1. Sociology – Chapter 21

2. How the crowd transforms the individual
Collective behavior  extraordinary activities
Carried out by groups of people
Examples: lynching, rumors, panics, urban legends
Charles MacKay
MacKay noticed people “when mad” and did “disgraceful and violent things” when formed in a crowd
People have a “herd mentality”
Gustave Lebon
People feel anonymous in crowds
People feel less accountable for what they do in crowds
People develop feelings of invincibility and think they could do anything
Collective mind: Gustave’s term for the tendency of people in a crowd to fee, think and act in extraordinary ways

3. How the crowd transforms the individual (cont.)
Robert Park
Circular reaction: Robert Park’s term for a back-and-forth communication between the members of a crown, whereby a “collective impulse” is transmitted
Collective impulse dominates all members of the crowd
Herbert Blumer
Identified five stages that precede what he called an acting crowd
Acting crowd: an excited group moving towards a goal
Models today’s police manuals on crowd behavior

4. Blumer’s 5 Stages of an Acting Crowd
Five Stages of an Acting Crowd
Tension or unrest (people become apprehensive, which makes them vulnerable to rumors and suggestions)
Exciting event (an event occurs)
Milling (people talk about the exciting event)
A common object of attention (attend forms around the event)
Common impulses (people form an agreement about the event

5. A SHORT Time to Ponder:
Why do you think people behave differently in a collective setting?
Why do you think people feel less responsible for their actions during collective behavior?
How do you think the collective mindset of a person comes to be?

6. The Contemporary View: Rationality of the Crowd
Everyone is collected in a mob in is organized (not chaotic)
Minimax strategy – people make effort to minimize their costs and maximize their rewards
Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian
Emergent norms – idea that people develop new norms to cope with a new situation
used to explain crowd behavior
In a group, not normal behavior can become normal

7. Emergent Norms
ego involved – people feel personal stake in the unusual event
concerned – personal interest in the event, but care less than the ego-involved
insecure – care little about the matter, but they join the crowd because it gives them power
curious spectator – care little about the issue, but they are inquisitive
exploiters – don’t care about the event, but their for their own purpose

8. A SHORT Time to Ponder
How could collective behavior involve unusual norms?
How does Pettie’s mob include the different players in a collective group?
Do you agree with the analysis of these 5 groups? Do you think they should take one away? Add a category? Why?

9. Forms of Collective Behavior
Riots
Rumors
Panics
Mass hysteria
Moral panics
Fads & Fashions
Urban legends

10. Forms of Collective Behavior: Riots
Riots – violent crowd behavior directed at people and/or property
Who: any group
Causes: frustration & feelings of deprivation
Precipitating events bring up all the feelings to a boiling point and it bursts or erupts in collective violence
Example: A while police officer in Los Angeles was caught on video beating an African American traffic violator.
The case went to trial (for beating the man), and was found not guilty.
Jury: 11 whites, 1 Asian
Anger led to people setting fires (rioting)
54 people died,
2,328 insured
4,000 fires set to properties

11. Forms of Collective Behavior: Rumors
Rumors – unfounded information spread among people
About: Rumors deal with a subject that is important to an individual, and they replace ambiguity with some form of certainty
Example: Disney and supposed subliminal messaging (The Little Mermaid containing a bishop with a boner)

12. Forms of Collective Behavior: Panics
Panic (condition of being so fearful that one cannot function normally and may even flee)
People react to widespread anxiety about world conditions with anxiety
Many times influenced by media
Most times people are frightened but not in a panic
Panic can be caused because of rumors
Seeing people panic causes others to panic
Not everyone panics: parents often help children, men often women in disasters (Example: fire)
In life threatening situations, when panic is expected, there is actually order
Many works take responsibility to help people when on the job

13. Forms of Collective Behavior: Mass Hysteria
Mass hysteria (imagined threat that causes physical symptoms among a large number of people)
Explained by saying “it happens”
Mass hysteria follows basic principles of human behavior
Happens in many cultures
Does not have a found explanation for cause
Example 1: tarantula bits in Italy hundreds of years ago
Example 2: people sick after drinking Coke in France and Belgium
Example 1: Hundreds of years ago people in Italy were bit by tarantulas. They became breathless, had fast heartbeats, felt sexual urges as well as urges to dance until exhaustion. It had to have been contagious because even people who were not bit had these symptoms. The only relief was bands traveling around the villages playing “tarantula” music.
Example 2: People in France and Belgium became sick after drinking Coke . It was diagnosed to be “bad carbon dioxide and fungicide.” Coke had to recall 15 million cases, but later investigation found nothing was wrong with the coke.

