The Prosocial Crowd

Despite the potential for great violence and destruction, most crowds that
gather do so quite uneventfully. Further, sometimes crowd behavior is quite
positive and prosocial. Research shows that sometimes deindividuation can
lead to prosocial behavior. For example, nonviolent protests operate under
an explicit norm of peaceful resistance and rarely lead to escalated violence
on both sides.

The power of prosocial norms was also experimentally established in a
1979 study conducted by psychologists Robert Johnson and Leslie Downing.
Johnson and Downing had participants dress in either nurse’s apparel or a
white robe and hood like those worn in the Ku Klux Klan. Some from each
group had their individual identity made salient, while the rest did not. All
participants were then given the opportunity to deliver an electric shock to
someone who had previously insulted them. Among participants wearing
the robes, those who were not identified delivered higher shock levels than
those who were identified. Presumably these people were deindividuated
and thus more strongly influenced by the violent cue of their costume. Of
those in nurses’ uniforms, the opposite was observed. Unidentified, deindividuated participants gave much less intense shocks than identified participants
did. They were also more strongly influenced by the cues around
them, but in this case the cues promoted prosocial action.

Sources for Further Study

Coleman, A. M. “Crowd Psychology in South African Murder Trials.” American
Psychologist 46, no. 10 (1992): 1071-1079. This article describes the use
of modern social psychological research on crowd behavior to argue for
extenuating factors in murder trials. The ethical issues raised from psychological
testimony are discussed.
Gaskell, G., and R. Benewick, eds. The Crowd in Contemporary Britain. London:
Sage, 1987. An excellent, comprehensive discussion of crowd behavior
and political responses to it, drawing on work from scholars in several
social scientific disciplines.

Le Bon, Gustave. The Crowd. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1995. First
published in 1895, this classic work explores the nature of crowd behavior
and the places in modern life where crowd behavior holds sway.
McPhail, Clark. The Myth of the Madding Crowd. New York: Aldine De Gruyter,
1991. Authored by one of the major modern researchers on crowd behavior,
this book summarizes and critiques Gustave Le Bon and earlier crowd
theorists and presents new formulations for understanding crowd behavior.
Mann, L. “The Baiting Crowd in Episodes of Threatened Suicide.” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 41, no. 4 (1981): 703-709. In this paper,
Mann provides a fascinating analysis of the factors that make crowds
more likely than individuals to bait potential suicides.

__________. “‘The Crowd’ Century: Reconciling Practical Success with Theoretical
Failure.” British Journal of Social Psychology 35, no. 4 (1996): 535-
553. Discusses the limits of Gustave Le Bon’s crowd psychology theory
and explores why, despite these limits, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini
were able to use his theory so successfully to manipulate crowds.
Reicher, S. Crowd Behavior. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Scholarly perspectives on crowd behavior.
Van Ginneken, Jaap. Crowds, Psychology, and Politics, 1871-1899. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1992. Provides a historical perspective on
the development of the field of crowd psychology, showing how early theories
were shaped by current political events.
Cynthia McPherson Frantz
See also: Aggression; Groups; Helping.