When people turn into a crowd. Large crowd of people

a large group of people largely devoid of structure, united by an emotional mood or subject of attention, but at the same time, as a rule, not united by clearly recognized common intentions and plans, much less a single goal and clear ideas of how it can be achieved. In modern psychology of large groups, there is the following, essentially generally accepted classification - a typology of different types of crowds as a specific community of people: occasional, conventional, expressive, active. If we talk about an occasional crowd, then the decisive factor in the formation of this type of community is a certain “opportunity”, an occasion in connection with which people gather together in the logic of outside observers, united by an unexpected reason for curiosity, interest and desire to learn about some social phenomenon more than those who are beyond the line of eyewitnesses to the events know. As for the conventional crowd, this type of community arises in connection with some information about some upcoming mass event (for example, a key football match, a pre-announced concert, etc.). In fact, this community, for a short time of its existence, carries out its life activities according to the scheme of a rather unsettled convention regarding equally rigidly undefined norms of behavior, determined by the very general ideas about the rules according to which it is customary for people who find themselves participants in events that have a specific behavior to behave. social specifics. An expressive crowd is traditionally understood as such a large group, which is characterized by the fact that it exhibits a common, essentially unified attitude towards some event, phenomenon, and at the peak of the expression of this attitude turns into an ecstatic crowd, that is, a crowd in a state of mass ecstasy (a similar state often occurs in conditions of rhythmically maintained excitement - concerts, for example, of “hard rock” ensembles, mass religious rituals, mass sessions of supposedly healing hypnosis, etc.). Finally, an active crowd, the distinctive feature of which is some kind of joint action, a kind of active and at the same time unbridled impulse, a common activity clearly demonstrated by its members. At the same time, those researchers who attempted to give a meaningfully comprehensive typology of various types of crowds emphasized that “the active crowd..., in turn, includes the following subtypes - a) an aggressive crowd, united by blind hatred of a certain object (lynching, beating of religious , political opponents, etc. d.); b) a panicked crowd spontaneously fleeing from a real or imaginary source of danger; c) an acquisitive crowd entering into a disorderly direct conflict for the possession of any valuables (money, seats in outgoing transport, etc.); d) an insurgent crowd, in which people are united by a common, just indignation at the actions of the authorities, it often constitutes an attribute of revolutionary upheavals, and the timely introduction of an organizing principle into it can elevate a spontaneous mass uprising to a conscious act of political struggle" (A.P. Nazaretyan, Yu. A Shirkovin). In addition to the fact that, in fact, the lack of structure of such a type of community as a crowd, and, as a rule, a sufficient blurring of the initial goals of such an association of people, lead to an easy change in types of crowd, one cannot help but notice that the above stated and at the same time practically The generally accepted classification of crowd types is obviously imperfect. First of all, such a conclusion is based on the fact that there is no single classification basis here and therefore, for example, a conventional and active crowd can be at the same time an expressive crowd, and, say, an occasional crowd can simultaneously be a panic crowd (one of the varieties of an active crowd ) etc.

The French researcher G. Lebon identified a number of patterns that are characteristic of almost any crowd and determine the behavior of its members.

First of all, the effect of depersonification and weakening of ego control is clearly observed in the crowd: “...whatever the individuals who make it up, whatever their lifestyle, occupation, character or mind, their mere transformation into a crowd is enough to , so that they would form a kind of collective soul, causing them to feel, think and act completely differently than each of them would think, act and feel individually. ...

It is not difficult to notice how different an isolated individual is from an individual in a crowd, but it is much more difficult to determine the reasons for this difference. In order to at least somewhat clarify these reasons for ourselves, we must recall one of the provisions of modern psychology, namely, that the phenomena of the unconscious play an outstanding role not only in organic life, but also in the functions of the mind. Our conscious actions arise from the substratum of the unconscious, created especially by the influences of heredity. In this substratum are contained the countless hereditary remnants that constitute the actual souls of the race. ...

These general qualities of character, governed by the unconscious, and existing in almost the same degree in the majority of normal individuals of the race, are united together in a crowd. In the collective soul the intellectual faculties of individuals and hence their individuality disappear; ... and unconscious qualities take over.

