LeBon (1985) saw the crowd as a social structure where individual transform into the primitive, irrational state of a mass of people, characterised by loss of self control, anonymity of the individual, primitive behaviour, suggestibility and a collective mind. A dominant notion here, by analogy with a disease, was that of mental contagion or the spread of emotion. LeBon, like a number of crowd theorists who followed, was concerned with social unrest and the apparent mob-like state of agitated crowds.
I like to think about crowd more in context of ‘Lemming crowd syndrome’ ('Lemming syndrome' as a term is reserved for a cultural context, so I redefine it here slightly). It’s not that you become absolutely mindless and irrational like LeBon suggested, it’s more that you options become limited – specifically your behavioural options. For example, in a busy London street you can try to resist the urge to cross the pedestrian walk on red light when the crowd around you suddenly starts moving, but it’s likely that you will follow them anyway. The rapid movement of crowd makes the option of waiting on red much less attractive. This doesn’t work in Poland of course, where you get fined for crossing the street on red…
‘Lemming Crowd syndrome’ doesn’t only apply to simple directional aspects. You might feel uncomfortable if you act against crowd mental behaviour too. Recently I joined extremely busy train from Bath Spa to London Paddington on Sunday afternoon. The train was obviously overbooked, a mass of people crowded in the passages, lots of backpacks and baggage’s (it was Bath Festival weekend). I didn’t book a ticket in advance. You know how this advance booking works – sits which are taken have a small display that tells you from which station they are taken. There are also free sits for those who bought the ticket on the train station last minute. I had a big backpack, it was very hot, and I had a nasty cold. Normally, I would conform but this time something cracked. I started walking/crawling towards the end of the train. People were not happy, but nobody said anything. I am small enough to pass even through most ridiculous bag barrier, so I slowly progressed through 3 coaches. Not bad. But so far all sits were taken everywhere. I reached the final coach. Two guys, rugby-size, blocking the entrance. I am trying to pass, one is asking ‘do you have a sit booked there?’, I said ‘yes’ with surprised certainty, but feeling extremely uncomfortable lying and they let me pass. There was one sit in this couch booked from Bath, but not taken. I dropped my bag on the overhead, and joined the table, smiling with a certain guilt displayed on my face. Everyone at the table looked at me with suspicion, or if not – I definitely felt like they were. I was stressed for another 10 minutes until we stopped in some smaller station (Chippenham), nobody joined there, and that was it – I got a sit all the way to Paddington (almost 2 hours trip mind you).
What was interesting about this is how this massive crowd set the behavioural rules for the train, blocking passages, and even enquiring me, whether I follow some non-existent crowd ethics – that is exactly what I mean by Lemming syndrome. It was a combination of attribution bias, cognitive dissonance and blind obedience. The limited space, limited options and large crowd worked as perfect decision blocker. And how uncomfortable I felt going against it was just a final prove.
I am sure you got you own stories of ‘Lemming Crowd syndrome’. Share some if you do.
