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 an object of attention, but at the same time, as a rule, not united by clearly understood common intentions and plans, and even more so by a single goal and clear ideas of how it can be achieved. In modern psychology of large groups, there is the following, in fact, generally accepted classification - a typology of various types of crowds as a specific community of people: occasional, conventional, expressive, acting. If we talk about an occasional crowd, then the decisive factor in the formation of this type of community is a certain “opportunity”, a case in connection with which people come 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 of 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, implements its life activity according to the scheme of a rather unsettled convention regarding equally rigidly undefined norms of behavior, due to the very general ideas about the rules according to which it is customary to behave for people who are participants in events that have a specific social specificity. Under the expressive crowd, they traditionally imagine such a large group, which is characterized by the fact that it shows a common, in fact, a single attitude towards some event, phenomenon, and at the peak of expression of this attitude turns into an ecstatic crowd, that is, a crowd that is in a state of mass ecstasy (such a state often occurs in conditions of rhythmically supported excitement - concerts, for example, by "hard rock" ensembles, mass religious rituals, mass sessions of supposedly healing hypnosis, etc.). Finally, there is 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 shown by its members. At the same time, those researchers who attempted to give a meaningfully exhaustive typology of various types of crowds emphasized that “the acting crowd ... in turn, includes the following subspecies - a) an aggressive crowd united by blind hatred for some object (lynching, beating of religious , political opponents, etc. d.); b) a panicked crowd spontaneously fleeing from a real or imagined source of danger; c) an acquisitive crowd entering into an unordered direct conflict for the possession of any valuables (money, places in a departing transport, etc.); d) an insurgent crowd, in which people are bound 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 the types of crowds, it is impossible not to notice that the above 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 acting crowd can be both an expressive crowd, and, say, an occasional crowd can be a panic crowd at the same time (one of the varieties of the acting 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 depersonalization and weakening of ego control is clearly observed in the crowd: “... whatever the individuals that make it up, whatever their lifestyle, occupation, their character or mind, their transformation into a crowd is enough to so that they form a kind of collective soul that makes them feel, think and act completely differently than each of them individually would think, act and feel. ...

It is easy to see how an isolated individual differs 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 explain these reasons to 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 flow from the substratum of the unconscious, which is created especially by the influences of heredity. In this substratum there are innumerable hereditary remnants that constitute the actual souls of the race. ...

These general qualities of character, governed by the unconscious and existing almost equally in the majority of the normal individuals of the race, join together in the crowd. In the collective soul, the intellectual faculties of the individuals, and consequently their individuality, disappear; ...and unconscious qualities take over.

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

Despite the fact that G. Le Bon interprets the problem of the individual and collective unconscious in a very simplified way 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 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, 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 the techniques of practical socio-psychological work with such communities, as a rule, are based on their defragmentation according to one or another principle, 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 features that are characteristic of a crowd and, moreover, not found in individual individuals that make up it, is due to various reasons. The first of these is that the individual in a crowd acquires, by virtue of sheer numbers, a consciousness of an irresistible force, and this consciousness permits him to succumb to instincts which 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. In fact, we are talking about deindividualization, which in modern social psychology is usually understood as the loss of fear before an external assessment and, at a minimum, a decrease in the level of self-consciousness. Numerous studies have shown that the degree of deindividuation is strongly correlated with anonymity, due in part to the size of the crowd. So, for example, “after analyzing 21 cases where someone threatened to jump off a skyscraper or bridge in the presence of a crowd, Leon Mann found that when the crowd was small and lit by daylight, as a rule, attempts to provoke suicide were not made. But when the size of the crowd or the darkness of the night ensured anonymity, people usually teased the suicide by mocking him in every possible way. Brian Mullen reports similar effects in vigilante gangs: the larger the gang, the more its members lose their sense of self-awareness and the more readily agree to commit atrocities such as burning, mauling or dismembering the victim. For each of the examples given ... 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.

