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After reading this article you will learn about:- 1. Meaning of Crowds 2. Types of Crowds 3. Features 4. Size 5. Composition 6. Information Flow.
Meaning of Crowds:
The French Sociologist Gustave Le Bon (1895) devoted a whole book to study the nature of crowds; he described how the people in a crowd often think, feel and act in extreme ways (mob scenes, crowd hysteria etc.) and how they accept or reject ideas uncritically. He contrasted the behaviour of people when they are alone with their behaviour when they are members of large groups.
Floyd Allport (1924) described a crowd as “a collection of individuals who are all attending and reacting to some common object, their reactions being of a simple prepotent sort and accompanied by strong emotional responses.”
Crowds and audiences are temporary collection of human beings, in contrast to groups which are more enduring. While groups have a hierarchic structure, there is no such structure in crowds and audiences. Though they are temporary and though they are without structure, crowds and audiences are of great significance in social life.
The crowd is the most transitory and unstable of all social groups. It is an unorganized group. Crowds form quickly and also dissolve quickly as we can see in the market place. The crowd differs from the audience in that the participants in an assembly, public meeting, cinema house etc., fall into the predetermined order and are arranged according to some principle of selection; but in a crowd there is no such order whatever.
In between the audience and the crowd is the gathering of people who assemble to watch a snake charmer or to listen to a lecture by a medicine vendor in the market place. In such assemblages there is a minimum order, the persons will stand around and their focus is on the performer or the vendor. But in a crowd there is no definite order at all. People just gather together.
Milgram and Toch (1968) describe collective behaviour as “group behaviour which originates spontaneously, is relatively unorganized, fairly unpredictable and plan-less in its course of development, and which depends on interstimulation among the participants.” It includes crowd behaviour, riots, protest movements, public revolts etc.
The persons in a crowd may behave in the most noble and heroic manner as well as in the most savage and destructive manner, it is because of this that collective behaviour may serve as vehicle of social change as in French Revolution or the Satyagraha movements in India under the leadership of Gandhi in 1920, 1930 and 1942 or the Vimo- chana, Samera in Kerala in 1958 which led to the unseating of the communist party rule.
In this manner social unrest and social movements are indicators of historical change. They also indicate the breakdown of existing social order. This is how the study of collective behaviour helps in the understanding of the basis of stability in the everyday social world.
Types of Crowds:
Brown (1954) divided the crowds into mobs and audiences as follows:
Thus, he distinguished between two kinds of crowds:
(a) Mobs which may be aggressive or escape mobs or acquisitive or expressive mobs, and
(b) Audiences which may be casual or intentional.
When there is social unrest, protest meetings and processions to express the grievances are organized. Thus, the protest meetings or processions are organized crowds they are audiences and not mobs. But a protest meeting may become disorganized when two parties clash or when the police come to disperse the meeting or procession, if it is in violation of the magistrate’s order. Under such circumstances an intentional, organized audience becomes an aggressive mob, pelting stones at the policemen or setting fire to buses etc.
In a similar manner an organized audience may become a panic mob when fire breaks out in the hall or at the meeting place. Sometimes the mob may also be organized into an audience when the leader comes and appeals to them to calm down and understand the exact situation or problem.
Some Features of the Crowd:
The crowd is an aggregation of people. Generally the crowds tend to form in a circle. From all sides people come up to see what is happening. Formation of a circle helps most people to observe the event. Such a ring will have a structure. The speaker or the snake charmer will be in the centre.
There will be some space around him which is free. The persons who arrive early tend to form the first circle around this empty space. The crowd may be four or five or more deep in concentric circles. Then there will be an outer boundary. The Fig. 6 illustrates the structure of the ring.
There will be considerable movement between the inner boundary. The late comers will try to push their way to the inner boundary to get a good view. The early comers who have satisfied their curiosity or who lose interest will struggle to move out.
A. The speaker or the snake charmer etc.
B. The inner space.
C. Inner boundary.
D. Outer boundary. (The crowd will be between C and D).
Thus, it may be assumed that those who form the inner boundary are more highly motivated than those who are at the periphery. Secondly, the larger the inner space, the wider the circle and so the greater the number of people who can witness the event. Sometimes the ring of admirers may be so close to a celebrity that he is unable to come out of it unless the policemen break the ring and make a pathway.
Boundary maintenance is an important problem in organized collectivities. When large crowds are expected the persons responsible for the assemblage will plant poles and tie thick cords to demarcate the areas. One can see such arrangements being made in Tirupati temple where tens of thousands of devotees crowd to go into the temple for darshan.