14. Forms of Collective Behavior: Moral Panics
Moral panics (a fear that grips a large number of people that some evil threatens the well-being of society, followed by hostility, sometimes violence, toward those thought responsible)
Fueled by the mass media and center around a sense of danger, and/or by rumor
Fed by rumors and thrive on uncertainty and anxiety
Example: In 1990 a rumor swept the country that thousands of kidnapped children were sold to Satanist who ritually killed them.
How would you react?

15. Forms of Collective Behavior: Fads and Fashions
Fads (novel form of behavior that briefly catches people’s attention)
there are many forms of fad
Craze (a short and intense fad) – Ex. Tickle Me Elmo dolls and Beanie Babies
Fashion (a fad that lasts, such as furniture & clothing)
What are some common fads that you know?

16. Forms of Collective Behavior: Urban Legends
Urban legends (stories with an ironic twist that are usually not true
Jan Brunvand
passed from “friend to friend”
Gain credibility by naming specific people or events
Urban legends = Modern morality stories (teaches moral lesson about life)
What are some urban legends that you know?

17. Social Movements
Social movement (a large group of people who are organized to promote or resist some social change)
Famous Examples
Abolitionist (anti-slavery) crusade
Civil rights movement
White supremacist
Woman's movement
Animal rights movement
Environmental movement

18. Social Movements: Motivations
Proactive social movement
Change something in society
Reactive social movement
Fight social change
Social movement organization (an organization people develop to further the goals of a social movements)
Head social movements
Examples: NAACP, KKK

19. Types of Social Movements
Alternative – change one specific thing about people
Redemptive – change people totally
Reformative – change specific aspect of society
Transformative – everything in society
Millenarian – change something based on the prophecy of coming social upheaval
Tranformational – change on condition around the world
New type of social movement
Metaformative – changing everything

20. A SHORT Time to Ponder Is all social change positive?
Is social change good for the world?
Do groups like the NAACP and KKK even out?

21. Tactics of Social Movements
Levels of Membership and Publics (6 levels)
“The inner core”
Tactics chose largely depend on the predisposition and backgrounds of the inner core
“the committed”
“the less committed”
“the sympathetic public”
Recruitment ground
“hostile public”
“indifferent public”
Public (in this context, a dispersed group of people relevant to a social movement)

22. Tactics of Social Movements
Relationship to authorities
Institutionalized – authorities accept the movement
Influences whether movement peaceful or violent
Other factors
Friendship
Race-ethnicity
Size of town

23. A SHORT Time to Ponder
How would you react if your authorities approved of a violent movement?
Would you be willing to join a movement if your friends or family joined?

24. Why People Join Social Movements
William Kornhauser
Mass society theory (an explanation for why people participate in a social movement based on the assumption that the movement offers them a sense of belonging)
Mass society (industrialized, highly bureaucratized, impersonal society)
Alexis de Tocqueville
Relative Deprivation theory (in this context, the belief that people join social movements based on their evaluations of what they think they should have compared with what others have)
James Jasper and Dorothy Nelkin
Moral issues and ideological commitment
Agent provocateur (someone who joins a group in order to spy on it an to sabotage it by provoking its members to commit extreme acts)
People most commonly join a social movement because they have friends and acquaintances already in it.

25. Success and Failure of Social Movements
Stages of Social Movements
Initial unrest and agitation
Resource mobilization
Organization
Institutionalization
Organizational decline / possible resurgence
A rocky road to success
Five stages do not work unless the movement is very broad
Initial unrest and agitation (people are upset and want to change social classes or conditions)
Resource mobilization (people garner money and skilled workers to help their movement)
Organization (leadership is made; the jobs are distributed)
Institutionalization (the movement is set; excitement starts to decrease)
Organizational decline / possible resurgence (movement is fading away; excitement is decreasing even more)

26. A SHORT Time to Ponder
What changes could be made to make the stages work?
What movement would you think would be successful in using these steps?
When has a social movement been successful? How were they successful?