Collection and crowd behaviour

• in a crowd people lose their sense of self, responsibility and morality – the crowd works together with a group mentality.
• Behaviour is unconscious and driven by instinct so there are no conscious cognitive processes (simply acting on instinct). This can lead to violence and people acting in ways that they would never normally contemplate if they were on their own.
• Reicher (1984) suggested a different way that crowd work – they act under a common social identity. Members of the crowd share a similar background, culture interest of come from a similar area.
• Research the St Paul’s riots, and found although rioters attacked police cars, they left other cars alone and actually help the traffic pass unharmed and property was not damaged. This was because rioters share a common social identity. They do not attack people seen as part of the “in-group” but did attack the police who were views as part of the “out-group”.
• Deindividuation: Individuals lose their sense of individuality and become part of the crowd mentality.
• According to psychologists, this could results in the crows becoming violent and acting instinctively. This could lead to people acting in ways that they would not normally do, committing anti-social acts and following a mob mentality.
• People lose their sense of self and their personal sense of morality but also feel less accountable for their actions as they understand there will be no negative consequences for their behaviour.
• Culture on pro-social and anti-social behaviour: look at differences between collectivist and individualist cultures.
• Children raised in collectivist cultures are expected to help out with the family chores and with their younger siblings.
• Children raised in individualist cultures are raised to be more competitive and to work hard at school to ensure that they succeed. If they are given housework to do, it is more likely for rewards such as pocket money.
• Whiting and Whiting (1975) – naturalistic observation, children ages 3-11 in 6 different countries. They found children from Mexico and the Philippines generally acted in a more pro-social way than those from Japan, India and the USA. Most pro-social children who demonstrated altruism were from Kenya.
• Tower (1997) found when looking at sharing behaviour in children from the UK and Russia; he found that children from Russia were more likely to choose resources that benefited others, whereas the children from the UK were more likely to choose resources that benefited themselves. Therefore upbringing can have an impact on children’s pro-social behaviour.
• Anti-social behaviour: countries such as Mexico which have the highest income inequality also reported the highest levels of anti-social behaviour. Countries with a higher level of income tended to report higher levels of pro-social behaviour.
• During the Second World War many people lost their lives in concentration camps
• Psychologists wanted to understand how the Nazis could commit such acts of atrocity
• Adolf Eichmann: 'He had only been following orders and as such did nothing wrong'
• Milgram


  Investigated the effects of situational factors on obedience
• Milgram was interested to see whether there was something different about the Nazis that caused them to commit terrible crimes
• Electric shock experiment

  1. Participants teaching a word list to a learner (confederate)

  2. Administering an electric shock if the learner answered incorrectly
• Researcher


  • Wore a lab coat
  • Probed the participant to continue delivering the shocks even when they wanted to stop the experiment
• 65% of participants were willing to obey the researcher and go all the way to 450 volts just because they were given the order to
• Situational factors that influenced participants to obey

  • Presence of a legitimate authority figure (wearing a lab coat)
  • Location of the research (well-respected university)
  • Learner was in the other room and could not be seen by the participant
  • Researcher said he would take responsibility for anything happening to the learner
• Agency Theory

  Milgram proposed a theory that people obey orders that they know to be ethnically wrong because they have moved from being in an autonomous state where they have power over their own actions, to being in an agentic state, where they are acting as agents of the authority figure and are therefore not responsible for their actions
• Hofling (1966) study on obedience

  1. Confederate posed as a doctor in a hospital

  2. Gave instructions to a nurse over the phone to give a patient a too high dose of medicine (it was not a real drug and couldn't cause them harm)

  3. 21 out of 22 nurses obeyed the doctors' orders, despite the high dose and the fact that it was forbidden for them to take orders to give medication over the phone

  4. Nurses stated it was a busy hospital and they should follow orders from doctors
• When Hofling asked a different set of nurses what they would do if they were in the situation

  Almost all of them said they would not have followed the doctors' orders
• There is a difference in what we say we will do and what we actually do
• Charismatic leaders


  another reason why people obey authority figures is down to the leader themselves.
• House et al., (1991) suggest that it is the charismatic personality of the leaders that enables them to create a special bond with their followers and allows them to exert power.
• Charisma actually refer to the special relationship between leader and follower. The leader is seen as almost being superhuman and is idolised by his followers.