Category: Social psychology

Crowd psychology research finds that masses and mobs are not the many-armed destructive monsters of the popular or even fascist imagination.

How do you imagine an archetypal crowd of people – say at a concert, a sporting event or a demonstration?

If you picture an irrational, spontaneous, suggestible, emotional and even potentially dangerous group then you are in good company.

Sociologists David Schweingruber and Ronald Wohlstein have found this view of crowd psychology is promoted by many authors of introductory sociology and psychology textbooks.

Indeed the idea that crowds demonstrate bizarre, almost pathological behaviour was championed by eminent French sociologist Gustave LeBon.

Despite these beliefs both in sociology textbooks and in the general public, the actual evidence of crowd psychology does not support it.

Crowds are not the many-armed destructive monsters of the popular or even fascist imagination.

Here are seven myths about crowd psychology that Schweingruber and Wohlstein identify, in order of how frequently they appear in introductory sociology textbooks.

1. Crowds are not spontaneous

The most common myth about crowd psychology is that they are spontaneous, or worse, that they are hotbeds of violence, with complete chaos only a few ill-judged jostles away.

Research into crowd violence does not support this.

One study of riots shows that violence is normally related to the presence of two opposing factions.

Mixed crowds – which are the norm – are in fact usually peaceful and only engage in stereotypical crowd-behaviour, e.g. whistling and clapping, face-painting, singing and shouting depending on the occasion.

In reality, most people will go to almost any length to avoid actual violence, whether they are in a crowd or not.

2. The masses are not suggestible

The idea that people in crowds have heightened suggestibility is also a relatively common myth.

People are said to copy each other, looking for a leader, being open to others’ suggestion about how they should behave, perhaps resulting from a lack of social structure.

Schweingruber and Wohlstein simply find no research to back up this claim.

If there is some truth to the idea that people in crowds are suggestible, no one has managed to demonstrate it empirically.

One scholar has asked why, if crowds are so suggestible, they don’t disperse when asked to do so by an authority figure.

3. Crowd psychology is not irrational

One type of irrationality frequently attributed to crowd psychology is panic.

Faced by emergency situations people are thought to suddenly behave like selfish animals, trampling others in the scramble to escape.

A long line of research in crowd psychology into the way people behave in real emergency situations does not support this idea.

Two examples are studies on underground station evacuations and the rapid, orderly way in which people evacuated the World Trade Center after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Many lives were saved that day because people resisted the urge to panic.

Resisting the urge to irrationality, or panic, is the norm.

4. Crowds do not increase anonymity

A less common myth, but still popular is the idea that people become more anonymous when they are in a crowd.

This anonymity is said to feed into spontaneity and even destructiveness, helping to make crowds violent, dangerous places in which society’s laws are transgressed.

Everyday experience, though, is that people usually travel in groups, with their family or friends, and so are not anonymous at all.

Crowd psychology research confirms this, for example one study from the 70s found that most people at a football match were with one or more friends.

Later research has repeated this finding.

5. Crowds are not emotional

Less widespread this myth – nevertheless crowds are thought by some to be particularly emotional.

It is argued that increased emotionality is linked to irrationality and perhaps violence.

Modern psychological research, though, doesn’t see the emotions as separate to decision-making, but rather as an integral part.

To talk about an ’emotional crowd’ as opposed to a ‘rational crowd’, therefore, doesn’t make sense.

People in crowds make their decisions with input from their emotions, just as they do when they’re not in a crowd.

6. Mass psychology is not unanimous

Few of the sociology textbooks endorse the myth of unanimity, but the idea does appear that when people are together they tend to act in unison.

Research suggests, though, that this is rarely the case – people remain stubbornly individual.

7. Crowd psychology is not destructive

The least common myth in the sociology textbooks, but quite a strong cultural stereotype of crowds, is that they are destructive.

This is closely related to the myth of spontaneity and is often connected to violence.

Again Schweingruber and Wohlstein find that the research (like this) shows violence in crowds is extremely rare.

And what violence does occur is normally carried out by a small minority – these are the people that make it onto the news.

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Psychology of love and relationships: The brain map of love, the role of kissing, how couples come to look similar, what kills a relationship and more…

“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The psychology of love and relationships has been examined by poets, philosophers, writers and many other artists over the years.

From the initial moment of attraction to growing old together, here are 10 psychology studies that all lovers should know.

1. Falling in love takes one-fifth of a second

It takes a fifth-of-a-second for the euphoria-inducing chemicals to start acting on the brain when you are looking at that special someone.

