Conventional Crowd This is a crowd that has gathered for some event, the location of which was known in advance. Such an event can be a football match, a boxing match, etc. This crowd is called conventional because before

Expressive crowd This is a crowd that expresses by its behavior any emotion, no matter what. The main distinguishing feature of such a crowd is the rhythm of movement. Such a crowd is made up of people chanting slogans at a rally, rhythmically dancing to the beat

The Active Crowd Finally, the fourth type of crowd is the active (or active) crowd. This is the most dangerous type of crowd. The acting crowd can be aggressive or panicky. A recent example of an aggressive crowd is the riots on Manezhnaya Square in

Organized Religion Despite its spiritual goals, organized religion often, like science, cannot give a clear answer to the question of defining the transition from physical life to physical death. This happens as a result of the clash of all religions, whether

The psychology of the crowd. Or the secret of mass control.

1. The concept of the crowd. What is a crowd?

The concept of a crowd is usually born from the personal experience of people. Almost everyone has either been in the crowd or seen its behavior from the outside. Sometimes, succumbing to simple human curiosity, people join a group that considers and discusses some event. Growing in numbers, infected by the general mood and interest, people gradually turn into a discordant, unorganized cluster, or crowd.

A crowd is an unstructured accumulation of people, devoid of a clearly perceived commonality of goals, but mutually connected by the similarity of their emotional state and a common object of attention.

The term "crowd" entered social psychology during the period of powerful revolutionary upsurge of the masses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Psychologists at that time understood the crowd as mainly poorly organized protests of the working people against the exploiters.

The crowd as the subject of mass forms of non-collective narration often becomes:

- the public, which is understood as a large group of people arising on the basis of common interests, often without any organization, but always in a situation that affects common interests and allows for rational discussion;

- a contact, outwardly unorganized community, acting extremely emotionally and unanimously;

- a set of individuals that make up a large amorphous group and for the most part do not have direct contacts with each other, but are connected by some common more or less constant interest. These are mass hobbies, mass hysteria, mass migrations, mass patriotic or pseudo-patriotic frenzy.

In mass forms of non-collective behavior, unconscious processes play an important role. On the basis of emotional excitement, spontaneous actions arise in connection with some impressive events that affect the main values ​​​​of people in the course, for example, of their struggle for their interests and rights.

Even the main stages of crowd formation are defined:

The formation of the core of the crowd.

The initial core of the crowd can be formed under the influence of rationalistic considerations and set itself quite definite goals. But in the future, the core grows like an avalanche and spontaneously. The crowd is growing, absorbing people who, it would seem, had nothing in common with each other before. Spontaneously, a crowd is formed as a result of some incident that attracts the attention of people and gives rise to interest in them (more precisely, at the very beginning - curiosity). Being agitated by this event, the individual who has joined those already gathered is ready to lose some of his usual self-control and receive exciting information from the object of interest. A circular reaction begins, prompting the audience to show similar emotions and meet new emotional needs through psychic interaction.

The circular reaction constitutes the first stage in the formation and functioning of the crowd. Spinning process. The second stage begins at the same time as the whirling process, during which the senses become even more acute and there is a readiness to respond to information coming from those present. The internal swirling on the basis of the ongoing circular reaction is growing. And the excitement grows. People are predisposed not only to joint, but also to immediate action.

The emergence of a new common object of attention. The whirling process prepares the third stage of crowd formation. This stage is the emergence of a new common object of attention, on which the impulses, feelings and imagination of people are focused. If initially the general object of interest was an exciting event that gathered people around it, then at this stage the image created in the process of whirling in the conversations of the crowd participants becomes a new object of attention. This image is the result of the creativity of the participants themselves. It is shared by all, gives individuals a common orientation and acts as an object of joint behavior. The appearance of such an imaginary object becomes a factor that unites the crowd into a single whole.

Activation of individuals through arousal. The last stage in the formation of the crowd is the activation of individuals by additional stimulation through the excitation of impulses corresponding to an imaginary object. Such (based on suggestion) stimulation occurs most often as a result of the leadership of the leader. It encourages the individuals that make up the crowd to take concrete, often aggressive, actions. Among those gathered, instigators usually stand out, who deploy vigorous activity in the crowd and gradually direct its behavior. These may be politically and mentally immature and extremist-minded individuals. Thus, the composition of the crowd is clearly defined.