It is precisely this combination of ordinary qualities in a crowd that explains to us why a crowd can never perform actions that require an elevated mind. Decisions concerning common interests, made by a meeting of even famous people in the field of various specialties, differ little from decisions made by a meeting of fools, since in both cases there are not any outstanding qualities combined, but only ordinary ones found in everyone. In a crowd, only stupidity can accumulate, not intelligence.”1

Despite the fact that G. Le Bon interprets the problem of the individual and collective unconscious in a very simplified manner and his views are strongly influenced by biological determinism, in general his conclusions about both the almost inevitable depersonalization and depersonalization of the individual in the crowd, and about the destructiveness of the crowd as a whole are completely fair. Moreover, as the practice of organizational psychology shows, in particular, even highly structured large groups of professionals, strictly speaking, who are not a crowd, often turn out to be completely ineffective in solving problems that require a creative and innovative approach. It is no coincidence that techniques for practical socio-psychological work with this kind of communities are, as a rule, based on their defragmentation according to one principle or another, followed by the search for a solution in small groups formed in this way.

G. Le Bon also clearly identified a number of socio-psychological mechanisms that mediate the behavior of an individual in a crowd: “The appearance of these new special traits, characteristic of a crowd and, moreover, not found in individual individuals included in its composition, is due to various reasons. The first of these is that the individual in a crowd acquires, thanks only to his numbers, a consciousness of irresistible force, and this consciousness allows him to succumb to instincts that he never gives free rein to when he is alone. In a crowd, he is less inclined to curb these instincts, because the crowd is anonymous and does not bear responsibility.”2 In essence, we are talking about deindividuation, which in modern social psychology usually means the loss of fear of external evaluation and, at a minimum, a decrease in the level of self-awareness. As numerous studies have shown, the degree of deindividuation clearly correlates with anonymity, due in particular to the size of the crowd. Thus, for example, “in an analysis of 21 cases in which someone in the presence of a crowd threatened to jump from a skyscraper or from a bridge, Leon Mann found that when the crowd was small and illuminated by daylight, then, as a rule, no attempt was made to provoke suicide. But when the size of the crowd or the darkness of the night provided anonymity, people usually egged on the suicide, mocking him in every possible way. Brian Mullen reports similar effects in lynch mobs: the larger the gang, the more its members lose their sense of self-awareness and the more willing they are to commit atrocities such as burning, mauling, or dismembering the victim. For each of the above examples... it is characteristic that the fear of evaluation drops sharply. Since “everyone did this,” they explain their behavior by the current situation, and not by their own free choice.”1

The second reason, which G. Le Bon points out, “contagiousness or contagion, also contributes to the formation of special properties in the crowd and determines their direction... In the crowd, every feeling, every action is contagious, and, moreover, to such an extent that the individual very easily brings sacrificing one’s personal interests to the collective interest.”2 In modern social psychology, social contagion is understood as “... the process of transferring an emotional state from one individual to another at the psychophysiological level of contact, in addition to the actual semantic interaction or in addition to it.” At the same time, “...infection often leads to the disintegration of formal and informal normative role structures and the degeneration of an organized interacting group into one or another type of crowd”3. A classic example of this kind is the transformation into a crowd under the influence of panic of such a rigidly organized group as a military unit. The infection mechanism is actively used within the framework of the so-called “dirty political technologies” during mass events, when groups of fake provocateurs deliberately push the crowd to take certain actions, from chanting certain slogans to mass pogroms.

The third, most important, from the point of view of G. Le Bon, the reason “...determining the appearance in individuals in a crowd of such special properties that may not occur in them in an isolated position is susceptibility to suggestion. ... He is no longer aware of his actions, and, like a hypnotized person, some abilities disappear, while others reach an extreme degree of tension. Under the influence of suggestion, such a subject will perform certain actions with uncontrollable swiftness; in a crowd, this uncontrollable impetuosity manifests itself with even greater force, since the influence of suggestion, the same for everyone, is increased through reciprocity.”4 This effect “in its pure form” is often observed and purposefully used in the practice of religious sects, all kinds of “healers”, “miracle workers”, “psychics”, etc.