The temple authorities draw up ropes on either side so that the crowd moves in a Q-fashion. Thus orderliness is created in a situation which would otherwise be chaotic. Similar arrangements are made when the Prime Minister visits the various parts of the country.
The properties of the crowd are continually changing so that a person who desires to stand on the fringe may find himself at the centre of a speedily increasing crowd. A person may wish to remain stationary, but the flow of the crowd may make him move in the stream. As Milgram and Toch write, “The choices made by a plurality of others in inter-stimulation create altered conditions for him that are independent of his intentions; in turn, his response to the conditions creates constraints and pressures for others.”
Another major feature of crowd activity is differential participation. Though it is assumed that a crowd is generally homogeneously acting, careful scrutiny will reveal that while a good proportion may be attending to the speaker, some others will be engaged in private conversation and other activities. Those who come as onlookers may be engulfed in the crowd but they may not be interested in the issue.
Polarization is another feature. When all or most of the members of a group are facing one object there is attention towards it. This gives unity to the group. When the speaker is able to-maintain the attention of the group there is polarization.
Similarly, when the actors on the stage are able to sustain the attention of the group there is polarization. Polarization is also related to the structure of the group; those near the centre will be more highly polarized than those at the periphery. When there is no polarization at all then the persons form a mere assemblage; they are no more a crowd.
A crowd is distinguished from a mere aggregate because of some common interest or purpose which leads to polarization. When polarization diminishes the crowd is broken up; when individuals lose interest, they disengage themselves and move on. A typical example of lack of polarization is when people gather to hear music in a park on a Sunday evening.
Some people may listen to some items with interest; but generally they will be moving around, conversing, buying eatables, and so on. When the songs are very popular and when the musicians are very popular there may be some polarization.
The number of people within a specified space defines the density of the crowd; when loudspeakers are made available the density decreases because people can stand far from the speaker and yet listen clearly. Hall (1966) asserts that one of the factors affecting density of crowds is how people respond to jostling and shoving, the touch of the strangers; if people like being touched by strangers or do not mind it, then the density will be high; if people do not like being touched by strangers, the density of crowd will be less.
Hall also suggests that there may be cultural variations. He writes: “The Japanese and Arabs have much higher tolerance for crowding in public spaces and in conveyances than do Americans and Northern Europeans.” There is no doubt that Indians as a whole have high tolerance for crowding in public spaces.
There will be dense crowds both at religious festivals and at political meetings and demonstrations. Kumbh Mela crowds, Dashara crowds and Pooja crowds are conspicuous for their high density going up even to hundreds of thousands. Similarly Gandhi, Nehru and Indira Gandhi have drawn hundreds of thousands. Another index of the Indian response to jostling and shoving is the overcrowding of houses and railway carriages. They are always packed.
Crowd Size:
Milgram and Toch report that the producers of television programme in Rome took the permission of the local authorities and staged an automobile “accident” in a relatively empty street by making two cars crash against each other. Soon a crowd began to form around the scene of accident but the maximum crowd was around one hundred arranged in a circle around the cars. It ceased to grow further.
This shows that a car accident will collect only a limited crowd. Also the size of the accident crowd will be limited by the population density in the area, the time of accident etc. Smelser (1963) discusses the general conditions of crowd formation. Canetti (1962) conducted a field experiment to examine the role of precipitating groups of varying numbers in crowd formation.
Precipitating groups made up of 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 and 15 were placed in a New York city street with heavy pedestrian flow. The members of the group performed a clearly observable action like looking up at a window of a sky-scraper and holding the pose for one minute. Each condition was replicated five times. It was found that about 40 per cent of the passersby joined one person gazing at the window, about 60 per cent when there were two or three persons and around 80 per cent of the passersby for groups of five and more.
Thus any increase above five persons in the precipitating group did not have any further significant increase in crowd formation with the increase in the precipitating group there is an increase in the proportion of onlookers up to a point who join.
One of the important tasks of the newspaper reporters is to estimate the size of the crowd when they write about an incident Studies show that this estimate can be actually based on measurement of the area. The minimum space for a person will be around two square feet. Therefore the total number of people can be worked out on the basis of the actual area in which the crowd gathers.
Long ago, Le Bon and Floyd Allport suggested that one of the factors leading to crowd behaviour is anonymity. When the crowd is large no person can be singled out and held responsible for his actions. This argument assumes that an individual has some antisocial tendencies, which are normally held under check by public opinion or fear of legal or social consequences, but which are let loose in a group since it provides anonymity.