The core of the crowd, or the instigators, are the subjects whose task is to form the crowd and use its destructive energy for the set goals. It is these people who are subject to the psychology of the crowd or the secret of controlling the masses.

Crowd members are subjects who have joined it as a result of identifying their value orientations with the direction of the crowd's actions. They are not instigators, but they find themselves in the sphere of influence of the crowd and actively participate in its actions. Of particular danger are aggressive individuals who join the crowd solely because of the opportunity that has arisen to release their neurotic, often sadistic, inclinations.

In the midst of the participants of the crowd there are also honestly mistaken ones. These subjects join the crowd due to an erroneous perception of the situation, they are driven, for example, by a falsely understood principle of justice.

The crowd joins the crowd. They don't show much activity. They are attracted to excess as an exciting spectacle that diversifies their boring, dreary existence.

Highly suggestible people who succumb to the general contagious mood find their place in the crowd. They surrender without resistance to the power of natural phenomena.

Crowd members are also just curious, watching from the sidelines. They do not interfere in the course of events, however, their presence increases the mass character and enhances the influence of the elements of the crowd on the behavior of its participants.

2. Crowd classification

Like any other social phenomenon, the crowd can be classified on various grounds. If we take such a sign as controllability as the basis for the classification (here it is one important secret of mass control), then we can distinguish the following types of crowds.

Natural crowd. It is formed and manifested without any organizing principle on the part of a particular individual.

Leading crowd. It is formed and manifested under the influence, influence from the very beginning or subsequently of a specific individual who is its leader in this crowd.

Organized crowd. This variety is introduced by G. Lebon, considering as a crowd both a collection of individuals who have embarked on the path of organization, and an organized crowd. It can be said that he sometimes makes no difference between an organized crowd and an unorganized one. Although it is difficult to agree with this approach. If some community of people is organized, therefore, it has structures of control and subordination. This is no longer a crowd, but a formation. Even a squad of soldiers, as long as there is a commander in it, is no longer a crowd.

If we take the nature of the behavior of people in it as the basis for classifying the crowd, then we can distinguish several of its types and subtypes.

Occasional crowd. It is formed on the basis of curiosity about an unexpected incident (traffic accident, fire, fight, etc.).

Conventional crowd. It is formed on the basis of interest in some pre-announced mass entertainment, spectacle or other socially significant specific occasion. Ready only temporarily to follow rather diffuse norms of behavior.

Expressive crowd. Formed - like a conventional crowd. It jointly expresses a general attitude towards an event (joy, enthusiasm, indignation, protest, etc.)

Ecstatic crowd. Represents an extreme form of expressive crowd. It is characterized by a state of general ecstasy based on mutual, rhythmically growing infection (mass religious rituals, carnivals, rock concerts, etc.).

Active crowd. Formed - like conventional; performs actions on a specific object. The current crowd includes the following subspecies.

1. Aggressive crowd. United by blind hatred for a specific object (any religious or political movement, structure). Usually accompanied by beatings, pogroms, arson, etc.

2. Panic crowd. Spontaneously escaping from a real or imagined source of danger.

3. The acquisitive crowd. Enters into an unordered direct conflict for the possession of any values. It is provoked by the authorities, ignoring the vital interests of citizens or encroaching on them (taking by storm places in outgoing transport, rush grab products in trade enterprises, destroying food warehouses, depositing financial (for example, banking) institutions, manifests itself in small quantities in places of major disasters with significant human victims, etc.).

4. Rebel crowd. It is formed on the basis of general just indignation at the actions of the authorities. The timely introduction of an organizing principle into it is capable of elevating spontaneous mass action to a conscious act of political struggle.

3. Psychological properties of the crowd

Social psychologists note a number of psychological characteristics of the crowd.

Inability to comprehend. Important psychological characteristics of the crowd are its unconsciousness, instinctiveness and impulsiveness. If even one person rather weakly succumbs to the messages of reason, and therefore most of the actions in life are done thanks to emotional, sometimes completely blind, impulses, then the human crowd lives exclusively by feeling, logic is contrary to it. An uncontrollable herd instinct comes into play, especially when the situation is extreme, when there is no leader and no one is shouting out restraining commands. The heterogeneous in each of the individuals - a particle of the crowd - is buried in the homogeneous, and unconscious qualities take over. General qualities of character, controlled by the unconscious, join together in a crowd. An isolated individual has the ability to suppress unconscious reflexes, while a crowd does not have this ability.

