ADVERTISEMENTS:
The following points highlight the four main types of collective behaviour. The types are: 1. Crowd 2. Mob 3. Audience 4. Publics.
Collective Behaviour: Type # 1. Crowd:
The most pronounced expression of collective behaviour is found in the crowd. Mac Iver and Page defined a crowd “as a physically compact aggregation of human beings brought into direct, temporary, and unorganised contact with one another”.
What distinguishes a crowd from other forms of collective behaviour is not the physical proximity of its members, “specially in a society like ours with instruments of mass communication like the newspaper and the radio”.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
A story published in a newspaper may start a wave of panic among a group of people who may manifest all the characteristics of crowd behaviour. Some of these characteristics may be briefly noted. To begin with, the essence of crowd behaviour is the highly emotional responses of individuals when they are released from the restraints that usually inhibit extreme behaviour.
Secondly, numbers are necessary to make a crowd. A chance meeting of friends or acquaintances on the street after a long interval may make them talk and behave in a highly emotional manner. But it is not a crowd because numbers are so small as to give such meetings the character of face-to-face groups.
Thirdly, in a crowd numbers are randomly “thrown together in physical proximity”. There is no set purpose or preplanning which precedes the formation of a crowd. In this respect, “the crowd differs from such groups as the assembly, public meeting, reception, and so on, where the participants fall into a pre-determined order and are arranged according to some principle of selection”.
When a College Athletic Club wins a trophy, say, in a football match, the students celebrate the event by dancing, singing, raising slogans, or even by looting the pavement shops. They exhibit, in other words, all the characteristics of crowd behaviour. On the other hand, when the students walk orderly in a procession in order to register their protest against anything which they consider to be undesirable, they cease to be a crowd.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The bases of crowd behavior:
Crowd behaviour is characterised by “highly emotional responses of individuals when they are released from the restraints that usually inhibit extreme behaviour”, in a crowd individuals do things which they would never do singly or under normal circumstances.
Everyday social controls may break down, and the crowd may throw away the standards and habits of conduct “which the education and discipline of civilized life have built up in its members”. What releases these customary restraints and leads to crowd behaviour?
Crowd mentality is characterised by intensified feeling and heightened suggestibility. That is, once a crowd is assembled, the individuals get so excited that each member responds uncritically to the stimuli provided by the other members. Because of intensified feeling characteristic of a crowd, there occurs in the members of a crowd “a partial dissociation of consciousness”.
For the time being, they lose their critical judgement and accept unreservedly whatever suggestions come to them. When we are critical about a matter, we subject every suggestion to close scrutiny in the light of our experience and judgement. For reasons discussed below, the members of the crowd, however, lose this critical judgement temporarily.
(i) The admired leader:
When a suggestion comes from one whom the crowd respects and admires, it hardly exercises its critical judgement and tends to accept the suggestions as truth. A clever and popular leader can easily convince the over suggestible crowd that its interests are in danger and that the real solution lies in the leader’s suggestions.
(ii) Numbers:
The numbers in a crowd tend to impart to the members a sense of security characteristic of an anonymous group. There is, consequently, a “loss of the sense of responsibility, the breakdown of inhibitions, experienced by its individual constituents”.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
This factor explains the fact that a member of a crowd does things which he would never do under normal conditions. A student of a college, for instance, does not normally dance in streets nor does he loot pavement shops; but in a victory celebration, following a match, he does.
As long as he is in a crowd, he tends to throw to the winds his sense of individual responsibility.
As Maclver and Page put it:
“Deviational behaviour is momentarily supported by the numbers of the crowd, providing the individual a short-lived social sanction for the acts forbidden in everyday life”.
(iii) Inter stimulation and crowd rhythm:
Crowd rhythm makes for greater suggestibility in crowds. A rally cry or a form of applause serves to bring down the barriers between individuals and forge links of solidarity among them. Gradually, they develop similar mood and “exhibit simultaneous and rhythmic gestures’. At this stage, “each individual seems to function as an amplifier of a mood, of a feeling, or merely of a verbal expression”.
Every individual, therefore, stimulates the other. As a consequence, excitement grows, and with it the suggestibility of each individual. Skilled politicians and party manipulators use various techniques with a view to producing crowd rhythm and winning crowds to their purposes.