The second reason that G. Lebon points out is “contagiousness or infection - 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 sacrifice their personal interests to the collective interest. In modern social psychology, social infection is understood as "... the process of transferring an emotional state from one individual to another at the psycho-physiological level of contact, in addition to or in addition to semantic interaction itself." 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 tightly organized group as a military unit. The mechanism of infection is actively used in the framework of the so-called "dirty political technologies" during mass events, when groups of dummy 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, “... causing the appearance in individuals in a crowd of such special properties that may not be found in them in an isolated position, is susceptibility to suggestion. ... He is no longer aware of his actions, and, as in 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 the crowd, this irresistible impetuosity manifests itself with even greater force, since the influence of suggestion, the same for all, increases through reciprocity. This effect "in its purest form" is often observed and purposefully used in the practice of religious sects, all kinds of "healers", "miracle workers", "psychics", etc.

G. Lebon especially emphasized the inclination towards intolerance and authoritarianism characteristic of the crowd. From his point of view, “only simple and extreme feelings are known to the crowd; any opinion, idea or belief inspired by it, the crowd accepts or rejects entirely 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. The individual can bear contradiction and contestation, but the crowd never bears them. In public meetings, the slightest objection from any speaker immediately provokes furious cries and violent curses in the crowd, followed by actions and expulsion of the speaker, if he insists on his own. Although G. Lebon uses the word "authority", it is quite obvious that in psychological terms, we are talking about authoritarianism.

It should be added to this that, for all its inherent unpredictability, the crowd, due to all the above 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 team in a match with the Japanese team at the World Cup. However, it is hard to imagine that with a favorable outcome of this match for the Russian team, a drunken crowd of shaven-headed “patriots” would arrange a merry carnival to celebrate, after which they would peacefully go home. It can almost certainly be argued that riots would have taken place anyway, although perhaps not in such a militant form. The history of various eras and societies convincingly testifies that 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 the subjects of social management at all levels is the direct professional duty 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 interacting with it and influencing it in no way can be ignored in socio-psychological practice.

A practical social psychologist who is professionally focused on working with the crowd, firstly, must psychologically correctly determine the type of crowd, its orientation, the degree of activity, potential or already nominated leaders, and secondly, must own and be able to implement the most effective technologies for constructive manipulation in work with spontaneously emerging large communities of people.

CROWD

the main subject of spontaneous behavior; 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) acting 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 the crowd, which must be feared. A hundred people is a crowd? And 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 closed space of a small apartment can be a crowd, but five thousand people, evenly dispersed in the open space of a large field and minding their own business, are not.

So the crowd is limited space and crowding? So? Not at all necessary. Three hundred people in the shield barracks - much more crowded, and yet it is not a crowd. Rather, its antipode is the army. Hundreds of thousands divided into separate units and therefore easily controlled people. We have found another ingredient. Are crowds a collection of disorganized people? Not always. Let's say a hundred thousand people are sitting at the stadium, each in his own place, with his own ticket, each on his own. What kind of crowd is this? Now, if only they jumped together.

All right. In order for a simple mass gathering of people to turn into a crowd dangerous for others and for itself, in addition to internal prerequisites, an external provocation factor is also needed, so to speak, a pinch of yeast, which causes a mass of dough to ferment and rise. What will serve as a detonator, turning a gathering of peaceful people into an inherently aggressive crowd - the panic caused by a natural disaster, a rally or a rock concert brought to a note of hysteria, the fear of being left without humanitarian aid handed out by a generous hand, mass discontent - is not important. The reasons can be the most diverse and unexpected.