Features of thinking. The crowd thinks in images, and the image evoked in its imagination, in turn, evokes others that have no logical connection with the first. The crowd does not separate the subjective from the objective. She regards as real images that are conjured up in her mind and often have only a very distant connection with the fact she observes. The crowd, capable of thinking only in images, is receptive only to images.

The crowd does not reason or think. It accepts or rejects whole ideas. She does not tolerate any disputes or contradictions. The reasoning of the crowd is based on associations, but they are connected with each other only by seeming analogy and consistency. The crowd is able to perceive only those ideas that are simplified to the limit. The judgments of the crowd are always imposed on it and never the result of an exhaustive discussion.

Categorical. Feeling no doubt about what is truth and what is error, the crowd expresses the same authority in their judgments as intolerance.

Conservatism. Being fundamentally extremely conservative, the crowd has a deep aversion to all innovation and an unbounded reverence for tradition.

Suggestibility. Freud put forward a very productive idea for describing the phenomenon of the crowd. He viewed the crowd as a human mass under hypnosis. The most dangerous and most essential thing in crowd psychology is its susceptibility to suggestion.

Any opinion, idea or belief inspired by the crowd, it accepts or rejects entirely and refers to them either as absolute truths or as absolute errors.

In all cases, the source of suggestion in the crowd is an illusion born in one individual due to more or less vague memories. The evoked representation becomes the nucleus for further crystallization that fills the entire area of ​​the mind and paralyzes all critical abilities.

Infectivity. Psychological infection contributes to the formation of special properties in the crowd and determines their direction. Man tends to imitate. Opinions and beliefs are spread to the crowd by infection.

The emotional-volitional sphere of the crowd is also characterized by numerous psychological features.

Emotionality. In the crowd there is such a socio-psychological phenomenon as emotional resonance. The people involved in the kurtosis are not just next door to each other. infect others and become infected by them. The term “resonance” is applied to this phenomenon because the crowd members, when exchanging emotional charges, gradually inflame the general mood to such an extent that an emotional explosion occurs, which is hardly controlled by consciousness. The onset of an emotional explosion is facilitated by certain psychological conditions for the behavior of a person in a crowd.

High sensibility. The feelings and ideas of individuals who form a whole called a crowd take one and the same direction. A collective soul is born, which, however, is temporary. The crowd knows only simple and extreme feelings.

The various impulses to which the crowd obeys may, depending on the circumstances (namely, the nature of the excitements), be magnanimous or evil, heroic or cowardly, but they are always so strong that no self-interest, even a sense of self-preservation, is able to suppress them.

The strength of the feelings of the crowd is further increased due to the lack of responsibility. Confidence in impunity (all the more powerful, the larger the crowd) and the consciousness of significant (albeit temporary) power enable crowds of people to express such feelings and perform such actions that are simply unthinkable and impossible for an individual person.

Whatever the feelings of the crowd, good or bad, their characteristic feature is one-sidedness. The one-sidedness and exaggeration of the feelings of the crowd lead to the fact that it knows neither doubt nor hesitation.

In its eternal struggle against reason, feeling has never been defeated.

Extremism. The forces of the crowd are aimed only at destruction. The instincts of destructive ferocity lie dormant in the depths of the soul of almost any individual. To succumb to these instincts is dangerous for an isolated individual, but being in an irresponsible crowd, where he is guaranteed impunity, he can freely follow the dictates of his instincts. In a crowd, the slightest squabble or slander on the part of any speaker immediately causes furious cries and violent curses. The normal state of a crowd that stumbles upon an obstacle is rage. A crowd never values ​​its life during a riot.

Motivation. Self-interest is very rarely a powerful mover in a crowd, while in an individual it comes first. Although all the desires of the crowd are very passionate, they still do not last long, and the crowd is just as little able to show a persistent will, as well as prudence.

Irresponsibility. It often gives rise to the incredible cruelty of the aggressive crowd, incited by demagogues and provocateurs. Irresponsibility allows the crowd to trample on the weak and bow before the strong.

4. Psychological characteristics of an individual in a crowd

In a crowd, an individual acquires a number of specific psychological characteristics that may be completely uncharacteristic of him if he is in an isolated state. These features have the most direct influence on his behavior in the crowd.

