Collective behavior
Information about Collective behavior
The term "collective behavior" was first used by Robert E. Park, and employed definitively by Herbert Blumer, to refer to social processes and events which do not reflect existing social structure (laws, conventions, and institutions), but which emerge in a "spontaneous" way. Some examples of collective behavior are a religious revival, a panic in a burning theatre, an outbreak of swastika painting, a change in popular preferences in toothpaste, the Russian Revolution, and a sudden widespread interest in body piercing. Since such events occur when social prescriptions are not clear, they exemplify neither conformity nor deviance. The claim that such diverse episodes all belong to a single field of inquiry is a theoretical assertion with which not all sociologists will agree. However, Herbert Blumer and Neil Smelser do agree, so that the formulation must satisfy some sociological minds.
At the University of Chicago, Robert Park and Herbert Blumer saw crowds as emotional, but as capable of any emotion, not only the negative ones of anger and fear.
All of these writers acknowledge that there are crowds in which the participants are not assembled in one place. Turner and Killian refer to such episodes as diffuse crowds, examples being stock market booms, panics about sexual perils, and "Red scares."
Some psychologists have suggested that there are three fundamental human emotions, fear, joy, and anger, and Smelser and others have proposed three corresponding forms of the crowd: the panic, in which fear is the dominant emotion, the craze, which is an expression of joy, and the hostile outburst, which is characterized by anger.
Each of the three emotions can characterize either a compact or a diffuse crowd, so that there are six types of crowds in this scheme.
Park distinguished the crowd, which expresses a common emotion from a public, in which a single issue is discussed. A public exists for every issue being discussed at a particular time, so that there are as many publics as there are issues, each public coming into being when its issue is first raised and going out of being when the issue is resolved.
To the crowd and the public, Blumer added a third form of collective behavior, the mass. It differs from both the crowd and the public in that it is not defined by a form of interaction but by presentation from the mass media to an audience. The invention of printing made masses possible, and they have become more prominent still with the invention of each of the other mass media.
The messages from the mass media is an attempt to persuade the mass to choose something which is offered, such as some brand of refrigerator. The mass acts not by the expression of a common emotion as does the crowd, nor by discussion as does the public, but by the simultaneous and independent action of the participants. Their aggregated choices can have powerful effects on society, as when a popular TV show leads many people to use the bathroom at the same time, so that bond issues have to be floated to increase sewage disposal facilities.
Contrary to Blumer, evidence confirms the common sense view that consumers do not act independently of one another but frequently discuss their choices. For this reason, Turner and Killian suggest that the mass is best thought of as what Max Weber calls an "ideal type" -- not an accurate description of empirical cases, but a concept which is useful in interpreting particular events insofar as they approximate it. Actually, most or all terms in the field refer to ideal types; there are many mixed cases.
We change intellectual gears when we confront Blumer's final form of collective behavior, the social movement. Some examples include the French Revolutions, the movement for the adoption of a World Calendar, and Alcoholics Anonymous.
Social movements typically have a structure and persistence which distinguishes them from the other three forms of collective behavior, and for this reason they are often considered to be a separate topic.
There have never been many specialists in collective behavior, and these few have typically been students of Park and Blumer at Chicago, or, more recently, of Blumer and Smelser at Berkeley. Thus, collective behavior has been a school of thought as well as a subfield of sociology.
The study of collective behavior spun its wheels for many years, until Neil Smelser's Theory of Collectiove Behavior (1962) and social disturbances in the U. S. and elsewhere in the late 60's and early 70's prompted a renewal of interest in the field. Out of this interest has come a number of empirical challenges to the armchair sociology of earlier students of collective behavior.
Richard Berk uses game theory to suggest that even a panic in a burning theater can reflect rational calculation. If members of the audience decide that it is more rational to run to the exits than to walk, the result may look like an animal-like stampede without in fact being irrational.
In a series of empirical studies of assemblies of people, Clark McPhail (The Myth of the Madding Crowd) argues that such assemblies vary along a number of dimensions, and that traditional stereotypes of emotionality and unanimity often do not describe what happens.
Peer pressure is a term describing the pressure exerted by a peer group in encouraging a person to change their attitude, behavior and/or morals, to conform to, for example, the group's actions,
..... Click the link for more information.
Four forms of collective behavior
Most of the examples of collective behavior mentioned above are instances of crowd behavior. The classic treatment of crowds is Gustave LeBon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1896), in which LeBon, a frightened aristocrat, interpreted the crowds of the French Revolution as irrational reversions to animal emotion, and infers from this that such reversion is characteristic of crowds in general. Freud expressed a similar view in his Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1922). Economists study similar behavior underlying the economic bubble, classic examples of which include tulip mania (1637), The South Sea Company (1720), and the Mississippi Company (1720); the classic study is Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841).At the University of Chicago, Robert Park and Herbert Blumer saw crowds as emotional, but as capable of any emotion, not only the negative ones of anger and fear.
All of these writers acknowledge that there are crowds in which the participants are not assembled in one place. Turner and Killian refer to such episodes as diffuse crowds, examples being stock market booms, panics about sexual perils, and "Red scares."
