The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological StudyMartin, Everett Dean
Science
The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological Study
Martin, Everett Dean
Crowds
We have now reached a point from which we can look back over the ground
we have traversed and note the points of difference between our view and
the well-known theory of Le Bon. The argument of the latter is as
follows: (1) From the standpoint of psychology, the crowd, as the term
is here defined, is not merely a group of people, it is the appearance
within such a group of a special mental condition, or crowd-mind. (2)
The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one
and the same direction. (3) Conscious personality vanishes. (4) A
collective mind is formed: This is Le Bon's "Law of the mental unity of
crowds." (5) This collective mind consists in the main of "general
qualities of character" which are our common racial inheritance. It is
an "unconscious substratum" which in the crowd becomes uppermost,
dominating over the unique personal consciousness. (6) Three causes
determine the characteristics of the crowd-mind, (a) From purely
numerical considerations, the individual acquires a sentiment of
invincible power which encourages him in an unrestrained yielding to his
instincts, (b) Contagion, or imitation, and (c) hypnotic suggestion
cause the individuals in the crowd to become "slaves of all the
unconscious activities of the spinal cord." (7) The resulting
characteristics of the crowd are (a) a descent of several rungs in the
ladder of civilization, (b) a general intellectual inferiority as
compared with the isolated individual, (c) loss of moral responsibility,
(d) impulsiveness, (e) credulity, (f) exaggeration, (g) intolerance, (h)
blind obedience to the leader of the crowd, (i) a mystical emotionalism.
(8) The crowd is finally and somewhat inconsistently treated by Le Bon
as being identical with the masses, the common people, the herd.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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