Collective Behavior and Social Movements Chapter 21

Collective Behavior  Collective Behavior : extraordinary activities carried out by groups of people  Types of Collective Behavior  Lynchings  Rumors  Panics  Urban Legends  Fads and Fashions

Herd Mentality  Charles Mackay  Like a herd of cows that suddenly stampede, ordinary people sometimes do unusual, violent things when in a crowd 

Collective Mind  Gustave LeBon  People feel invisible in a crowd  “Invisibility” allows people to feel less accountable for their actions  Members of Crowd develop sense of Invicibility  Collective Mind : tendency of people to act, feel, and think in unusual ways when in a crowd  Robert Park  Circular Reaction: Back and Forth communication that creates a “collective impulse” amongst a crowd  People learn the “right” way to perceive and think about an event

Stages before Acting Crowd  Developed by Herbert Blumer  1. Background of Tension or Unrest  2. Exciting Event  3. Milling: Circular Reaction sets in  4. Common object of Attention  5. Common Impulses  Acting Crowd: Excited Group moving toward a goal

Cincinnati Race Riots  GfUCKrAcI GfUCKrAcI  On your participation paper, identify the five stages that preceded the acting crowd.  1. Background of Racial Tension  2. African-American killed by Police  3. Circular Reaction: “Hate Crime” by white Police  4. Desire for Justice  5. Justice by attacking Caucasian Cincinnatians

Minimax Strategy  Richard Berk  As principle of human behavior, people will make efforts to maximize benefits and minimize costs  What could be benefits of a riot? How could you maximize them?  What could be risks of a riot? How could you minimize them?

Emergent Norms RRalph Turner and Lewis Killian PPeople develop new norms to cope with new situations, especially amidst crowd behavior

LA Riots  On your participation sheet, make a list of the emergent norms that you witness in the LA Riots  Q Q

Emergent Norms in LA Riots  Looting/Stealing  Walking in street obstructing traffic  Destruction of public property  Throwing Trash in Streets  Starting Fires  Random Violence Against Strangers

Five Types of Crowd Participants  Ego-Involved  Feel Personal Stake in Event  Concerned  Feel Personal Interest, but less than ego-involved  Insecure  Care little about matter, but join crowd because it gives them a sense of power, belonging, and security  Curious Spectators  Care little about the issue, but want to see what’s going on  Exploiters  Don’t care about event, just use it for own purposes to get free stuff or to have fun

Riots  Violent Crowd Behavior directed at people and property  MM MM  What were the Emergent Norms during Malice at the Palace?  Fighting, Assault, Throwing Bottles, Throwing Drinks, Etc.

Rumors  Rumor: Unfounded Information spread among people  Rumor has it  Song is too annoying to play in class…  Why Believe Rumors?  Rumors deal with a subject important to individual  Rumors replace ambiguity with some form of certainty  Rumors are attributed to credible source  Mr. Lund’s Goal.

Disney Consipracy  Conspiracy Theory: Disney has sexual agenda to force on young children  

Panics and Mass Hysteria  War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells  October 30, 1938  Panic: Condition of being so fearful that one cannot function normally, and may even flee  Mass Hysteria: Imagined threat that causes physical symptoms among a large number of people

The Who Concert Stampede  c c

Moral panics  Moral Panic: Fear that grips large number of people that some evil threatens the well-being of society, followed by hostility, sometimes violence, toward those thought responsible.

Mass Hysteria  Mass Hysteria : imagined threat that causes physical symptoms among a group of people  g g  E E

Fads and Fashions  Fad: temporary pattern of behavior that catches people’s attention  Furby, Flash Mobs, etc.  Improv Everywhere  YZ6rbPU2M  Fashion: Pattern of behavior that catches people’s attention and lasts longer than a fad

Urban Legends  Urban Legend: story with an ironic twist that sounds real, but is unverifiable or simply false  Usually have some sort of moral lesson about life  Three Principles  1. Urban legends serve as warnings  2. Urban legends are related to social change  3. Urban legends are intended to create fear   AIDS Sally  Slit-Mouth Woman  Headlights & Gang Members

Social Movements  Social Movements: Large Group of people who are organized to promote or resist some social change  Proactive Social Movement: A social movement that promotes some social change  Reactive Social Movement: A social movement that resists some social change  Social Movement Organization: An organization to promote goals of a social movement

Individual Social Movements  Target: Individual  Alterative Social Movement: Seeks to alter only specific aspects of people  Ex. Women’s Christian Temperance Union  Redemptive Social Movement: Seeks to change people totally, to redeem them  Ex. Conversion to Christianity, One becomes “new creation” and changes entire person rather than specific behaviors

Societal Social Movments  Target: Society  Reformative Social Movement : Seeks to reform specific aspects of society  Transformative Social Movement: Seeks to change society totally, to transform it

Global Social Movements  Target: World  Transnational Social Movements : Emphasize some condition around the world  Metaformative Social Movements: Goal to change social order of an entire civilization or the entire world

Social Movements  Levels of Membership  Inner Core  sets goals/strategies of movement  Committed  Show up for demonstrations and do grunt work (mailings, petitions, callings, etc.)  Less Committed  Participation depends on Convenience

Social Movements  The Public: Group of People relevant to a social movement  Sympathetic Public  Sympathize with goals, but not committed to success  Hostile Public  Oppose goals of movement, seek to end movement  Indifferent Public  Unaware/Indifferent towards movement

Why Join Social Movements?  Mass Society Theory  Offers sense of belonging to individuals  Deprivation Theory  Those who feel deprived join movements to address their grievances  Relative Deprivation Theory  A person’s actual level of deprivation matters little, and relative deprivation matters much more

Why Join Social Movements?  Moral Shock  Sense of outrage at finding out what is really going on

Stages of Social Movements  Initial Unrest and Agitation  Resource Mobilization  Organization  Institutionalization  Organizational Decline