Anyway there is no doubt that the aim of the police is to identify the persons in a crowd to fix their responsibility. It is possible that in this situation innocent persons who are in the scene may be held responsible. There is also another aspect to the problem. When a crowd gathers and when conditions are favourable for rioting, not only do the police come to prevent violence, but it is also possible that many persons who are in no way connected with the problem may use the opportunity to join the crowd and get some excitement by including in riotous behaviour.
It is possible that this often happens when the student crowds are formed to agitate for something. Though the students themselves may not desire to engage in violence and destruction the unruly elements may take advantage of the situation. But this only means that the students should not provide opportunity for the rowdies to get in.
The Composition of Crowds:
What are the characteristics of the people who make up crowds? According to Le Bon crowds are composed of criminals, vagrants, social misfits etc. However, historical studies of French Revolution (1789) show that the 662 persons, reported to have been killed in storming the Bastille, had regular places of residence and settled occupations. There is no doubt that the Satyagrahis under the leadership of Gandhi, who revolted against the British rule and who were submitted to lathi charge, shooting etc., were people of character, who had been trained in the principles of satyagraha.
However, it is true that a large proportion of a crowd consists of illiterate, unskilled, unemployed people since that is a demographic feature in India. About 75 per cent or more of the people belong to this category in India today. So it is little wonder if they also constitute the majority in any crowd except when the crowds are formed by students, or factory labourers, or government employees, who are on strike.
Another feature of the crowd is its changing composition. Just as the stream is the same but the water flowing changes, similarly the crowd may persist but the individuals composing it keep on changing except for the small core of people committed to the cause or issue. The ruffians in the area may join when the crowd becomes riotous so that they can take advantage of the situation and turn the attention of the crowd to looting.
The composition of the crowd may also determine the form of collective behaviour that arises. For example, when the crowd consists of a good number of women, it may not break off into violence; also the police who come to check the activities of the crowd may not resort to lathi charge, tear gasing etc., when there are many women in the crowd.
Brown (1954) has enumerated the various categories of persons who compose a mob, in terms of their readiness to violate conventional behaviour. There may be lawless persons for whom violent behaviour is not completely discontinuous with their normal life. There may be highly suggestible persons who readily succumb to the hypnotic influence of the father surrogates, the leaders.
There may be those with lower thresholds for conventional behaviour and who can readily drop off conventional behaviour if the situation makes it possible; such individuals may take advantage of the loss of responsibility through anonymity and because of the creation of an impression of universality may become active in the mob situation; because of anonymity they have no fear of being identified; because of the impression of universality, they feel that they must also join in the rioting since everybody is riotous. Next there are the supportive individuals; they may not like to indulge in mob action but they are ready to support them, to encourage them. Finally, there are those who may actively resist any mob violence and who may even risk their lives by condemning the unruly members.
Information Flow in the Crowds: Rumour:
Rumours may precede as well as succeed mob behaviour. There are several cases on record when rumours spread that some child is kidnapped, that some member of the group has been taken into custody by the police and ill-treated or even murdered in the police station. The spread of these rumours may lead to the formation of crowds and violent behaviour. If it is a case of rumours about kidnapping of children, any stranger in the locality may be set upon. If it is a case of maltreatment of a citizen by the police, the mob may attack the police station.
Rumours may also spread after the riot. It may be rumoured that the police shot down a number of people. This may lead to protest meetings the next day.
Rumours arise when there is an ambiguous situation. Rumour is an attempt to restructure the situation by explaining what may have happened.
Allport and Postman (1947) asserted that the intensity of rumour and the rapidity with which it spreads is a function of interest in the matter being transmitted and the ambiguity; ambiguity arises when there is incomplete information or when the information cannot be readily verified.
They also showed that the rumours become shorter, more concise and more easily grasped; rumours also become sharpened, with relatively few details. These features enable the rumour to be grasped easily; they are spread quickly because of the interest in the matter; they may affect them personally.
It is assumed that rumours will not spread if the correct information is provided. This is a wrong assumption. Rumours spread because of the interest in the situation and the eagerness of the people to know something about it. Secondly, it is assumed that rumours are inflammatory while facts are not. The facts, by themselves, may provoke the aggressiveness of the group. Factual information may stop the rumours which are not based on facts; but knowledge of facts is no guarantee against aggressiveness and mob action.