A person in a crowd is characterized by the following features.

Anonymity. An important feature of the self-perception of an individual in a crowd is the feeling of one's own anonymity. Lost in the "faceless mass", acting "like everyone else", a person ceases to be responsible for his own actions. Hence the cruelty that usually accompanies the actions of an aggressive mob. A member of the crowd appears in it, as it were, nameless. This creates a false sense of independence from organizational ties by which a person, wherever he is, is included in the work collective, family and other social communities.

Instinct. In the crowd, the individual gives himself over to such instincts that he never, being in other situations, gives free rein. This is facilitated by the anonymity and irresponsibility of the individual in the crowd. It reduces the ability to rationally process the perceived information. The capacity for observation and criticism, which exists in isolated individuals, completely disappears in the crowd.

Unconsciousness. The conscious personality disappears in the crowd, dissolves. The predominance of the unconscious personality, the same direction of feelings and ideas, determined by suggestion, and the desire to immediately turn the suggested ideas into action is characteristic of an individual in a crowd.

Hypnotic trance state. The individual, after spending some time among the active crowd, falls into a state that resembles the state of a hypnotized subject. He is no longer aware of his actions. In him, as in a hypnotized person, some abilities disappear, while others reach an extreme degree of tension. Under the influence of the suggestion acquired in the crowd, the individual performs actions with an irresistible impetuosity, which, moreover, increases, since the influence of the suggestion, which is the same for all, is increased by the force of reciprocity.

Feeling of irresistible power. An individual in a crowd acquires the consciousness of an irresistible force, thanks to sheer numbers. This consciousness allows him to succumb to hidden instincts: in the crowd he is not inclined to curb these instincts precisely because the crowd is anonymous and does not answer for anything. The sense of responsibility that usually restrains individual individuals completely disappears in the crowd - here the concept of impossibility does not exist.

Infectivity. In a crowd, every action is contagious to such an extent that the individual very easily sacrifices his personal interests to the interest of the crowd. Such behavior is contrary to human nature itself, and therefore a person is capable of it only when he is a part of the crowd.

Amorphous. In the crowd, the individual features of people are completely erased, their originality and personal uniqueness disappear.

Irresponsibility. In a crowd, a person completely loses a sense of responsibility, which is almost always a deterrent for an individual.

social degradation. Becoming a particle of the crowd, a person, as it were, descends several steps lower in his development. In an isolated position - in ordinary life, he was most likely a cultured person, but in a crowd - this is a barbarian, i.e. being instinctive. In the crowd, the individual reveals a tendency to arbitrariness, violence, ferocity. A person in a crowd also suffers a decrease in intellectual activity.

5. Behavior of the crowd.

In the behavior of the crowd, both ideological influences are manifested, with the help of which certain actions are prepared, and changes in mental states that occur under the influence of any specific events or information about them. In the actions of the crowd, there is a docking and practical implementation of both ideological and socio-psychological influences, their interpenetration into the real behavior of people.

The situation of mass hysteria serves as a backdrop against which the most tragic actions often unfold.

As already mentioned, one of the types of crowd behavior is panic. Panic is an emotional state that occurs as a result of either a lack of information about some frightening or incomprehensible situation, or its excessive excess and manifests itself in impulsive actions.

There are many factors that can cause panic. Their nature can be physiological, psychological and socio-psychological. There are known cases of panic in everyday life as a result of catastrophes and natural disasters. In panic, people are driven by unaccountable fear. They lose self-control, solidarity, rush about, do not see a way out of the situation.

The factors that have a particularly strong influence on the behavior of the crowd are as follows.

Superstition is a fixed false opinion that arises under the influence of fear experienced by a person. However, there may be a superstitious fear, the causes of which are not recognized. Many superstitions are associated with belief in something. They affect a variety of people, regardless of the level of education and culture. For the most part, superstition is based on fear, and it is magnified many times over in a crowd.

Illusion - a kind of false knowledge, entrenched in public opinion. It may be the result of a deception of the sense organ. In this context, we are talking about illusions related to the perception of social reality. A social illusion is a kind of ersatz-likeness of reality, created in the imagination of a person instead of genuine knowledge, which for some reason does not accept. Ultimately, the basis of the illusion is ignorance, which can produce the most unexpected and undesirable effects when manifested in a crowd.