Brain imaging studies of love suggest that 12 different areas of the brain are involved.

When looking or thinking about a loved one, these areas release a cocktail of neurotransmitters across the brain, including oxytocin, dopamine, vasopressin and adrenaline.

The brain gets a similar ‘hit’ from love as it does from a small dose of cocaine.

2. Psychology of love: brain map

The first study to look at the neural difference between love and sexual desire finds remarkable overlaps and distinct differences.

The results showed that some strikingly similar brain networks were activated by love and sexual desire.

The regions activated were those involved in emotion, motivation and higher level thoughts.

This psychology of love suggests that sexual desire is more than just a basic emotion, but involves goal-directed motivation and the recruitment of more advanced thoughts.

Love is built on top of these circuits, with one key area of difference being in the striatum. This area of the brain is typically associated with the balance between higher- and lower-level functions.

3. Psychology of love: kissing helps us choose

Two studies of kissing have found that apart from being sexy, kissing also helps people choose partners–and keep them.

In a survey, women in particular rated kissing as important, but more promiscuous members of both sexes rated kissing as a very important way of testing out a new mate.

But kissing isn’t just important at the start of a relationship; it also has a role in maintaining a relationship.

The researchers found a correlation between the amount of kissing that long-term partners did and the quality of their relationship.

This link wasn’t seen between more sex and improved relationship satisfaction.

4. Couples look more similar after 25 years together

People who live with each other for 25 years may develop similar facial features.

One study on the psychology of love has found that over 25 years of marriage the facial features of couples became more similar, as judged by independent observers.

This may be because of similarities in diet, environment, personality or even a result of empathising with your partner over the years.

5. Psychology of love: long distance relationships

Contrary to the received wisdom, long distance relationships can work, according to research on the psychology of love.

Two factors that help keep long distance relationships alive are that these couples:

• Tell each other more intimate information.
• Have a more idealised view of their partner.

As a result, those in long distance relationships often have similar levels of relationship satisfaction and stability as those who are geographically close to each other.

6. Four things that kill a relationship stone dead

For over 40 years the psychologist Professor John Gottman has been analysing the psychology of love.

He’s followed couples across decades in many psychological studies to see what kinds of behaviours predict whether they would stay together.

There are four things that kills relationships stone dead: repeated criticism, lots of expressions of contempt like sarcasm, being defensive and stonewalling, which is when communication almost completely shuts down.

7. Modern marriages demand self-fulfilment

The face of marriage has changed significantly over the years, according to research.

It used to be more about providing safety and solidity, now people want psychological fulfilment from their marriages.

More than ever people expect marriage to be more of a journey towards self-fulfilment and self-actualisation.

Unfortunately in the face of these demands, couples are not investing sufficient time and effort to achieve this growth.

The study’s author, Eli Finkel explained:

“In general, if you want your marriage to help you achieve self-expression and personal growth, it’s crucial to invest sufficient time and energy in the marriage. If you know that the time and energy aren’t available, then it makes sense to adjust your expectations accordingly to minimize disappointment.”

8. A simple exercise to save a marriage

If your relationship needs a little TLC, then there may be no need to go into therapy, suggests research on the psychology of love.

Instead, watching a few movies together could do the trick.

A three-year study finds that divorce rates were more than halved by watching movies about relationships and discussing them afterwards.

The study’s lead author, Ronald Rogge, said:

“The results suggest that husbands and wives have a pretty good sense of what they might be doing right and wrong in their relationships. Thus, you might not need to teach them a whole lot of skills to cut the divorce rate.

You might just need to get them to think about how they are currently behaving. And for five movies to give us a benefit over three years–that is awesome.”

9. The post-divorce relationship

Even after divorce, relationships don’t necessarily end, especially if there are children.

A study of co-parenting post-divorce has found it can go one of five ways, the first three of which are considered relatively functional:

1. Dissolved duos, where (usually) the father disappears.
2. Perfect pals, where parents continue to be best friends.
3. Cooperative colleagues, where couples move on but remain on a good footing with each other.
4. Angry associates, where the fighting continues after the divorce.
5. Fiery foes, where children become pawns in the fight and usually suffer as a result.

10. Psychology of love: the little things

Finally, as we live in a highly commercialised world where we’re encouraged to think love can be bought and sold, it’s worth remembering that often it’s the small things that can make a difference.

A survey on the psychology of love of over 4,000 UK adults found that simple acts of kindness are often appreciated the most.

