CSP - Week 4 - Crowd Psychology - Panics, Riots, and Social Change PDF

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Lecturer: Dr Clifford Stevenson.
Two hours of lecture notes on crowd psychology for module Contemporary Social Psychology....

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CSP - Week 4 - Crowd Psychology - Panics, Riots, and Social Change Crowds as sharing an identity ● Feeling part of a group ● Knowing that you share a collective identity ● Knowing that others are aware of this identity ● Evidenced by: ● Visual displays of identity ● Collective movement and reaction ● Coordination and cooperation ● Crowds have collective power Historic understandings of crowds - Earliest times: Ancient Rome - Plebs and mobs - Breads and circuses - 18th and 19th centuries and the revolutionary crowd: - Increased population - Industrialisation and urbanisation - Breakdown of traditional way of life - Ideas of equality LeBon and the irrationality of the mob: ● ‘By the mere fact that he forms parts of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs on the ladder of civilisation. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd he is a barbarian - that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence the ferocity… of primitive beings, whom he further tends to resemble by the facility with which he allows himself to be impressed by words and images’ (1895) LeBon’s model of the crowd ● Atavistic: ● People regress to primitive emotional state ● Unpredictable: ● Anonymity gives rise to irresponsibility and lack of self control ● Suggestible: ● Emotions become ‘contagious’ as people do not think for themselves ● Politically motivated account Classic psychological theories of crowds - McDougall (1920) directly imported LeBon’s ideas to psychology: - Irrationality of the mob - ‘Primitive sympathy’ and the gregarious instinct - Dangerous due to lowered personal responsibility - Freud (1922) group psychology and the analysis of the ego: - Society provides constraints on behaviour through superego - In crowd, superego replaced by leader - Crowd members revert to primitive ‘horde’ - Suggestible, excitable Zimbardo (1970) and deindividuation

Evidence: ● If people anonymised in lab situations, tend to punish confederates more harshly (1970) ● But KKK and nurses (Johnson & Downing, 1979): ● Deindividuation did not increase punishment ● Deindividuated nurses actually reduced level of punishment Do all groups behave the same?

Limits of individual and pathological models of the crowd - Assume inherent unpredictability and irrationality of crowd - Don’t explain why people behave differently in groups - Don’t explain or predict what sort of behaviour crowd will exhibit or how this will change - Assume people will overreact if gravity of situation known - Implication = must withhold information to keep crowd calm Consequences of panic myths: Hillsborough disaster ● 15th April, 1989, Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield ● Large crowd, poor entry facilities ● Police open gates to already overcrowded stand

Fear of crowd and poor crowd control judgements - Misinterpretation of early warning signs of disaster - Withholding emergency services due to misreports of ‘crowd unrest’ - ‘Helpless’ crowd and lack of assistance to crowd responders - 96 dead, 766 injured - Blamed crowd afterwards Heroism and helping ● Members of crowd later shared thoughts on how heroic other crowd members were in attempting to help the injured and get them to safety, obviously a crowd unity ● People tried not to panic, or lose control Crowd panic and social identity: Drury, Cocking, & Reicher, 2009) - Panic model = popular belief - Eye witness accounts: - Orderly behaviour - Helping behaviour, even at individual cost - Identity-mediated action London 7/7 Bombings

● Again, unity described by passengers after blast Comparative event study - Interviewed 21 participants from range of disaster events 1 - the myth of panic - No real panic - just overwhelming sense to get out of (area) quickly - Although people panicked straightaway there were level headed people there to calm them down 2 - no selfish behaviour - Helping behaviours - Organised, pattern-like behaviours - orderly 3 - increased altruism 4 - increased shared identity - Camaraderie, pulling together, strengthened by incident Collective resilience ● Perception of common fate

● Shared social identity ● Trust and expect others to be supportive, practically and emotionally ● Reduces anxiety and stress ● Shared definition of reality (legitimacy, possibility) ● Allows coordination, enhances agency/power ● Limitation: retrospective accounts Virtual crowd behaviour (Drury et al., 2009) - Ethical issues in simulating crowd panic - Immersive environment as alternative - Allows experimental manipulation of: - Type of event - Crowd experience - Response options - Trying to rush through busy train station - experimental condition - large fire starts - Strength of identification predicts behaviour - Works by increasing concern for others Crowd emergencies: recommendations from social psych: ● Build shared identity in crowd: ● Disseminate information ● Clarify shared goals and interdependence ● Develop coordination and cooperation: ● Identify leaders, divide tasks ● Help people to help themselves and each other ● Build longer-term resilience and capacity: ● Training and information about disasters ● Rehearsals and community involvement Part 2 - Crowds and Riots ● Previous research looks at dynamic w/in crowds ● How can social identity explain riots and intercrowd conflicts? ● Social identity principles: ● Crowds provide rather than remove identity ● Identity responsible for coordination of behaviour ● Intergroup behaviour meaningful and identity-driven St. Paul’s Riot - Reicher (1984; 1987; Reicher & Potter, 1985; Potter & Reicher, 1987) - Bristol race riots - 1980 - Context: racial inequality, deprivation and ‘sus’ laws - Police raid on black and white cafe, initial confrontations, reinforcements called in, running battles between police and crowd, police withdraw from area Reicher’s data: ● Ethnography ● 46 interviews w. People on the day ● Retrospective accounts ● Media and police reports ● Legal reports and insurance claims ● Photos taken on the day