G. Le Bon especially emphasized the tendency towards intolerance and authoritarianism inherent in the crowd. From his point of view, “the crowd knows only simple and extreme feelings; The crowd accepts or rejects every opinion, idea or belief instilled in it and treats them either as absolute truths or as equally absolute errors. ... The crowd expresses the same authoritarianism in its judgments as it does intolerance. An individual can tolerate contradiction and challenge, but a crowd can never tolerate it. In public meetings the slightest dissent on the part of any speaker immediately provokes furious shouts and violent curses in the crowd, followed by action and expulsion of the speaker if he insists on his own. Although G. Le Bon uses the word “authority,” it is quite obvious that, psychologically, we are talking specifically about authoritarianism.

It should be added that, with all its inherent unpredictability, the crowd, due to all the listed features, is inclined almost exclusively to destructive and destructive actions. As you know, the reason for the riots and pogroms that took place in the center of Moscow in the summer of 2002 was the loss of the Russian national team in the match with the Japanese national team at the World Cup. However, it is difficult to imagine that if the outcome of this match was favorable for the Russian team, a drunken crowd of shaven-headed “patriots” would have staged a merry carnival to celebrate, after which they would have peacefully gone home. It can almost certainly be argued that mass unrest would still have taken place, although perhaps not in such a militant form. The history of various eras and societies convincingly testifies: any attempts to flirt with the crowd and use it to achieve political, ideological and other goals almost inevitably lead to tragic and often irreversible consequences. Bringing this idea to the consciousness of subjects of social management at all levels is the direct professional responsibility of a practical social psychologist.

At the same time, since a crowd of one type or another is an objective factor in the life of modern society, the problems of interaction with it and influence on it cannot in any way be ignored in socio-psychological practice.

A practical social psychologist, professionally oriented to working with crowds, firstly, must psychologically competently determine the type of crowd, its direction, degree of activity, potential or already nominated leaders, and secondly, must own and be able to implement the most effective technologies of constructive manipulation in working with spontaneously emerging large communities of people.

CROWD

the main subject of spontaneous behavior; a contact, outwardly unorganized community, characterized by a high degree of conformity of its constituent individuals, acting extremely emotionally and unanimously. Types of crowd: 1) casual, 2) expressive, 3) “conventional,” 4) active crowd. (D.V. Olshansky, p.426)

First of all, let's agree that there is a mass gathering of people and how it differs from a crowd that needs to be feared. Is one hundred people a crowd? What about a thousand? What about ten thousand?

And a hundred. And a thousand. And ten thousand. It all depends on the location. Thirty people in the confined space of a small apartment may be a crowd, but five thousand people evenly dispersed across the open space of a large field and minding their own business cannot.

So does a crowd mean limited space and crowding? So? Not at all necessary. Three hundred people in the shield barracks is much more crowded, and yet it is not a crowd. Rather, its antipode is the army. Hundreds of thousands of people divided into separate units and therefore easily controlled. We found one more component. Are crowds a collection of unorganized people? Not always. Let’s say, a hundred thousand people are sitting in a stadium, each in his own place, with his own ticket, each on his own. What kind of crowd is this? If only they had jumped up at once.

That's right. In order for a simple mass gathering of people to turn into a crowd dangerous for those around them and for itself, in addition to internal prerequisites, an external provocation factor is also needed, so to speak, a pinch of yeast, which makes the mass of dough ferment and rise. What will serve as the detonator that turns a gathering of peaceful people into an inherently aggressive crowd - panic caused by a natural disaster, a rally or rock concert brought to the point of hysteria, the fear of being left without humanitarian aid distributed by a generous hand, mass discontent - is not important. The reasons can be very diverse and unexpected.

It is important that at some point one hundred thousand individuals lose self-control and turn into a single biological organism living according to its own laws, where a person is assigned the role of no more than one of the thousands of molecules that make it up. It is clear that the “molecule” cannot live according to its own laws, but only according to general ones. The subordination of everyone to everyone is the main law of the crowd. Very often, after the end of mass unrest, people, recalling the events of the past hours or even days, are surprised that they, in general, peaceful, law-abiding, well-behaved citizens, suddenly, having pulled off the brakes, fled to where everyone else was running. They did what others did, even to the point of committing crimes and acts of vandalism.

