COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR

the kinds of activities engaged in by sizable but loosely organized groups of people. Episodes of collective behaviour tend to be quite spontaneous, resulting from an experience shared by the members of the group that engenders a sense of common interest and identity. The informality of the group's structure is the main source of the frequent unpredictability of collective behaviour. Included in collective behaviour are the activities of people in crowds, panics, fads, fashions, crazes, publics, cults, and followings as well as more organized phenomena, such as reform and revolutionary social movements. Because it emphasizes groups, the study of collective behaviour is different from the study of individual behaviour, although inquiries into the motivations and attitudes of the individuals in these groupings are often carried out. Collective behaviour resembles organized group behaviour in that it consists of people acting together; but it is more spontaneousand consequently more volatile and less predictablethan is behaviour in groups that have well-established rules and traditions specifying their purposes, membership, leadership, and method of operation. The U.S. sociologist Robert E. Park, who coined the term collective behaviour, defined it as the behavior of individuals under the influence of an impulse that is common and collective, an impulse, in other words, that is the result of social interaction. He emphasized that participants in crowds, fads, or other forms of collective behaviour share an attitude or behave alike, not because of an established rule or the force of authority, and not because as individuals they have the same attitudes, but because of a distinctive group process. The absence of formal rules by which to distinguish between members and outsiders, to identify leaders, to establish the aims of the collectivity, to set acceptable limits of behaviour for members, and to specify how collective decisions are to be made accounts for the volatility of collective behaviour. The leader of a mob can become the object of the mob's hatred in a matter of minutes; a fashion leader can suddenly become pass. Although agreeing that collective behaviour does not generally adhere to everyday rules, some investigators emphasize the emergence of rules and patterns within the collectivity that are related to the surrounding social structure. The U.S. psychologist Ralph H. Turner and the U.S. sociologist Lewis M. Killian define collective behaviour on the basis of the spontaneous development of norms and organization which contradict or reinterpret the norms and organization of society. Somewhat similar is the U.S. sociologist Neil J. Smelser's definition: mobilization on the basis of a belief which redefines social action. The distinctive beliefwhich is a generalized conception of events and of the members' relationships to themsupplies the basis for the development of a distinctive and stable organization within the collectivity. But Smelser's definition points attention, in a way that other definitions do not, toward the unique manner in which members perceive reality; without such a view a group of people would not be engaged in collective behaviour. The U.S. sociologist Herbert Blumer determined a desire for social change in collective behaviour, as expressed in his definition: a collective enterprise to establish a new order of life. This definition, however, excludes many of the temporary escapes from conventional life through revelry and orgies, punitive actions such as lynchings, and panics, which are not oriented to any kind of reconstruction of social life or society. Most students of collective behaviour, however, would not restrict the field so severely. the kinds of activities engaged in by sizable but loosely organized groups of people. Episodes of collective behaviour tend to be quite spontaneous, resulting from an experience shared by the members of the group that engenders a sense of common interest and identity. The informality of the group's structure is the main source of the frequent unpredictability of collective behaviour. Despite the uncertainties in specific courses of action, certain patterns in collective behaviour can be noted. In particular, there is typically a preliminary phase, during which people prepare themselves to act together. This phase is said to contain elementary collective behaviour, which is of three basic types. The first is milling. Milling consists of the restless movements of a group of people who are aroused in some way but who are still responding to their situation primarily as individuals. Milling serves to make members of the group aware of each other and helps spread a mutual sense of the situation and its meaning. The second type of elementary collective behaviour is rumour. Rumour can be seen as a process by which a group of people arrive at a consensus on the nature and significance of events. Rumours can be defined as bits of information that are transmitted via channels that lack official sanction. Thus, rumours flourish when these channels provide insufficient information or perhaps are not trusted. A prolonged combination of milling and rumour can produce the third type of elementary collective behaviour, social unrest. A community in which people are sensitive to each others' moods is prone to generalized discontent that can spread rapidly and bring ordinary affairs to a halt. Because the discontent is unfocussed, a period of social unrest is marked only by sporadic individual actions; it sets the stage, however, for more fully developed collective behaviour. A central example of full-blown collective behaviour is the phenomenon of crowds. A crowd is a group of people who occupy a fairly limited space over a relatively brief span of time but who share a mutually defined purpose. An active crowd directs its energies toward some external object that it desires to transform, often to deface or destroy. Thus, the period of elementary collective behaviour that forges the crowd must effectively diminish its members' normal reluctance to engage in violence. An expressive crowd is not concerned with anything outside itself. Rather, its members direct their energies toward a certain shared experience, often of a fervent nature. Crowd behaviour must be distinguished from related varieties of collective behaviour. First, crowds differ from so-called publics, which are relatively dispersed groups of people who have not settled their views on a given issue. Second, crowds differ from so-called masses, which are groups of people who all perform the same action, perhaps in the same place, but without the sense of acting in concert. Finally, crowds differ from so-called social movements, which have longer term goals and which can be manifested repeatedly over time. Other