Crimonology How do people react in a crowd?

In the first instance, differences must be made between the various faces of the 'crowd' and operational definitions must be arrived at. As Intro to Sociology defines it:

Crowds are large numbers of people in the same space at the same time. (http://freebooks.uvu.edu/SOC1010/index.php/ch19-collective-behaviors.html)

The 'crowd' itself is divided into various characteristics. There is, for instance, the Conventional Crowd which a crowd that gathers for a typical event that is more routine in nature. Then you have the Expressive Crowd that gathers to express an emotion (e.g. Woodstock; the Million Man March; or the 9-11 Memorial Services). And finally you have Solidaristic Crowds that gather as an act of social unity (e.g., Breast Cancer awareness conventions). All of these are non-violent and mostly predicable in their outcome.

Other categories of crowds are the emotionally charged so-called 'Acting crowds' that have a goal or objective that they are willing to defend. Many of these develop into riots and strikes (e.g. he 1991 Los Angeles Riots) and their unpredictable nature can make them a danger to the larger community.

The theme of this essay largely turns on the latter category, since it is generally recognized that individuals usually retain their character and mode of action within the less emotionally charge crowd; certainly within the conventional crowd.

There are various theories regarding the mode of behavior in a crowd. Some, such as Freud, posit that people' behavior changes in a crowd and they become more restless and less individualistic. Mob theory, in fact, is born form this which asserts that crowds are the source of volatile conduct where diverse people gang together for a particular cause. Minds merge and each person's enthusiasm becomes increased as a result.

On the one hand, you have the Convergence theory that posits that the cause is born beforehand and that people join the crowd in order to put their cause into practice. The crowd, in other words, enables them...

The individuals carry the motive with them to the crowd. The crowd possesses like-minded individuals who have similar motivations and the aggrandizements and collection / convergence of these individuals simulates the 'madding crowd' (e.g. Mackay, 1841). This is not so different from LeBon's contagion theory (see later) which posits that the contagiousness of the fervor of the crowd causes people to lose their individual personality and to evade responsibly. Although this is only partially correct, LeBon's contagion theory merges with the convergence theory in that like-minded people join together and simulate the collective behavior of the crowd.
Social psychologists LeBon (1895) and Zimbardo (1969) see the crowd as an instigator of individuation. Stimuli such as mergence into a larger whole, the rush of the environment, the pressure of the crowd, the sensory overload and so forth blur mental input and causes a deindivdualistic individual to appear. In fact, the deindivdiuation theory lingers with authors such as Festinger pioneering it in the 1950s and with its continuance up to this day with Zimbardo (e.g. 1969) taking the cudgels.

The main promoter of this theory was leBon whose book ran into 16 languages and 42 French editions (McPhail, 1991). According to LeBon:

Whoever be the individual that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind that makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation (p57)

Festinger argued that crowds cripple cognition and transform behavior. He writes that crowds render individuals "more free from restraint, less inhibited and able to indulge in forms of behavior which, when alone, they would not indulge in." (1952, 382).

Others who propagated the…