What happened? How did they get to this point? Unclear. It's very clear. Man is a herd animal. That is why he survived in extreme primitive times. No, no, but old instincts make themselves felt. And the former biological law - the priority of the pack over its constituent individuals - breaks through the patina of acquired civilized habits. To my shame, I once had to experience a similar transformation. This happened during one trans-sea (out of sight of the coast) voyage. Good weather, a hearty dinner, a great mood, good prospects and just one phrase spoken out loud that turned a luxurious vacation into a nightmare of an extreme situation.

— Guys, a bloody sunset is a harbinger of a storm.
- But really...

And everyone, without hesitation, whether the sign corresponds to reality or not, whether there are prerequisites for an imminent shipwreck or whether this is delirium of heated fantasy, became preoccupied with saving his dear life. In a split second, the crew turned into a poorly controlled crowd. Everyone ran around looking for life jackets, grabbed flares and emergency protection, and put on all the warm clothes they could. So what is next? What's next? Nothing! That is, absolutely nothing. There is nowhere to run, there is nothing to fight for, there is no point in breaking through to the boats, because there are none. We were initially sitting in conditions of an artificially simulated emergency situation. Worse than ever. The only thing worse is death.

All night we pretended to be a mass gathering of waterfowl idiots. They sat in full emergency gear, holding rockets in one hand and a can of condensed milk in the other. We were waiting for a storm. Naturally, there was no storm. Instead of organizing a normal, warm, comfortable overnight stay, we organized a real emergency one. They punished themselves. Then we tried to figure out what happened, why such inappropriately violent reactions were caused by one single, not the most terrible phrase.

Why didn't anyone show basic prudence? Not a single person! Maybe we are such hopeless cowards? No! Otherwise, we wouldn’t be sitting in the middle of the sea on a homemade raft, much more dangerous than the smallest boat. We would have stayed at home. So what happened? Nothing supernatural - ordinary. And yet, what made us, generally normal, timid dozen people, suddenly, in the blink of an eye, lose our calm and commit a mass of useless, stupid and shameful acts? What was the initial impetus that triggered the mechanism of fear? We tried to analyze the situation.

“Everyone was scared, and I was scared... Everyone ran, and I ran—that’s how almost all of us expressed our feelings.”

There were no culprits. Everyone was guilty. We repeated the experience of thousands of victims who preceded us, replacing individual prudence with collective fear. We have become a crowd. And in the crowd, fear spreads with the speed of an explosion and with approximately the same consequences.

Based on materials from the book “School of Survival in Accidents and Natural Disasters.”
Andrey Ilyichev.

INTRODUCTION

In everyday language, a “crowd” refers to a large number of people present in one place at the same time. Although even intuitively we would not use this word to describe a marching army unit or soldiers in an organized assault (as well as defending) a fortified point, an audience gathered at a conservatory for a symphony concert, crews working on a large construction site, employees of an institution at a planned trade union meeting, etc. etc. etc.

Terminologically, it is not entirely correct to call passers-by on a crowded city street a crowd. But something unusual happened on the street. Suddenly, buffoons appeared or artists gave a performance. Or, as happened in the good Soviet times, scarce goods were “thrown away” on a street counter. Or a person fell out of a window and was killed. Or it was raining heavily. Or - God forbid - a gang war began with shooting, a powerful explosion occurred... If the situation develops according to one of these scenarios, attractive, dramatic and even catastrophic, a special socio-psychological phenomenon may arise, which, with all its diversity forms, has common features that distinguish a crowd from organized forms of social behavior.

Main signs of a crowd

There are typical life situations in which numerous clusters of people (crowds) easily form. These include the following:

· natural disasters (earthquakes, major floods, fires),

· public transport and transport hubs (stations, metro, etc.),

· mass entertainment (sports matches, pop concerts, etc.),

· political actions (rallies, demonstrations, political elections, strikes and other protests),

· places of mass celebrations and recreation (stadiums, squares and city streets, premises and areas for large discos, etc.), etc.

Crowds of people that form in a variety of social situations nevertheless have many similar characteristics.