Some psychologists have suggested that there are three fundamental human emotions, fear, joy, and anger, and Smelser and others have proposed three corresponding forms of the crowd: the panic, in which fear is the dominant emotion, the craze, which is an expression of joy, and the hostile outburst, which is characterized by anger.
Each of the three emotions can characterize either a compact or a diffuse crowd, so that there are six types of crowds in this scheme.
Park distinguished the crowd, which expresses a common emotion from a public, in which a single issue is discussed. A public exists for every issue being discussed at a particular time, so that there are as many publics as there are issues, each public coming into being when its issue is first raised and going out of being when the issue is resolved.
To the crowd and the public, Blumer added a third form of collective behavior, the mass. It differs from both the crowd and the public in that it is not defined by a form of interaction but by presentation from the mass media to an audience. The invention of printing made masses possible, and they have become more prominent still with the invention of each of the other mass media.
The messages from the mass media is an attempt to persuade the mass to choose something which is offered, such as some brand of refrigerator. The mass acts not by the expression of a common emotion as does the crowd, nor by discussion as does the public, but by the simultaneous and independent action of the participants. Their aggregated choices can have powerful effects on society, as when a popular TV show leads many people to use the bathroom at the same time, so that bond issues have to be floated to increase sewage disposal facilities.
Contrary to Blumer, evidence confirms the common sense view that consumers do not act independently of one another but frequently discuss their choices. For this reason, Turner and Killian suggest that the mass is best thought of as what Max Weber calls an "ideal type" -- not an accurate description of empirical cases, but a concept which is useful in interpreting particular events insofar as they approximate it. Actually, most or all terms in the field refer to ideal types; there are many mixed cases.
We change intellectual gears when we confront Blumer's final form of collective behavior, the social movement. Some examples include the French Revolutions, the movement for the adoption of a World Calendar, and Alcoholics Anonymous.
Social movements typically have a structure and persistence which distinguishes them from the other three forms of collective behavior, and for this reason they are often considered to be a separate topic.
There have never been many specialists in collective behavior, and these few have typically been students of Park and Blumer at Chicago, or, more recently, of Blumer and Smelser at Berkeley. Thus, collective behavior has been a school of thought as well as a subfield of sociology.
The study of collective behavior spun its wheels for many years, until Neil Smelser's Theory of Collectiove Behavior (1962) and social disturbances in the U. S. and elsewhere in the late 60's and early 70's prompted a renewal of interest in the field. Out of this interest has come a number of empirical challenges to the armchair sociology of earlier students of collective behavior.
Richard Berk uses game theory to suggest that even a panic in a burning theater can reflect rational calculation. If members of the audience decide that it is more rational to run to the exits than to walk, the result may look like an animal-like stampede without in fact being irrational.
In a series of empirical studies of assemblies of people, Clark McPhail (The Myth of the Madding Crowd) argues that such assemblies vary along a number of dimensions, and that traditional stereotypes of emotionality and unanimity often do not describe what happens.
Bibliography
- Herbert Blumer, "Collective Behavior," in A. M. Lee, ed., New Outline of the Principles of Sociology, 1951.
- Neil J. Smelser, "Theory of Collective Behavior," 1963.
- Ralph H. Turner and Lewis M. Killian, Collective Behavior, Englewood Cliffs, N. J., Prentice-Hall, 2d ed., 1972; 3d. ed. 1987; 4th ed. 1993.
- James B. Rule, Theories of Civil Violence, Berkeley, University of California, 1988.
- Clark McPhail, The Myth of the Madding Crowd, New York, Aldine de Gruyter, 1991.
External Links
- Group Experiment Environments (GEE) project, sponsored by the Percepts and Concepts Laboratory at Indiana University
See also
- Crowd psychology
- Collective hysteria
- Penis panic
- Peer pressure
- Social comparison theory
- Spiral of silence
- Herd behaviour
- Bandwagon effect
- Collective consciousness
- Collective Effervescence
- Collective intelligence
- Group behaviour
- Herd morality
- Mob rule
- Sheeple
- Keeping up with the Joneses
- Theories of political behavior
Robert Ezra Park (February 14 1864–February 7 1944) was an American urban sociologist, one of the main founders of the original Chicago School of sociology.
..... Click the link for more information.
Life
Park was born in Harveyville, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Minnesota...... Click the link for more information.
Herbert Blumer (born March 7, 1900 in St. Louis, Missouri; died April 13 1987) was an American sociologist and a pupil of George Herbert Mead.
When Mead had to give up his position as a lecturer at the University of Chicago due to illness, Blumer took over and continued his
..... Click the link for more information.
When Mead had to give up his position as a lecturer at the University of Chicago due to illness, Blumer took over and continued his
..... Click the link for more information.
Sociology (from Latin: socitus, "companion"; and the suffix -ology, "the study of", from Greek λόγος, lógos, "knowledge") is the systematic and scientific study of society and societal behavior.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
LAW may refer to:
..... Click the link for more information.