Bringing your partner a cup of tea in bed, putting the bins out or telling them they look good naked may all do a lot more than a box of chocolates or bunch of flowers (although these won’t hurt!).

Psychology of love

As the German poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke said:

“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.”

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The definition of deindividuation is when aspects of a situation cause people’s sense of themselves to recede, allowing them to change their behaviour.

Deindividuation in psychology is one of the reasons that people behave differently in a crowd.

When in a crowd people experience deindividuation: a loss of self-awareness.

When deindividuation takes hold people can feel less responsibility and may become anti-social or even violent.

Deindividuation definition

The psychologist Leon Festinger was the first to use the term deindividuation in a 1952 paper.

Festinger wrote that deindividuation in a group or crowd brings about a loosening in people’s behaviour.

People often enjoy being in groups which are deindividuated as they lose their sense of self.

Common examples of deindividuation are:

• When people are dancing in a nightclub, they move and behave in ways they never would in other situations.
• The online disinhibition effect causes people to behave in different ways when they are online than when they are interacting face-to-face.
• People in military units are conditioned to behave in ways that would not be normal elsewhere.

Example of deindividuation research

Psychologists have investigated deindividuation in a variety of ways.

One of those is in the context of cheating and how deindividuation affects it.

People will cheat for all sort of different reasons in all sorts of different ways — in love, in their finances and at work — but social psychologists are particularly interested in the general features of situations in which people cheat.

It’s this question that inspired Professor Ed Diener and colleagues in the 1970s to carry out a classic social psychology study of children’s honesty at Halloween.

Trick or treat?

Diener and colleagues monitored 27 houses in Seattle on the evening of Halloween, as kids came trick-or-treating (Diener et al., 1976).

Just inside the door on a table were two bowls, one filled with candy bars, another with pennies and nickels.

As children arrived in their costumes they were told to take one candy bar each, but not to touch the money.

The host then told the children she had to go back to her research in another room.

Actually, though, she was looking through a peep-hole in the door to see how much candy and/or money they would take.

But this wasn’t just a test of the kids honesty, it was a test of how various situational factors would affect what they did.

Before leaving the room, each of the hosts in each of the houses created a number of different experimental conditions.

The three major factors the experimenters wanted to examine were the effect of being in a group, anonymity and shifting the responsibility for any cheating:

1. Groups: children naturally arrived either alone or in groups (so this condition was only quasi-experimental).
2. Anonymity: sometimes the kids were asked by the host for their names and addresses, other times not.
3. Shifted responsibility: sometimes all the children were told that the smallest child the host could see was responsible if any extra candy or money was taken.

Over the night 1,352 children entered the 27 houses across Seattle, some alone and some in groups, many emboldened by their Halloween costumes.

In each house the host, after the experimental manipulation, left the room and watched the children, waiting to see how the anonymity and responsibility shifting would affect whether they cheated, and by how much.

Anonymity and deindividuation

The good news is that overall, across all the conditions, about two-thirds of the children were completely honest and didn’t take even a single extra candy bar or touch the pennies and nickels.

But the effects of anonymity, being in a group and responsibility shifting were dramatic:

As you can see, when children came alone and were identified, only 8 percent cheated.

However when they came in a group, were anonymous and the responsibility for any cheating had been shifted to the smallest child, the average rate of cheating shot up to 80 percent.

The results suggested that each of the factors were not just additive but interacted with each other to encourage an even larger percentage of children to cheat.

The researchers teased out some further intriguing subtleties from the data they collected.

They were also interested in why the children cheated: was it just because they were in a group, or was it also because the leader cheated and the others copied?

Their results suggested there was indeed a modelling effect because in groups where the first child cheated, the other children were also more likely to cheat.

4 factors predicting cheating

This experiment is a powerful demonstration of deindividuation: when aspects of situations cause people’s sense of themselves, including their ethical and moral codes, to recede and allow them to be easily influenced by the actions of others.

Deindividuation may be at least partly responsible for social loafing, people’s tendency to slack off when working in a group.

But social loafing is the least of the charges ranged against deindividuation.

The phenomenon has been blamed for all kinds of social disorder, especially the antisocial, destructive behaviour sometimes seen in crowds (although according to some scholars the combustibility of crowds has been exaggerated, cf. 7 myths of crowd psychology).

Whatever the judgement on deindividuation, this classic social psychology study does give us four specific situations which make people more likely to cheat:

• when in a group,
• when anonymous,
• when they can copy someone else
• and when responsibility can be shifted elsewhere.

It also demonstrates that these factors can interact with each other to make it even easier for cheating to occur.

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