A crowd is usually called a gathering of people that, to one degree or another, corresponds to the following characteristics:

· multiplicity- as a rule, this is a large group of people, since in small groups typical psychological crowd phenomena arise with difficulty or do not arise at all;

· high contact, i.e., each person is at close range with others, actually entering their personal spaces;

· emotional excitement- typical psychological states of this group are dynamic, unbalanced states: increased emotional arousal, excitement of people, etc.;

· disorganization (spontaneity)- these groups most often form spontaneously, initially have weak organization, and if they have organization they can easily lose it;

· instability of goal- the greatest controversy arises around such a sign of the crowd as its integrity-purposelessness: a common goal for all in these groups is, as a rule, absent or, if present, is poorly understood by most people; in addition, goals can easily be lost, the original goals are often replaced by others, often fake etc. (therefore, when talking about aimlessness crowd as its property, this means the absence of a common, universally recognized goal).

Consequently, a crowd must be understood as a large accumulation of people who are in direct contact with each other and in a state of heightened emotional arousal, characterized by their initial spontaneous formation (or loss of organization) and the absence of a common conscious goal for all (or its loss).

MECHANISMS OF CROWD BEHAVIOR

Two main mechanisms of crowd formation have been identified: gossip And emotional whirling(synonym - circular reaction).

Hearing - is the transfer of subject information through interpersonal communication channels.

Circular reaction - This is mutual infection, i.e. transfer of emotional state at the psychophysiological level of contact between organisms. Not only fun can circulate, but also, for example, boredom (if someone starts to yawn, those around them feel the same desire), as well as initially more sinister emotions: fear, rage, etc.

To better understand what a circular reaction is, it is advisable to compare it with communication- contact between people at the semantic level. During communication, there is one or another degree of mutual understanding, interpretation of the text, the participants in the process come to an agreement or do not come to an agreement, but in any case, everyone remains an independent person. Human individuality is formed in communication connections and largely depends on the variety of semantic channels in which a person is included.

On the contrary, emotional whirling erases individual differences. The role of personal experience, individual and role identification, and common sense is situationally reduced. The individual feels and reacts behaviorally “like everyone else.” Happening evolutionary regression: lower, historically more primitive layers of the psyche are updated.

“The conscious personality disappears,” G. Le Bon wrote on this occasion, “and the feelings of all the individual units that form the whole, called the crowd, take the same direction.” Therefore, “in a crowd there can only be an accumulation of stupidity, not intelligence.” The same observation can be found in the works of other researchers. For example, in 3. Freud we read: “It seems that it is enough for a large mass, a huge number of people, to be together for all the moral achievements of the individuals composing them to immediately dissipate, and in their place only the most primitive, the most ancient, the crudest psychological attitudes remain.” .

A person caught in an emotional whirlpool increases susceptibility to impulses, the source of which is located within the crowd and resonates with the dominant state, and at the same time decreases susceptibility to impulses from the outside. Accordingly, the barriers against any rational argument are strengthened. Therefore, at such a moment, an attempt to influence the masses with logical arguments may turn out to be untimely and simply dangerous. Here you need other techniques that are adequate to the situation, and if you don’t know them, then it’s better to stay away from the crowd.

The circular reaction is not a uniquely negative factor. It accompanies any mass event and group action: a joint viewing of a play or even a film, a friendly feast, a military attack (with shouts of “Hurray!”, warlike screaming and other attributes), a business or party meeting, etc. and so on. In the life of primitive tribes, the processes of mutual infection before battle or hunting played a vital role. As long as the emotional whirlpool remains within a certain measure that is optimal for each specific case, it serves to unite and mobilize and helps to strengthen the integral effectiveness of the group (psychologists call this fascination). But, exceeding the optimal measure, this factor results in opposite effects. The group degenerates into a crowd, which becomes less and less controllable through normative mechanisms and, at the same time, more and more easily susceptible to irrational manipulation.

The likelihood of a circular reaction increases sharply during periods of social tension in society associated with various kinds of crises, since in this case a significant number of people may experience similar emotions and their attention will be focused on common problems.

Types of Crowds

Different types of crowds are distinguished based on which of the above characteristics they correspond to and which they do not, or what new specific characteristics appear in them.

