Psychology - Crowd and Collective Behaviour

• Collective behavior

  The actions people take when they're part of a group
• Types of collective behavior

  • Pro-social behavior (constructive, happy, helpful)
  • Anti-social behavior (disruptive, vandalism, rioting, aggression)
• Pro-social group behavior

  • Seen in groups at music festivals, peaceful protests, and disaster response
• Anti-social group behavior

  • People who have never committed anti-social behavior before can be swept along with the group
• Deindividuation

  Losing one's sense of individual identity and responsibility when part of a large crowd, leading to following the group's actions
• Social loafing

  People putting in less effort when part of a group task because their individual contribution is less visible
• Collectivist culture

  Seeing responsibility as playing a positive role as part of a group
• Individualistic culture


  Seeing one's own success and needs as more important than the group
• Understanding social influences on collective behavior


  Can help managers, police, and others manage group behavior
• Not everyone goes along with crowds, some resist due to personality/dispositional factors
• Locus of control

  Internal locus of control leads to resisting crowd behavior, external locus of control leads to going along with crowd
• Morality


  An individual's sense of right and wrong, which can lead them to resist or go along with anti-social crowd behavior
• Dispositional factors struggle to explain why law-abiding people sometimes take part in riots or hooliganism, better explained by social factors
• The video provides 5 questions to test understanding of the content