Prejudice is false knowledge that has turned into a belief, more precisely, into a prejudice. Prejudices are active, aggressive, assertive, and desperately resist true knowledge. This resistance is so blind that the crowd will not accept any arguments that contradict prejudice.

6. The leader in the crowd and the secret of mass control.

Often the behavior of the crowd is determined by the presence or absence of a leader in it. The leader in the crowd can appear as a result of a spontaneous choice, and often - in the order of self-appointment. The self-proclaimed leader usually adapts to the moods and feelings of the people of the crowd and can relatively easily induce its members to a certain type of behavior.

Any collection of individuals instinctively submits to the authority of the leader. The hero worshiped by the crowd is truly a god for it. In the soul of the crowd, it is not the desire for freedom that prevails, but the need for submission. The crowd is so eager to obey that it instinctively submits to the one who declares himself to be its master.

People in the crowd lose their will and instinctively turn to the one who retained it. Always ready to rise up against a weak government, the crowd grovels and bows before a strong government. Left to their own devices, the mob soon tire of their own disturbances and instinctively yearn for slavery.

The crowd is as intolerant as it is gullible with respect to authority. She respects strength and is little affected by kindness, which for her means only a kind of weakness. She demands strength and even violence from the hero, she wants to be possessed, she is suppressed. She yearns to fear her master. The power of the leaders is very despotic, but it is precisely this despotism that makes the crowd obey.

In a crowd of people, the leader is often only the leader, but, nevertheless, his role is significant. His will is the core around which opinions crystallize and unite. The role of leaders is mainly to create faith, no matter what. This explains their great influence on the crowd.

Most often, the leaders are mentally unbalanced people, half-mad, on the verge of insanity. No matter how absurd the idea they proclaim and defend, and the goal towards which they strive, their convictions cannot be shaken by any arguments of reason. There is another quality that usually distinguishes the leaders of the crowd: they do not belong to the number of thinkers - they are people of action.

The leader class is divided into two categories:

- people are energetic, with a strong will, but appearing in them only for a short time;

- people with a strong and at the same time persistent will (they are much less common).

The secret of mass control, which determines the leader's influence on the crowd, is his charm. Charm is a kind of dominance of some idea or personality over the mind of an individual. It can be made up of opposite feelings, such as admiration and fear, and can be of two types: acquired and personal. Personal charm is different from artificial or acquired and does not depend on either title or power. It is based on personal superiority, on military glory, on religious fear, but not only on this. There are many different factors involved in the nature of charm, but one of the most important has always been and remains success.

Crowd management has a dual nature, because the crowd is almost always the object of control of two forces: on the one hand, it is led by leaders, leaders; on the other hand, the forces of protection of public order, power administrative structures are engaged in the crowd.

The possibilities of crowd control differ significantly depending on who aspires to be the leader in it - a demagogue or an intellectual. As they say in the East, he who wants to control the crowd tries to ride the tiger. However, managing individuals is much more difficult than managing a crowd.

The mechanisms of mass behavior can be used by a politician with any views and any moral level. In such cases, the crowd becomes a plaything in the hands of the leader. Usually, people who want to lead the crowd intuitively know how to influence it. They know that in order to convince the crowd, you must first understand what feelings inspire it, pretend to share them, and then conjure up in the imagination of the crowd images that attract it. The crowd should always be presented with any ideas in solid images, without indicating their origin.

A speaker who wants to captivate a crowd must abuse strong language. To exaggerate, to assert, to repeat, and never to try to prove anything by reasoning - these are the ways of argumentation for the crowd.

The statement only affects the crowd when it is repeated many times in the same expressions: in this case, the idea is embedded in the minds so firmly that in the end it is perceived as a proven truth, and then crashes into the deepest regions of the unconscious. This technique is also quite successfully used by the leaders or leaders of the crowd.

A theoretical analysis of the mechanisms of crowd formation can, to some extent, help administrative bodies to control its behavior. They face a twofold task:

1) to awaken awareness by individuals of the crowd of their actions, to return to them the lost sense of self-control and responsibility for their behavior;

2) prevent the formation of a crowd or disband an already formed crowd.