Types of crowd:
Crowd is classified by sociologists into various types, depending on the perspective from which they look at the crowd phenomenon. Some emphasize the way a crowd is formed, some emphasise the purpose which distinguishes one crowd from another, and some others emphasise the behaviour-pattern of a crowd.
In the light of their discussions we may distinguish between four types of crowd:
Collective Behaviour: Type # 2. Mob:
A crowd is transformed into a mob when the people concerned become disorderly. The situation may be such as to make the people highly excited. The admired leader may deliberately incite people by giving inflammatory speeches.
His attempt at exciting people will be successful if, in particular, the people have been nursing grievances against an agency or a group for a long period of time. It will, however, be wrong to assume that only a crowd exhibits mob behaviour. Even a stable group, such as the army or the police, or the factory workers, may, all on a sudden, become disorderly in their conduct.
In terms of the nature of conduct, mobs are generally classified into two categories : the first, the purposive and active mob: the second, the confused and random mob. These two types of mobs may be explained with reference to an example. If, for instance, a revolutionary leader forcibly takes control of the Legislative Chamber, there might follow two different types of outcome.
If the large majority of the legislators are in sympathy with ideals and action-programmes of the revolutionary leader, they may indulge in revolutionary activities under his direction. Such a group may be called a purposive and active mob.
If, on the other hand, a sizeable number of legislators are opposed to the ideals and activities of the revolutionary leader, they may get confused and act in a disorderly manner. This group may be called a confused and random mob.
We should bear in mind that a mob easily grows in an environment in which conflicting interests, ideals or norms exist side by side. If, for instance, two separate groups of people with distinct life-styles, customs and traditions live in geographically contiguous areas, they may develop relationship of enmity.
On some flimsy ground they may, therefore, become highly excited and hurl filthy abuses at one another and indulge in disorderly conduct.
Collective Behaviour: Type # 3. Audience:
When a group of people meet at a particular place at a particular time with a specific object, it is known as an audience. Those who go to the playground to see a cricket match or those who go to a public hall to listen to a lecture come under this category. But those who witness a match or listen to a lecturer on the television screen at home do not form an audience.
The first characteristic of an audience is that people assemble at a particular place with some common or similar interest in view. The second characteristic of an audience is that they are expected to conform to the universally accepted code of conduct.
For instance, it is an accepted code that a speaker should not be interrupted or asked a question while he is speaking. Likewise, it is an accepted norm that one should not applaud in the midst of a symphony orchestra.
But one is expected to applaud at the end of each ‘number’. On the other hand, it is an accepted code that spectators can yell and shout while a football match is being played. Thus, codes of conduct vary with different audiences.
The principle which determines broadly such codes is that the audience should not be allowed to do things or act in a manner prejudicial to the goal or purpose for which the audience is assembled. The same principle dictates that people are expected not to engage in conversation while a drama is being played on the stage.
Kimball Young has classified audience into three distinct categories. The first type is called information-seeking audience. Those who assemble in order to seek information or knowledge fall under this category. The second type is called recreation-seeking audience. Those who go to the playground to watch a game or to the movie house to see a film come under this category. The third type is called conversional audience.
There may be two types of conversional audience. These may be explained with reference to examples. There may be some people who entertain certain beliefs or values, but who entertain, at the same time, some doubts about them.
In such cases, the concerned persons may attend meetings and discussion groups in order to dispel doubts and seek re-enforcement and support in favour of values and beliefs which they cherish. There may be another type of conversional audience. Religious discourses and meetings organised by political parties are designed to propagate certain ideas and ideologies.
There may be people who attend such discourses and meetings in order to familiarize themselves with the ideas which are sought to be propagated through such discourses and meetings. Such people may be called conversional audience.
Collective Behaviour: Type # 4. Publics:
“When the interest of a group of individuals in a social issue or set of social values is more abiding and more rational than it is in a crowd, we call the group a public”. Since publics are interest groups, we may think of different kinds of publics.
Thus, a newspaper seeks to cater to the different types of publics by dividing the paper into different sections, such as film, theatre or entertainment section, sports section, youth section, etc. One important characteristic of public is that though its members share common interest, they do not necessarily have a common approach or a common viewpoint.
For instance, those who are interested in the cinema may have different ideas about the qualities of a good cinema or the meaning of good acting. It follows, therefore, that public is characterised by discussions and controversies, and hence by the formation of public opinion.
Since public opinion is processed through discussion and controversy, it is generally free from the emotional overtones characteristic of crowd mentality.
