archival lynchings
He examined archival records of lynchings in the US. He found that the larger the size of the crowd, the more gruesome the assault.
A similar correlation between crowd size and anti-social behaviour has been found in archival records of people threatening to throw themselves.
What are the limitations of the deindividuation hypothesis?
First, the evidence for the notion of de-individuation is often circumstantial, and when tested directly, the evidence is mixed.
Second, crowds frequently behave in calm and even pro-social ways. How can we explain why sometimes crowds behave in negative and volatile ways and sometimes they do not?
What did Postmes && Spears (1998) meta-analysis reveal?
They looked at all these studies that manipulated things like group size, anonymity, cohesiveness (IVs) and looked at their effects on anti-normative behaviour (electric shock, stealing cheating)
What they found that there was not a lot of evidence that what leads to deindividuation makes people mean
What they did pick up on strongly was the situational norms (SN). SN has an effect on people, but the argument is that it makes u MORE SENSITIVE to the situational norms or expectations. e.g. If I de-individuate by making people wear school uniforms, they should behave more like students.
What did Johnson and Downing (1979) do?
According to the theory, if u DInd someone and the situation implies something prosocial, u should become nicer.
They got Ps into lab and got them to give electric shocks to strangers.
Ps then had them put on KKK outfits and got them to. Or they got them to wear a nurses robe (it’s also DInd but implies caring). Half were then individuated by being asked to wear a name badge; half were left de-individuated.
They then asked to give electric shocks again after the manipulation (changes mentioned above).
RECAP: So Ps are either given a KKK or nurse outfit and and were either wearing a name badge or not. They got Ps to give electric shocks BEFORE AND AFTER those changes. They were looking for the change in how mean people were.
Negative scores meant u gave less of an electric shock after the manipulation. Positive score meant u gave more of an electric shock.
They found that when dressed in the KKK outfits the became meaner (there was no change in meanness depending on whether they were given or not given a name badge)
Ps given the nurse outfit became nicer (administered less electric shocks) and this change was particularly greater when they were given no name badge (when they were DInd)
How does the emergent norm theory relate to crowd behaviour?
Crowd behaviour – like all group behaviour – is governed by norms, or rules of appropriate behaviour.
When crowds meet, people are uncertain as to what the appropriate norms are or what to do.
Their attention is attracted by the behaviour of distinctive individuals, implying a norm is emerging.
Inaction on the part of the majority is interpreted as confirmation of the norm, amplifying pressure to behave in a similar way.
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Ad hoc collection of individuals with no history of association; therefore, no pre-existent norms
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Distinctive behaviour perceived as an implicit norm
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Normative influence comes into play, creating pressures against non-conformity
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Inaction of majority interpreted as tacit confirmation of the norm; pressures against non-conformity increase
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COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR
What are the limitations of emergent norm theory?
In reality this rarely happens, u don’t get people meeting in a normative vacuum.
More often than not, crowds gather for a SPECIFIC PURPOSE and bring with them a clear set of SHARED NORMS
Crowd violence often has an INTERGROUP COMPONENT (THEY ARE FIGHTING AN OUTGROUP)
Crowds often behave LOGICALLY, even when they’re violent. (This theory implies some kind of contagion of behaviour that doesn’t have to be logical)
What did Reicher (1984) find when he analysed a riot in Bristol using newspaper reports and interviewing rioters?
Essentially the riots were quite rational
He found that violence, burning and looting was “orderly” and directed at symbolic targets
The crowd remained within the confines of its community
During and after the riot, participants felt a strong sense of social identity; in other words people felt a positive identity as members of the St Paul’s community.
From the inside it can look very organised, logical, methodical. People just prepared for a battle. They knew exactly what was going to happen and who their specific targets were (i.e. the police); it was not an act of random violence. So often what looks illogical and crazed (from the outside) isn’t always.
What is the process of crowd behaviour according to social identity theory?
Individuals come together as members of a specific social group with a specific purpose
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Social identity provides norms for behaviour. When uncertain, crowd members look to core members for guidance. Senior member sets the norm, not just anyone.
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Conformity to group norms
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COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR
What are three types of collective action?
(1) Industrial action: Refusal to form labour (e.g., strikes, blackbans, stopwork meetings)
(2) Representation: Performance in which individuals and organizations attempt to “stand” for a larger group of individuals (e.g., conventions, conferences, petitions, the formation of organizations, open letters)
(3) Staging: People take over a public space and make demands; directly declare how the state should be run and how the good life should be pursued (e.g., public meetings, demonstrations, pickets, paint-throwing, sit-ins, vigils, graffiti, marches, destruction of property, internet manipulation).
Is staging increasing and in what aspects?
Yes, in both relative and absolute terms
What did the Gallup poll reveal in 1983 about collective action?
That approximately 40% of people in the US believed it was likely that there would be nuclear war by 1998, and 70% believed that they would not survive a nuclear war.
Despite this, surveys in the 1980s showed that only a very small minority of people engaged in collective action to try to prevent the proliferation of nuclear missiles.
This finding suggests that although collective action is typically thought of as the most powerful to achieve social change, people are typically quite reluctant to engage in collective action; ONLY A MINORITY ENGAGE IN COLLECTIVE ACTION.
