The Era of Crowds: Gustave Le Bon, Crowd Psychology, and Conceptualizations of Mass-Elite Relations in China

2014 ◽  
pp. 157-183
Author(s):  
Mareike Ohlberg
Keyword(s):  
Crowd Psychology

scholarly journals Future research avenues to facilitate social connectedness and safe collective behavior at organized crowd events

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-222
Author(s):  
Anne Templeton
Keyword(s):  
Social Connectedness ◽  
Extreme Case ◽  
Group Processes ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Collective Behaviors ◽  
Accurate Perception ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Future Research Directions ◽  
Crowd Psychology ◽  
Perception Of Health

During the COVID-19 pandemic, organizers of crowd events must facilitate physical distancing in environments where attendees previously enjoyed being close with ingroup members, encourage accurate perception of health risks and close adherence to safety guidance, and stop expected normative behaviors that may now be unsafe. Research from crowd psychology demonstrates how group processes are integral to each of these issues. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has created an extreme case environment in which to evaluate the collective findings from previous research and identify future research directions. This paper outlines how organizers of crowd events and researchers can work together to further develop our understanding of social connectedness in crowds, reasons for risk-taking behavior, and level of engagement in new collective behaviors. By working together to address these issues, practitioners and researchers can develop our understanding of crowd processes and improve safety at future crowd events.

Le Bon’s crowd psychology and post-truth

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-160
Author(s):  
Dusko Prelevic
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Crowd Psychology ◽  
Philosophical Community

The phenomenon of post-truth, in which truth (or facts or the best scientific evidence) is brushed aside in public debates, has recently caught the eye of many philosophers, who typically see it as a threat to deliberative democracy. In this paper, it is argued that Gustave Le Bon?s remarks on crowd psychology, which had been very popular in past (and brushed aside later on), might be relevant for a better understanding of psychological mechanisms that lead to post-truth. According to Le Bon, crowds are often irrational, whereas those who try to convince them to do something should use specific techniques of persuasion, such as affirmation, repetition, contagion and prestige, of which the last one can be undermined either by fiasco (the fastest way), or by critique (a bit slower, but nonetheless effective way). It is the age of posttruth that goes towards the neutralization of any critique (Le Bon himself considered such neutralization devastating for democratic societies), which has been, according to some authors, affected to a great extent by technological innovations in media, such as social media that some authors consider anti-social due to their negative impact on society. I argue that Le Bon?s insights might be useful to members of scientific and philosophical community in their attempts to eliminate the spreading of quasi-scientific views in public discourse.

The Origins of Crowd Psychology: Gustave Lebon and the Crisis of Mass Democracy in the Third Republic

1976 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
pp. 1131
Author(s):  
John J. Baughman ◽  
Robert A. Nye ◽  
Peter H. Amann
Keyword(s):  
Third Republic ◽  
The Third ◽  
Crowd Psychology ◽  
Mass Democracy

Fatal Attraction? Popular Modes of Inclusion in the Economic System

2002 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Urs Stäheli
Keyword(s):  
Stock Market ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Stock Exchange ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Functional Systems ◽  
Fatal Attraction ◽  
Market Communication ◽  
Crowd Psychology ◽  
Inclusive Society

AbstractThe paper suggests a concept of the popular which understands itself as an alternative to mainstream Cultural Studies which refer to the Popular in terms of hegemonic articulations of socio-cultural identities such as gender, ethnicity, sexuality or class. In contrast, my contention is that the Popular is intrinsically linked to the universalism of functionally differentiated systems. The popular then describes how functional systems use the distinction between a universalistic semantics of inclusion and its seductive, hyper-universalistic exaggeration. At the turn of the century, it was crowd psychology (e.g. Le Bon) which provided the semantics to deal with the new forms of hyper-universalism. The paper uses this redefined notion of the popular for analyzing discourses on speculation and the stock exchange. It focuses on those semantics which implicitly problematize the process of inclusion by trying to make it more attractive. The inclusion of the speculator becomes a process of seduction, resulting in a precarious expansion of inclusion. It is discussed how such a ›massive universalism‹ is produced by stock market communication itself and how it relates to the modern ideal of a more and more inclusive society.

scholarly journals Simultaneous EEG Acquisition System for Multiple Users: Development and Related Issues

Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (20) ◽  
pp. 4592
Author(s):  
Sunghan Lee ◽  
Hohyun Cho ◽  
Kiseong Kim ◽  
Sung Chan Jun
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Acquisition System ◽  
Signal Acquisition ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
Multiple Users ◽  
Simultaneous Acquisition ◽  
Eeg Data ◽  
Reasonable Cost ◽  
Average Loss ◽  
Crowd Psychology

Social interaction is one of humans’ most important activities and many efforts have been made to understand the phenomenon. Recently, some investigators have attempted to apply advanced brain signal acquisition systems that allow dynamic brain activities to be measured simultaneously during social interactions. Most studies to date have investigated dyadic interactions, although multilateral interactions are more common in reality. However, it is believed that most studies have focused on such interactions because of methodological limitations, in that it is very difficult to design a well-controlled experiment for multiple users at a reasonable cost. Accordingly, there are few simultaneous acquisition systems for multiple users. In this study, we propose a design framework for an acquisition system that measures EEG data simultaneously in an environment with 10 or more people. Our proposed framework allowed us to acquire EEG data at up to 1 kHz frequency from up to 20 people simultaneously. Details of our acquisition system are described from hardware and software perspectives. In addition, various related issues that arose in the system’s development—such as synchronization techniques, system loads, electrodes, and applications—are discussed. In addition, simultaneous visual ERP experiments were conducted with a group of nine people to validate the EEG acquisition framework proposed. We found that our framework worked reasonably well with respect to less than 4 ms delay and average loss rates of 1%. It is expected that this system can be used in various hyperscanning studies, such as those on crowd psychology, large-scale human interactions, and collaborative brain–computer interface, among others.

scholarly journals Contemporary understanding of riots: Classical crowd psychology, ideology and the social identity approach

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford Stott ◽  
John Drury
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Classical Theory ◽  
The Self ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Mass Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ruling Elites ◽  
Crowd Psychology ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Social Identity Approach

This article explores the origins and ideology of classical crowd psychology, a body of theory reflected in contemporary popularised understandings such as of the 2011 English ‘riots’. This article argues that during the nineteenth century, the crowd came to symbolise a fear of ‘mass society’ and that ‘classical’ crowd psychology was a product of these fears. Classical crowd psychology pathologised, reified and decontextualised the crowd, offering the ruling elites a perceived opportunity to control it. We contend that classical theory misrepresents crowd psychology and survives in contemporary understanding because it is ideological. We conclude by discussing how classical theory has been supplanted in academic contexts by an identity-based crowd psychology that restores the meaning to crowd action, replaces it in its social context and in so doing transforms theoretical understanding of ‘riots’ and the nature of the self.

Tackling football hooliganism: A quantitative study of public order, policing and crowd psychology.

2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford Stott ◽  
Otto Adang ◽  
Andrew Livingstone ◽  
Martina Schreiber
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Study ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Crowd Psychology
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