- Lightweight Anti-tank Weapon, like the M72 LAW (US Army) and the LAW 80 (British Army)
- Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights (also known as LAW)
- League of American Bicyclists, formerly known as the League of American Wheelmen
..... Click the link for more information.
Institutions are structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of two or more individuals. Institutions are identified with a social purpose and permanence, transcending individual human lives and intentions, and with the making and enforcing of
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
emergence refers to the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Like intelligence in the field of AI, or agents in distributed artificial intelligence, emergence is central to the theory of complex systems and yet very
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
swastika (from Sanskrit svástika
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Toothpaste is a paste or gel dentifrice used to clean and improve the aesthetic appearance and health of teeth. It is almost always used in conjunction with a toothbrush. Toothpaste use can promote good oral hygiene: it can aid in the removal of dental plaque and food from the
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
The Russian Revolution (1917) was a series of economic and social upheavals in Russia, involving first the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy, and then the overthrow of the liberal and moderate-socialist Provisional Government, resulting in the establishment of Soviet power under
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Body piercing usually refers to the piercing of a part of the human body for the purpose of wearing jewelry in the opening created. Body piercing is a form of body modification.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Neil J. Smelser was a University of California, Berkeley sociologist who studied collective behavior. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1952.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Gustave Le Bon (May 7, 1841 – December 13, 1931) was a French social psychologist, sociologist, and amateur physicist. He was the author of several works in which he expounded theories of national traits, racial superiority, herd behaviour and crowd psychology.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Sigmund Freud
Born May 6 1856
Freiberg, Moravia, now the Czech Republic
..... Click the link for more information.
Born May 6 1856
Freiberg, Moravia, now the Czech Republic
..... Click the link for more information.
economic bubble (sometimes referred to as a "speculative bubble", a "market bubble", a "price bubble", a "financial bubble", or a "speculative mania") is “trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance from intrinsic values”.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
tulip mania (alternatively tulipomania) is used metaphorically to refer to any large economic bubble. The term originally came from the period in the history of the Netherlands during which demand for tulip bulbs reached such a peak that enormous prices were charged for a
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
South Sea Bubble, by Edward Matthew Ward, Tate Gallery]] The South Sea Company (1711 – c1850s) was an English company granted a monopoly to trade with South America under a treaty with Spain.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Compagnie des Indes (or Compagnie Perpétuelle des Indes). In 1720 it acquired the Banque Royale, which was founded by John Law as Banque Générale in 1716.
Law exaggerated the wealth of Louisiana with an effective marketing scheme, which led to wild speculation on the
..... Click the link for more information.
Law exaggerated the wealth of Louisiana with an effective marketing scheme, which led to wild speculation on the
..... Click the link for more information.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a popular history of popular folly by Charles Mackay, first published in 1841. The book chronicles and vilifies its targets in three parts: "National Delusions", "Peculiar Follies", and "Philosophical Delusions".
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
The University of Chicago is a private university located principally in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. Founded in 1890 by the American Baptist Education Society and the oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, the University of Chicago held its first classes on October 1, 1892.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
A thought experiment (from the German term Gedankenexperiment, coined by Hans Christian Ørsted) in the broadest sense is the use of a hypothetical scenario to help us understand the way things actually are. There are many different kinds of thought experiments.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence or consequences that are observable by the senses. Empirical data is data that is produced by experiment or observation.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
The World Calendar is a proposed reform of the Gregorian calendar created by Elisabeth Achelis of Brooklyn, New York in 1930.
..... Click the link for more information.
Features
The World Calendar is a 12-month, perennial calendar with equal quarters...... Click the link for more information.
Social movements are a type of group action. They are large groupings of individuals and/or organizations focused on specific political or social issues, in other words, on carrying out, resisting or undoing a social change.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Neil J. Smelser was a University of California, Berkeley sociologist who studied collective behavior. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1952.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is often used in the context of economics. It studies strategic interactions between agents. In strategic games, agents choose strategies which will maximize their return, given the strategies the other agents choose.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
A stampede is an act of mass impulse among herd animals or a crowd of people in which the herd (or crowd) collectively begins running with no clear direction or purpose. Stampedes are believed to originate from biological responses in the brains and endocrine systems of herd
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Crowd psychology is a branch of social psychology. Ordinary people can typically gain direct power by acting collectively. Historically, because large groups of people have been able to affect dramatic and sudden social change in a manner that bypasses established due process, they
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Mass hysteria, also called collective hysteria or collective obsessional behavior, is the sociopsychological phenomenon of the manifestation of the same or similar hysterical symptoms by more than one person.
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
Genital retraction syndrome (GRS), generally considered a culture-specific syndrome, is a condition in which an individual is overcome with the belief that his/her external genitals—or also, in females, breasts—are retracting into the body, shrinking, or in some male
..... Click the link for more information.
..... Click the link for more information.
For other uses, see Peer Pressure (disambiguation).
Peer pressure is a term describing the pressure exerted by a peer group in encouraging a person to change their attitude, behavior and/or morals, to conform to, for example, the group's actions,
..... Click the link for more information.
This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.