Examining accounts of events - In situ interviews: - Practicalities - Position of the respondent - Post hoc interviews: - Sampling - Forgetfulness, contamination, bias - Media, police, legal accounts - Build up a consensus account of what happens - Examine where accounts diverge Themes resulting from analyses: ● Different perspective on event according to group ● Restraint and selective action of crowd ● Social limits of behaviour Different perspective on event according to group - Outside explanation of conspiracy and coordination - Town councillor: people phoning each other up beforehand - Senior police: participants were a mix of psychopaths and subversive anarchists - Inside explanation of spontaneous identity-based action - ‘There was no organisation or anything like that. It was just totally spontaneous, but it was… I don’t know, just a feeling they were invading - bringing a hundred coppers down to St Paul’s. Obviously looking for trouble’ Directed and selective action of crowd ● Violence against police was acceptable ● Looting of showrooms linked to popular resentment ● Buildings targeted represented inequitable social system Social limits of behaviour - Non-identity behaviour not generalised - ‘it was definitely against the police, because nothing or nobody else got hurt, except a bus - that got one window smashed. That could have been deliberate, but I think it was probably not. Everyone went ‘ugh, idiots’ - Evidence of self-regulation of crowd - Geographical limits to behaviour Conclusions: ● Behaviour not atavistic or chaotic ● Vs. relative deprivation, emergent norm theory, behaviour meaningful in terms of preexisting identities ● Patterns of behaviour related to self identification as residents of St Paul’s and perceptions of inequality in local society ● Group members viewed their own behaviour as legitimate and meaningful reaction against the police Elaborated Social Identity Model (Reicher, 1996) - Based on Self-Categorisation Theory: - Different identities salient at different times - Content of identity depends on: - 1 - existing group stereotype - 2 - relevant outgroup and their behaviour

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Crowd behaviour informed by broader social context Behaviour of one group always forms the context for the behaviour of the other Changes in relations between groups at an event will impact on broader social relations Poll tax riot (Stott & Drury, 2000) ● Poll-tax rate as flat rate tax to replace property value based rates ● Nationwide movement culminating in public protest (1990) ● Non-violent demonstration, sit down protest opposite Downing Street ● Police intervention and escalation in Trafalgar Square from dozens to thousands of people ● Police viewed large numbers as dangerous or having violent intentions and intervene ● Police intervention viewed as illegitimate and indiscriminate and hence violence was legitimate response ● Police response escalated Police perspective (Stott & Reicher, 1998) - Indiscriminate treatment - Radicalisation - Ironic self-fulfilling prophecy - Police lay understandings of crowds - Police equipment - Police tactics 2011 England Riots ● London boroughs, spread across UK ● 5 deaths, 16 members of public injured ● 189 police officers injured ● £200m damage ● Media coverage Social Identity Interpretation (Reicher & Stott, 2011) - Deprivation, inequality, marginalisation, crime - In January, as part of spending cuts, Haringey Council announced the budget for youth services would be slashed by 75% Police reaction ● Long term poor relations w. Police ● Mark Duggan shot August 2011 ● Uncertainty around death - armed or not? ● ‘Armed gangster’ or ‘community peacemaker’? ● No Family Liaison Officer appointed ● Delay in police communicating w. Family, community ● ‘Ambiguity’ in police accounts Initial demonstration - Peaceful demonstration at police station - No police spokesperson present - Reports of young girl assaulted by police - Escalation of isolated riot Broader riots ● Civil disorder: ● Separate from initial incident, though thematically linked

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Documented attacks on individuals unrelated to riots Attacks on symbolic sites/commercial symbolism Different manifestation in different locations Is looting a form of protest? Reclaiming the streets as a form of assertion of group identity

Part 3: the effects of planned crowd behaviour Intragroup processes leading to collective action: - Identity as basis of collective action: - Central importance of group to self - Depth of feeling about group - Identity as basis of common perception: - Seek a common perspective on the world - Common perceptions of threat and injustice - Common feelings of anger and outrage - Identity as basis of collective efficacy: - Awareness that others can work together - Belief that together the group can change the situation Social identity model of collective action (Van Zomeren et al., 2008)

Crowds as collective action: M11 protest ● ‘No M11’ campaign in North London (Drury & Reicher, 2005; Drury et al., 2005) ● Local people and ecological protestors ● Longitudinal study of two events ● ‘Tree dressing ceremony’ - (1993) ● Advertised protest, limited policing, fences flattened ● Later eviction ● 1month occupation ● Overwhelming police and bailiff presence ● 400 protestors, but tree demolished and land reclaimed ● Participant observation and interviewing ● Disparate groups bound together by common experience, increased sense of empowerment ● Feelings of empowerment assoc. W. initial success Enduring effects - Later defeat redefined as moral victory, exposing the illegitimacy of the authorities - Later goal to express group identity rather than to win the battle Effects of political crowds:

● Increase in empowerment ● Ability to project the identity of the group: Collective Self-Objectification ● Defeat reconfigured as victory ● Participation increases identification leads to more participation Crowds as identity enactment (Neville & Reicher, 2011) - Move towards understanding crowds neglects emotions - Focus on response to conflict ignores positive shifts in relations within group - Examine a range of different events: St. Andrews (political), Dundee Utd (football), Rockness (music) - Connectedness, recognition, validation - Impact on emotion Festival ● Three day Rockness festival in 2009 at Loch Ness ● Rock and dance acts ● Attended by approx. 30,000 people ● 98 participants in study ● Measured shared identity, feelings of relatedness, positivity of event and emotional intensity...