According to the level (or degree) of their activity, crowds are divided into passive and active (see Fig. 1).

Rice. 1.

Random crowd - an unorganized community of people that arises in connection with some unexpected event, such as a traffic accident, fire, fight, etc.

Usually a random crowd is formed by so-called onlookers, i.e. persons who experience a certain need for new experiences and thrills. The main emotion in such cases is people's curiosity. A random crowd can quickly gather and disperse just as quickly. Usually it is not numerous and can unite from several dozen to hundreds of people, although there are also individual cases when a random crowd consisted of several thousand.

Conventional crowd - a crowd whose behavior is based on explicit or implicit norms and rules of behavior - conventions.

Such a crowd gathers on the occasion of a pre-announced event, such as a rally, political demonstration, sporting event, concert, etc. In such cases, people are usually motivated by a well-directed interest and must follow norms of behavior appropriate to the nature of the event. Naturally, the behavior of spectators at a symphony orchestra concert will not coincide with the behavior of admirers of a rock star during her performance and will be radically different from the behavior of fans at a football or hockey match.

Expressive crowd - a community of people distinguished by the special power of mass manifestation of emotions and feelings (love, joy, sadness, sadness, grief, indignation, anger, hatred, etc.).

Crowd is a temporary accumulation of a large number of people in an area allowing direct contact, who spontaneously react to the same stimuli in a similar or identical way.

The crowd does not have established organizational norms and no set of moral principles and taboos. What emerges here are primitive but powerful impulses and emotions.

The crowd is usually divided into four types:

• aggressive crowd;
• fleeing (escaping) crowd;
• hungry crowd;
• demonstrating crowd.

All these types of crowds have many common phenomena:

• deindividuation, i.e. partial disappearance of individual personality traits and a tendency to imitate;
• a sense of standardization, which entails a weakening of ethical and legal standards;
• a strong feeling that the actions taken are correct;
• a sense of one’s own strength and a decreased sense of responsibility for one’s actions.

In a crowd, a person is involuntarily transmitted increased excitability regarding one's own social feelings, there is a multiple mutual strengthening of the emotional impact. Hence, even an accidentally thrown word in a crowd that offends political preferences can become an impetus for pogroms and violence.

Unconscious anxiety about what has been done often exacerbates the feeling of persecution - a special excitability of the crowd towards its true or illusory enemies.

The influence of the crowd on an individual is transient, although the mood that arises in him can last a long time. The bond that unites the crowd is destroyed, if new stimuli create different emotions:

• the crowd disperses under the influence of the instinct of self-preservation or fear (if the crowd is doused with water or fired upon);
• the crowd can also disperse under the influence of such feelings as hunger, a sense of humor, excitement directed towards other goals, etc.

Methods of overcoming or psychologically disarming the crowd are based on the use of this kind of mental mechanisms, just as the technical techniques by which the crowd is manipulated are based on knowledge of the mechanisms that unite the crowd.

Crowd Formation

Crowd- a temporary and random meeting of individuals of any nationality, profession and gender, regardless of the reason for this meeting. Under certain conditions, a participant in such a meeting - a “man of the crowd” - is characterized by completely new features that differ from those that characterize individual individuals. The conscious personality disappears, and the feelings and ideas of all the individual units that form the whole called the crowd take the same direction. A “collective soul” is formed, which, of course, is temporary, but the meeting in such cases becomes what the Frenchman G. Lebon (1841 - 1931) called an organized crowd or a spiritualized crowd, constituting a single being and obeying the law of spiritual unity of the crowd.

Without a doubt, the mere fact of the chance occurrence of many individuals together is not enough for them to acquire the character of an organized crowd; This requires the influence of certain pathogens. According to the French sociologist and psychologist S. Moscovici, the masses are a social phenomenon: individuals “dissolve” under the influence of suggestion that comes from the leader. The social machine of massing people makes them irrational when people, irritated by some event, gather together and the conscience of individuals cannot restrain their impulses. The masses are carried away, spurred on by the leader (“the mad leading the blind”). In such cases, politics acts as a rational form of using the irrational essence of the masses. Having said “yes” to the leader, the exalted crowd changes its faith and is transformed. Emotional energy propels her forward and gives her the courage to endure suffering and at the same time insensitivity. The energy that the masses draw from their hearts is used by leaders to press the levers of government and lead many people towards the goal dictated by reason.