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

What happened? How did they get to this point? Unclear. Very understandable. Man is a herd animal. That's why he survived in extreme primitive times. No, no, but the old instincts make themselves felt. And the former biological law - the priority of the pack over the individuals that make it up - breaks through the patina of acquired civilized habits. To my shame, I once had to experience a similar transformation. It was during one trans-sea (out of sight of the coast) voyage. Good weather, a hearty dinner, a great mood, good prospects, and only one single spoken phrase 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 already everyone, without hesitation, corresponds to the sign of reality or not, there are prerequisites for an imminent shipwreck or is it a delusion of a heated fantasy, he took care of saving his dear life. In a fraction of a second, the crew turned into a poorly managed crowd. Everyone ran in, looking for life jackets, grabbed signal flares and NZ, put on all possible warm clothes. So? What's next? But nothing! That is absolutely nothing. There is nowhere to run, there is nothing to fight for, it is useless to break through to the boats, because there are none. We were already sitting in an artificially simulated emergency situation from the very beginning. Worse than ever. Worse than death.

All night we pretended to be a mass gathering of waterfowl idiots. They sat in full emergency attire, clutching rockets in one hand and a can of condensed milk in the other. Waiting for a storm. There was no storm, of course. 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 inadequately violent reactions were caused by a single, not the most terrible phrase.

Why did no one show elementary prudence? Not a single person! Maybe we are such hopeless cowards? Not! Otherwise, they would not be sitting in the middle of the sea on a makeshift, much more dangerous than the tiniest boat, a raft. They would stay at home. So what happened? And nothing supernatural - ordinary. And yet what made us, in general, normal, not timid dozen people, suddenly, in the blink of an eye, lose our calmness, commit a lot of useless, stupid and shameful acts? What was the initial impetus that launched the mechanism of fear? We tried to analyze the situation.

- Everyone was scared, and I was scared ... Everyone ran, and I ran - this is how almost all of us expressed their 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 about the same consequences.

Based on the materials of the book "School of Survival in Accidents and Natural Disasters".
Andrei Ilyichev.

INTRODUCTION

In everyday language, a "crowd" refers to a large number of people who are simultaneously in one place. Although even intuitively we will not call this word a marching army unit or fighters who are storming (as well as defending) a fortified point in an organized manner, the audience gathered at the conservatory for a symphony concert, teams working at a large construction site, employees of an institution at a planned trade union meeting, etc. etc.

Terminologically, it is not entirely correct to call a crowd and passers-by on a crowded city street. But something unusual happened on the street. Suddenly, buffoons appeared or artists perform with a performance. Or, as happened in the good Soviet times, scarce goods were "thrown out" on the street counter. Or a person fell out of a window and crashed. Or a heavy downpour. Or - God forbid - a gangster showdown with shooting began, a powerful explosion occurred ... If the situation develops according to one of these scenarios, enticing, dramatic and even catastrophic, a special socio-psychological forms, has common features that distinguish the crowd from organized forms of social behavior.

The main signs of the crowd

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

natural disasters (earthquakes, major floods, fires),

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

mass spectacles (sports matches, pop concerts, etc.),

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

Places of mass celebrations and recreation (stadiums, squares and streets of cities, premises and sites for large discos, etc.), etc.

Clusters of people formed in a variety of social situations, however, have many similarities.

A crowd is usually called such an accumulation of people, which, to one degree or another, corresponds to the following features:

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

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

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

· disorganization (spontaneity)- these groups are most often formed spontaneously, initially have a weak organization, and if there is an organization, they can easily lose it;

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

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

MECHANISMS OF CROWD BEHAVIOR

Two main mechanisms of crowd formation have been identified: rumors and emotional whirl(synonym - circular reaction).

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

Circular reaction - this is a mutual infection, i.e. the transfer of the 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, others feel the same desire), as well as initially more sinister emotions: fear, rage, etc.

For a better understanding of what a circular reaction is, it is useful 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 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 blurs individual differences. The role of personal experience, individual and role identification, and common sense are reduced situationally. The individual feels and behaviorally reacts "like everyone else." going on evolutionary regression: the lower, historically more primitive layers of the psyche are being updated.

