Why only the slightest commonalities are enough to increase people’s liking for each other.
The patterns have nothing to do with habits, days of the week, the menstrual cycle or phases of the moon.
Gossip is a feature of almost every known human society.
People who did this activity daily delayed their death by 42 percent compared with those who never did it.
Could this study provide the real reason that we tend to shake hands when greeting another person?
The amount of alcohol that makes the drinker themselves look more attractive to others.
While we can certainly ‘catch’ stress off those around us, there are some strange kinks in how it is transmitted.
Reflecting on personally important values helps people interact more harmoniously.
Crowd psychology research finds that masses and mobs are not the many-armed destructive monsters of the popular or even fascist imagination.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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Both better health and higher attractiveness were linked to the most attractive height and weight for females.
Both better health and higher attractiveness were linked to the most attractive height and weight for females.
Young men prefer young women of normal weight, research finds.
Flying in the face of the size zero trend, normal weight young women are seen as more healthy-looking and attractive than skinnier peers.
‘Normal’ weight for a young woman who is the average height in the US of 1.64 metres is between 50 kg and 68 kg.
This range is higher for women who are taller and lower for those who are shorter.
Dr Vinet Coetzee, the study’s first author, said:
“We often remark on how healthy or unhealthy someone looks, but it can be very difficult to say precisely how we know this.
Scientists have been trying to answer this question for decades, and have made many breakthroughs in our understanding of health and attractiveness, but until now they have tended to overlook the influence of weight.”
Researchers asked male students to rate the attractiveness and health of a group of female students.
Dr Coetzee said:
“We studied a group of young healthy students.
However, amongst this group, those students that were rated as more overweight reported more frequent and longer lasting cold and flu bouts, used antibiotics more frequently and had higher blood pressure than the students that were considered normal weight.
Even at this young age, their health was already suffering because they were overweight, and what is more, other people can spot this in their face.”
The results showed that young women whose weight was in the normal range were considered the most attractive.
Professor David Perrett, study co-author, said:
“A take home message for young people is that maintaining a normal weight benefits current health and will improve good looks.
In our study, people in the normal weight range were judged healthier and more attractive than under or overweight individuals.
This sends a strong message to all the girls out there who believe you have to be underweight to be attractive.
The people making judgments in our study were all between the ages of 18 and 26 and they did not rate underweight girls most attractive.
They preferred normal weight girls.”
The study was published in the journal Perception (Coetzee et al., 2009).
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