“Social involvement” may be a factor that enhances the behavioral component. For example, street riots, riots, pogroms and other similar aggressive mass actions activate individual attitudes (negative attitude towards the authorities, the police or some “hostile” group), which under normal conditions manifest themselves only in verbal assessments or moods. In such situations, an additional reinforcing factor is the phenomenon of emotional contagion that occurs in large gatherings of people, a crowd.

Characterizing collective behavior and role, three types of formation of spontaneous groups are distinguished:

Crowd, which is formed on the street due to a variety of events (traffic accident, detention of an offender, etc.). At the same time, the elements, being the main background of crowd behavior, often lead to its aggressive forms. If there is a person capable of leading a crowd, pockets of organization arise in it, which, however, are extremely unstable;

Weight- a more stable formation with unclear boundaries, which is more organized, conscious (rallies, demonstrations), although heterogeneous and quite unstable. Among the masses, the role of organizers who do not come forward spontaneously, but are known in advance, is more significant;

Public, which usually gathers for a short time together in connection with some kind of spectacle. The public is quite divided; its specific feature is the presence of a psychic connection and a common goal. Because of a common goal, the public is more controllable than a crowd, although an incident can make its actions uncontrollable (say, the behavior of fans in a stadium if their favorite team loses).

Thus, under crowd understand a temporary and random gathering of people, characterized by spiritual and emotional community, spatial proximity and the presence of an external stimulus. Weight - somewhat more stable and conscious education of individuals (for example, participants in a rally or demonstration); the organizers of the masses do not appear spontaneously, but are determined in advance. Public - this is a community of people who are consumers of the same spiritual and information product; Unlike the crowd, the public is united not on a territorial, but on a spiritual basis. Spontaneous groups in general are a constant element of social life at all stages of its development, and their role in the development of many social processes is very significant.

Behavior of people in a socially unorganized community

Let us consider the essential features of an unorganized social community. A variety of such a community, along with the public and the masses, is the crowd.

The behavior of people in a crowd is distinguished by a number of mental characteristics: some deindividuation of the personality occurs, a primitive emotional-impulsive reaction dominates, the imitative activity of people sharply intensifies, and the anticipation of the possible consequences of their actions decreases. In a crowd, people exaggerate the legality of their actions, their critical assessment decreases, the sense of responsibility becomes dulled, and a sense of anonymity dominates. Against the background of general emotional stress caused by a particular situation, people entering the crowd quickly succumb to mental infection.

A person in a crowd acquires a sense of anonymity, self-liberation from social control. Along with this, in crowd conditions, the conformity of individuals, their compliance with the behavior models proposed by the crowd, sharply increases. The casual crowd easily includes people who feel the need for thrills. The so-called expressive crowd easily includes people who are impulsive and emotionally labile. Such a crowd is easily carried away by rhythmic influences - marches, chants, chanting slogans, rhythmic gestures. An example of this type of crowd behavior is the behavior of fans in a stadium. An expressive crowd easily develops into an active crowd of an aggressive type. Her behavior is determined by hatred of the object of aggression and is directed by random instigators.

The spontaneous behavior of people is provoked in some cases by spontaneous information - rumors. Rumors cover events not covered by the media and are a specific type of interpersonal communication, the content of which is captured by an audience subject to certain situational expectations and prejudices.

The regulatory mechanism of crowd behavior - collective unconsciousness - is a special class of mental phenomena, which, according to the ideas of psychoanalyst C. G. Jung, contains the instinctive experience of humanity. General a priori behavioral patterns, transpersonal patterns of behavior suppress the individual consciousness of people and cause genetically archaic behavioral reactions, “collective reflexes”, in the terminology of V. M. Bekhterev. Homogeneous, primitive assessments and actions unite people into a monolithic mass and sharply increase the energy of their one-act impulsive action. However, such actions become maladaptive in cases where the need for consciously organized behavior arises.

The crowd phenomenon and impulsive behavior patterns are widely used by totalitarian politicians, extremists and religious fanatics.