"The conscious personality disappears," G. Le Bon wrote on this occasion, "and the feelings of all individual units that form a whole, called the crowd, take the same direction." Therefore, "in the crowd, only the accumulation of stupidity can occur, and not the mind." The same observation can be found in the works of other researchers. For example, in Z. Freud we read: "It seems that it is enough to be together with a large mass, a huge multitude of people, so that all the moral achievements of their constituent individuals immediately dissipate, and in their place only the most primitive, most ancient, most rude psychological attitudes remain" .

A person caught in an emotional whirl increases susceptibility to impulses, the source of which is inside the crowd and resonates with the dominant state, and at the same time decreases susceptibility to impulses from outside. Correspondingly, the barriers against any rational argument are strengthened. Therefore, at such a moment, an attempt to influence the mass with logical arguments may turn out to be untimely and simply dangerous. Other techniques are needed here, adequate to the situation, and if you do not own them, then it is better to stay away from the crowd.

Circular reaction is not a uniquely negative factor. It accompanies any mass event and group action: watching a play or even a film together, a friendly feast, a military attack (with shouts of "Hurrah!", belligerent screeching and other attributes), a business or party meeting, etc. etc. In the life of primitive tribes, the processes of mutual infection before a battle or hunting played an important role. As long as the emotional whirling remains within the limits of a certain measure that is optimal for each specific case, it serves to unite and mobilize and enhance the integral effectiveness of the group (psychologists call this fascination). But, having exceeded the optimal measure, this factor turns into opposite effects. The group degenerates into a crowd, which becomes less and less controlled by normative mechanisms and, at the same time, is more and more susceptible to irrational manipulation.

The likelihood of a circular reaction rises 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 on the basis of which of the above signs they correspond and which do not, or what new specific signs they appear.

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

Rice. one.

random crowd - a disorganized 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 the so-called onlookers, i.e. persons experiencing a certain need for new impressions, thrills. The main emotion in such cases is the curiosity of people. A random crowd can quickly gather and disperse just as quickly. Usually it is not numerous and can unite from several tens to hundreds of people, although there are also isolated cases when a random crowd consisted of several thousand.

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

Such a crowd gathers for a pre-announced event such as a rally, political demonstration, sporting event, concert, etc. In such cases, people are usually driven by a well-directed interest and they must follow the norms of behavior appropriate to the nature of the event. Naturally, the behavior of the audience at a symphony orchestra concert will not coincide with the behavior of rock star fans 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, characterized by a 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 a territory that allows for direct contact, who spontaneously respond to the same stimuli in a similar or identical way.

The crowd has no established organizational norms and no set of moral precepts and taboos. What appears here are primitive but strong impulses and emotions.

The crowd is usually divided into four kinds:

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

In all these types of crowds, there are many common phenomena:

• deindividualization, 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 norms;
• a strong sense of the correctness of the actions taken;
• a sense of one's own strength and a decrease in the sense of responsibility for one's actions.

In the crowd, a person is involuntarily transmitted hyperexcitability about one's own social feelings, there is a multiple mutual amplification of the emotional impact. From here, in the crowd, even an accidentally thrown word that insults political preferences can become an impetus for pogroms and violence.

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

The influence of the crowd on the individual is transient, although the mood that has arisen in him may persist for a long time. The bond that binds the crowd is broken 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 to other goals, etc.

Methods of overcoming or psychological disarming of the crowd are built on the use of this kind of mental mechanisms, just as techniques are based on the knowledge of the mechanisms that unite the crowd, with the help of which the crowd is manipulated.

crowd formation

Crowd- a temporary and casual meeting of individuals of any nationality, profession and gender, regardless of the reason for this meeting. Under certain conditions, the participant in such an assembly - the "man of the crowd" - has 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 subject to the law of the 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 take on the character of an organized crowd; this requires the influence of some 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 lead 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. The emotional energy throws 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 push the levers of government and lead many people to a goal dictated by reason.