familiar cases of collective behaviour fall under the rubric of collective obsessions. The central example is the fad, in which large numbers of people occupy themselves with an unusual activity almost to the exclusion of anything else, primarily because the activity has become intensely popular. Those who do not participate in the fad usually regard it as silly, if not indeed dangerous. The phenomenon is roughly similar to speculative crazes in the world of business, and it has, in a sense, been institutionalized by the fashion industry. A fascinating example of a collective obsession is a so-called hysterical contagion, wherein a group of people all manifest symptoms of a mysterious disease. Investigation into these cases shows that the disease is nonexistent and that the symptoms are the result of shared (though perhaps unstated) anxiety. Efforts to explain collective behaviour have pointed to three sorts of causes. Some theorists have emphasized the motivations that lead an individual to engage in it. In this view, people who ordinarily feel cut off from social groups develop a deep sense of frustration. To alleviate this unpleasant feeling, such people seize on the opportunity to act together with others, almost without regard to the activity itself. Other theorists have emphasized the influence that people in a group exercise over one another. Thus, a bit of behaviour can be repeated and intensified by successive members of a group. In this way, a group can generate a pattern of behaviour forceful enough to overcome the resistance of people who would ordinarily not engage in the activity in question. Finally, certain theorists have emphasized the importance of social conditions, arguing that collective behaviour can express various kinds of social change. Groups that hold a new set of values or are exercising newly acquired power often engage in collective behaviour in order both to consolidate their membership and to manifest themselves to the rest of society. The effects of collective behaviour will differ, depending on such factors as social reactions. Immediately, an episode of collective behaviour can enliven society to a given issue, forcing people to take sides. But it should be observed that the way in which the behaviour is handled by social authoritiese.g., whether it is officially sanctioned or ruthlessly repressedwill help shape the way that people respond to it. Taking a broader view, it is sometimes suggested that collective behaviour provides an avenue for social experimentationa procedure by which new social forms and values can be put to the test in full public view. As such, social leaders are deeply concerned to try to control collective behavioureither to put it to their own uses or to prevent its use by someone else. The explosive character of collective behaviour makes it virtually impossible to master, however. Additional reading Theoretical and general studies Theories of collective behaviour are introduced in Hadley Cantril, The Psychology of Social Movements (1941, reprinted 1973); Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1922, reissued 1975; originally published in German, 1921); William A. Gamson, Power and Discontent (1968); Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951, reissued 1980); Richard T. Lapiere, Collective Behavior (1938); and David L. Miller, Introduction to Collective Behavior (1985). See also John C. Brigham, Social Psychology (1986). The major general treatments of the subject include Herbert Blumer, Collective Behavior, in Alfred M. Lee (ed.), Principles of Sociology, 3rd ed. (1969), a classic sociological statement of a widely used approach; Roger Brown, Mass Phenomena, in Gardner Lindzey (ed.), Handbook of Social Psychology, vol. 2, pp. 833876 (1954); and Stanley Milgram and Hans Toch, Collective Behavior: Crowds and Social Movements, in Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson (eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology, 2nd ed., vol. 4, pp. 507610 (1968), comprehensive reviews presented by psychologists; Robert R. Evans (ed.), Readings in Collective Behavior, 2nd ed. (1975), a collection of classic journal articles; Kurt Lang and Gladys Engel Lang, Collective Dynamics (1961), a standard textbook; Neil J. Smelser, Theory of Collective Behavior (1963, reissued 1971), a classic theoretical treatise and text; Ralph H. Turner, Collective Behavior, in Robert E.L. Faris (ed.), Handbook of Modern Sociology, pp. 382425 (1964), an analytic statement of the field for the advanced student in sociology; Ralph H. Turner and Lewis M. Killian, Collective Behavior, 3rd ed. (1987), a standard textbook; and John Lofland, Protest: Studies of Collective Behavior and Social Movements (1985). Specialized studies Elementary collective behaviour is studied in Gordon W. Allport and Leo Postman, The Psychology of Rumor (1947, reprinted 1975); Tamotsu Shibutani, Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumor (1966); and Fredrick Koenig, Rumor in the Marketplace: The Social Psychology of Commercial Hearsay (1985). Responses to disaster are the subject of George W. Baker and Dwight W. Chapman (eds.), Man and Society in Disaster (1962); Walter Lord, A Night to Remember (1955, reissued 1984); Harry E. Moore, Tornadoes over Texas: A Study of Waco and San Angelo in Disaster (1958); and United States. Federal Emergency Management Agency, Behavior and Attitudes Under Crisis Conditions: Selected Issues and Findings (1984). For discussion of collective obsessions, see David Caplovitz and Candace Rogers, Swastika 1960: The Epidemic of Anti-Semitic Vandalism in America (1961); John Carswell, The South Sea Bubble (1960); Alan C. Kerckhoff and Kurt W. Back, The June Bug: A Study of Hysterical Contagion (1968); and Charles MacKay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, 3 vol. (1841, reissued in 1 vol. as Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1981). Crowds E. Louis Backman, Religious Dances in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine (1952, reprinted 1977; originally published in Swedish, 1945); Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr (eds.), Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (1969; published also as The History of Violence in America); Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, 2nd ed. (1968, reprinted 1984; originally published in French, 1895); Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968); Arthur F. Raper, The Tragedy of Lynching (1933, reprinted 1970); George Rud, The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 17301848, rev. ed. (1981); Carl F. Graumann and Serge Moscovici (eds.), Changing Conceptions of Crowd Mind and Behavior (1986); and Frank Stagg, E. Glenn Hinson, and Wayne E. Oates, Glossolalia: Tongue Speaking in Biblical, Historical and Psychological Perspective (1967). Ralph H. Turner