When the members of the public take a stand on some specific social issues, we call it public opinion. The concept of public opinion is relevant particularly in a society that is characterised by complex rapid changes. In a static primitive society no new issue obviously arises. Hence, all these issues can be easily met by the prevailing folkways. There is not much discussion or controversy about what ought or ought not to be done.
In a complex rapidly changing society, on the other hand, there is scope for controversies and differences of opinion. Hence, “the issues that beset publics under conditions of rapid change may be numerous and acute”.
A study in contrast between a crowd and a public will bring out clearly the characteristics of the latter. In the first place, a crowd implies an assemblage of people. A group of people becomes transformed into a crowd only when they are assembly and exhibit as a result of close contact other features of crowd behaviour.
A public, on the other hand, does not imply that its members needs must assemble. They may remain scattered all throughout the country. The communication among them may be established, though indirectly, through the mass media, such as newspapers, radio and television. The views of the public also find expression through these mass media.
Secondly, since a crowd is formed through direct contact among people, a crowd is necessarily less numerous than a public whose members may be scattered over a wider area. Thirdly, numbers and spatial distribution of the members of the public protect them from being highly suggestible and-emotional.
In the case of a crowd, the excitement of one individual affects others around him. In a public, for obvious reasons, such inter-stimulation does not exist. Each individual member of a public takes his decision on his own in terms of his predilections, interests and judgment.
A question may be raised here. If the members of the public take decisions independently, then how does a public opinion grow? It is true that the members of the public lie scattered with no direct means of communication among them all.
There is, however, a common culture which links them together and moulds their processes of thinking and doing along certain set broad lines. No individual member of the public can ignore this cultural influence.
In the circumstances, the opinions that the members of the public arrive at have some common elements on basic issues even though substantial differences on matters of details may exist. It will, therefore, not be an exaggeration to suggest that public opinion can never grow among people in the absence of a cultural unity.
Propaganda and Public:
While drawing a comparison with the crowd, some people suggest that, unlike a crowd, the public is guided by intelligence and reason. This is probably not always true. It is undeniable that the members of the public cannot escape the influence of tradition which deeply affects both their intelligence and reason.
Moreover, public opinion does not necessarily grow on the basis of evidence alone. Subjective perceptions give shape to public opinion to a large extent. It is, therefore, not proper to consider public opinion as objective. In this connection, we may refer to the part played by the highly sophisticated techniques of publicity, advertising and propaganda, in particular”, in moulding public opinion.
Through graphic symbols, music, gestures, and combinations of words the propagandist makes impressions upon masses of people. These impressions are sometimes vivid. They are frequently charged with emotion. They may be wholly or partially true, confusing or false.
Nevertheless, people are powerfully influenced in their judgement by the impressions made by the glittering and attractive symbols presented by the propagandist. Propaganda is made under cover so that the members of the public fail to discriminate between fact and merely imagined ideas.
We have seen that public is characterised by discussions and controversies, and that rationality, rather than emotion, guides the conduct of the members of the public. But propaganda may stir up the emotion of the public on a particular issue, and it may abandon processes of rational thinking and discussion, and may give way to emotion. When this happens, it ceases to be a public and becomes a crowd.
C. Wright Mills in his book The Power Elite has expressed the apprehension that our lives in present-day society are so deeply influenced by carefully orchestrated propaganda that the society of publics is gradually being transformed into a mass society.
He noted the following indications of mass society which are increasingly becoming evident:
(i) There is a tendency among people to accept uncritically the views which are expressed or conveyed through mass media. These are not usually subjected to critical scrutiny,
(ii) The mass media in present-day society are so organised today that it is not possible for anybody, either individually or collectively, to challenge effectively any information or fact conveyed by the mass media,
(iii) The concerned authorities at different levels are in a position to manipulate facts and mould the views of the people in the way they like. No informed public opinion can grow in such a miasma of distortions.
Commenting on this aspect, MacIver and Page observe:
“Propaganda and demagoguery were hardly new in the days of ancient Greece and Rome. But today, with the great increase in the range of communications and in the size of audiences, and with the constant improvement of the techniques of persuasion, the latter have become an instrument of social control of unprecedented possibilities”.
They therefore, conclude by emphasizing ” the need for that social education which guards us against the most expert of ‘practitioners of propaganda’… and which permits us to exercise to the utmost our individual discernment”.