"Social involvement" may be a factor that reinforces 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 any “hostile” group), which under normal conditions are manifested only in verbal assessments or moods. In such situations, an additional reinforcing factor is the phenomenon of emotional infection that occurs in large crowds of people, the crowd.

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

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

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

Public, which usually gathers for a short time together in connection with some kind of spectacle. The audience is quite divided; its specific feature is the presence of a psychic connection and a single goal. Thanks to a common goal, the public is more manageable than the crowd, although an incident can turn its actions into uncontrollable (say, the behavior of fans in a stadium in the event of a loss to their favorite team).

Thus, under crowd understand a temporary and random meeting of people, characterized by a 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 predetermined. 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 as a whole 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 features: there is some deindividualization of the personality, a primitive emotional-impulsive reaction dominates, the imitative activity of people is sharply activated, and the prediction of the possible consequences of their actions is reduced. In crowd conditions, people exaggerate the legitimacy of their actions, their critical assessment decreases, the sense of responsibility becomes dull, and the feeling of anonymity dominates. Against the background of the general emotional stress caused by this or that situation, people entering the crowd quickly succumb to mental infection.

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

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

The regulatory mechanism of the behavior of the crowd - collective unconsciousness - is a special class of mental phenomena, in which, according to the ideas of the psychoanalyst C. G. Jung, the instinctive experience of mankind is contained. Universal 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 phenomenon of the crowd, impulsive stereotypes of behavior are widely used by totalitarian politicians, extremists and religious fanatics.

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

Behavioral characteristics vary four kinds of crowd:

• random (occasional);
• expressive (jointly expressing general affective feelings - jubilation, fear, protest, etc.);
• conventional (based on some spontaneously formulated positions);
• acting, which is divided into aggressive, panic (rescuing), money-grubbing, ecstatic (acting in a state of ecstasy), insurrectionary (outraged by 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 increased emotional state from one individual to another at the psychophysiological level of contact. The absence 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 prelaunch, installation state; only an appropriate start signal is needed to activate it.

One of the types of disorganized behavior of the crowd 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 its rational assessment, people's actions become defensive and chaotic, consciousness narrows sharply, people become capable of extremely selfish, even antisocial 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 inhabitants of one village, who were expecting an attack by Turkish troops, fell into a state of panic, seeing in the distance the reflections of the braids of their fellow villagers.

It is possible to get the crowd out of a panic state only with a very strong counteracting irritant, purposeful, categorical commands of authoritative leaders, presentation of brief soothing information and an indication of the real possibilities of getting out of the critical situation that has arisen.

Panic is an extreme manifestation of the spontaneous, impulsive behavior of people in the absence of their social organization, a state of mass passion that occurs in response to a shocking circumstance. The crisis situation creates the need for immediate action, and their conscious organization is impossible due to information-oriented insufficiency.

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

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

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

CLUSTER, I, cf. 1. see hoard. 2. whom (what). A large number of accumulated where n. people, objects, substances. S. people. C. cars at the crossroads. Attack on enemy clusters. C. liquid. Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova ... Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov

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

This term has other meanings, see Pleiades. This term has other meanings, see M45. "Stozhary" redirects here; see also other meanings. Pleiades Open Cluster ... Wikipedia

Pleiades Open Cluster Pleiades, Open Cluster Research history Discoverer Discovery date Designations M45 Observed data (Epoch J2000.0) Class ... Wikipedia

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

CROWD- an accumulation of people who are deprived of a clearly perceived commonality of goals and organization, but are interconnected by the similarity of their emotional state and a common center of attention. There are four main types of crowds: a) occasional, connected by curiosity to ... ... Professional education. Dictionary

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

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

Books

• Mysterious Petersburg, Vadim Burlak. Like a person, the city must know what was before it, what it stands on and grows on, why it arose and what is destined for it. Otherwise, this is not a city, but a temporary accumulation of people and structures, to which ...
• Informal Moscow. Guide to places of worship, Samoilova A. Opens the city from a new, unusual side. Here is something that is not in the guidebooks, about which ...