The predominance of one-sided interest in a social community can cause crowd-like patterns of behavior, a sharp division into “us” and “them,” and a primitivization of social relations.

Behavioral characteristics vary four types of crowd:

• random (occasional);
• expressive (jointly expressing common affective feelings - jubilation, fear, protest, etc.);
• conventional (based on some spontaneously formulated positions);
• acting, which is divided into aggressive, panicky (saving), acquisitive, ecstatic (acting in a state of ecstasy), rebel (indignant at the actions of the authorities).

Any crowd is characterized by a common emotional state and a spontaneously emerging direction of behavior; growing self-reinforcing mental infection - the spread of an elevated emotional state from one individual to another at the psychophysiological level of contact. The lack of clear goals and the organizational diffuseness of the crowd turn it into an object of manipulation. The crowd is always in an extremely excited pre-start, pre-start state; To activate it, only an appropriate trigger signal is needed.

One of the types of disorganized crowd behavior is panic - a group conflict emotional state that arises on the basis of mental infection in a situation of real or imaginary danger, with a lack of information necessary for reasonable decision-making.

Panic blocks the ability to adequately reflect the situation and rationally assess it, people’s actions become defensive and chaotic, consciousness sharply narrows, people become capable of extremely selfish, even asocial, actions. Panic occurs in a state of mental tension, in conditions of increased anxiety caused by the expectation of extremely difficult events (fire, famine, earthquakes, flooding, armed attack), in conditions of insufficient information about the sources of danger, the time of its occurrence and methods of counteraction. Thus, the residents of one village, expecting an attack by Turkish troops, fell into a state of panic when they saw the reflections of their fellow villagers’ braids in the distance.

The crowd can be brought out of a panic state only by a very strong counteracting stimulus, targeted, categorical commands from authoritative leaders, the presentation of brief reassuring information and an indication of real possibilities for exiting the critical situation that has arisen.

Panic is an extreme manifestation of spontaneous, impulsive behavior of people in the absence of their social organization, a state of mass affect that arises in response to a shocking circumstance. A crisis situation creates the need for immediate action, and their conscious organization is impossible due to insufficient information and orientation.

Using the example of people's behavior in a crowd, we see that the absence of social organization, a system of regulated norms and ways of behavior leads to a sharp decrease in the socionormative level of people's behavior. People's behavior under these conditions is characterized by increased impulsiveness, subordination of consciousness to one actualized image, and narrowing of other spheres of consciousness.

- ▲ crowding due to (what l), crowding, crowding. close. make room. push. push away (# crowd). cuddle. squeeze through. push through, sya. shove. like herring in a barrel (colloquial). you can’t get through with a cannon [you can’t get through]. apple... ... Ideographic Dictionary of the Russian Language

Noun, number of synonyms: 4 gathering (40) gathering of people (5) gathering of people (4) ... Synonym dictionary

CLUSTER, I, Wed. 1. see accumulate. 2. whom (what). A large number of people have accumulated where n. people, objects, substances. S. people. S. cars at the intersection. Strike at enemy clusters. C. liquid. Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova... Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

Noun, number of synonyms: 4 gathering (40) gathering of people (5) gathering of people ... Synonym dictionary

This term has other meanings, see Pleiades. This term has other meanings, see M45. The request "Stozhary" is redirected here; see also other meanings. Pleiades Open cluster ... Wikipedia

Pleiades Open cluster Pleiades, Open cluster History of research Discoverer Date of discovery Designations M45 Observed data (Epoch J2000.0) Class ... Wikipedia

cathedral- crowd of people... Dictionary of archaisms of the Russian language

CROWD- a collection of people who lack a clearly recognized commonality of goals and organization, but are connected by similarities in their emotional state and a common center of attention. There are four main types of crowd: a) occasional, connected by curiosity about... ... Professional education. Dictionary

COLLECTED PUBLIC- a collection of people who have similar expectations of certain experiences or are interested in the same subject. General interest and polarization of attitudes around one object or event are the basis for its isolation. (D.V. Olshansky,... ... Glossary of Political Psychology

kindergarten- crowd of people at the bus stop... Thieves' jargon

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