- reorientation of the attention of individuals that make up the crowd. As soon as the attention of people in the crowd is divided among several objects, separate groups immediately form, and the crowd, just united by the "image of the enemy" or readiness for joint action, immediately disintegrates. The features of the personality structure of individuals suppressed by the influence of the crowd come to life - each person individually begins to regulate his behavior. The crowd ceases to be active, functioning and gradually dissipates;

- an announcement over the loudspeaker that the hidden cameras are filming the crowd members;

- an appeal to the crowd participants with the name of specific surnames, names, patronymics, the most common in the area;

- the use of measures to capture and isolate the leaders of the crowd. If, by some accident, the leader disappears and is not immediately replaced by another, the crowd again becomes a mere gathering without any connection or stability. In this case, it is easier to carry out crowd dispersal measures.

In fact, it is very difficult to speak with the voice of reason with the crowd. She only accepts orders and promises.

Literature:

1. American sociological thought. - M., 1994.

2. Lebon G. Psychology of peoples and masses. - St. Petersburg, 1996.

3. Mitrokhin S. Treatise on the crowd // XX century and the world. - 1990. No. 11.

4. Moskovichi S. Age of crowds. - M., 1996.

5. Criminal mob. - M., 1998.

6. Psychology of domination and submission: Reader. - Minsk, 1998.

7. Psychology of the masses: Reader. - Samara, 1998.

8. Psychology of crowds. - M., 1998.

9. Rutkevich A.M. The Man and the Crowd // Dialogue. - 1990. - No. 12.

10. Freud 3. "I" and "It". - Tbilisi, 1991.

The concept of the crowd. The mechanism of its formation and composition

The social life of people is molded into a great variety of the most diverse forms. Some of them are ordinary and familiar. Others are seriously different from what is considered to be the daily norm. There are forms of behavior that are purely individualized, entirely or largely dependent on the will, desires or needs of the individual. But there are also those in which the manifestations of the will, desires and needs of an individual are seriously limited by the direct or indirect influence of other people.

People and the individual, not even experiencing psychic pressure from others, but only perceiving the behavior of these others, become infected with their behavior, obey and follow it. Of course, insubordination is also possible, but the individual, as a rule, rationally explains it to himself. Without this clarification, "insubordination" inevitably causes an internal anxiety in the individual, often supplemented by the work of the imagination regarding the possibly low assessment of one's personality by others.

The concept of a crowd is usually born from the personal experience of people. Almost everyone has either been in the crowd or seen its behavior from the outside. Sometimes, succumbing to simple human curiosity, people join a group that considers and discusses some event. Growing in numbers, infected by the general mood and interest, people gradually turn into a discordant, unorganized cluster, or crowd.

A crowd is an unstructured accumulation of people, devoid of a clearly perceived commonality of goals, but mutually connected by the similarity of their emotional state and a common object of attention.

The term "crowd" entered social psychology during the period of powerful revolutionary upsurge of the masses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Psychologists at that time understood the crowd as mainly poorly organized protests of the working people against the exploiters.

A very figurative definition of the crowd was given by G. Lebon: "The crowd is like leaves raised by a hurricane and carried in different directions, and then falling to the ground."

When combining small groups, consisting of individuals who are indignant about a certain reason, into a sufficiently large group, the likelihood of spontaneous behavior increases sharply. The latter can be aimed at expressing people's feelings, assessments and opinions, or at changing the situation through action. Very often the crowd turns out to be the subject of such spontaneous behavior.

The crowd as the subject of mass forms of non-collective narration often becomes:

• the public, which is understood as a large group of people arising on the basis of common interests, often without any organization, but necessarily in a situation that affects common interests and allows for rational discussion;
• contact, outwardly unorganized community, acting extremely emotionally and unanimously;
• a set of individuals who make up a large amorphous group and who, for the most part, do not have direct contacts with each other, but are connected by some common more or less constant interest. These are mass hobbies, mass hysteria, mass migrations, mass patriotic or pseudo-patriotic frenzy.

In mass forms of non-collective behavior, unconscious processes play an important role. On the basis of emotional excitement, spontaneous actions arise in connection with some impressive events that affect the main values ​​​​of people in the course, for example, of their struggle for their interests and rights. Such were the numerous “copper” or “salt” riots of the urban and peasant squalor in the Russian Middle Ages or the rebellious performances of the English “Luddists”, expressed in the destruction of machines, devoid of a clear ideological context and clearly conscious goals of the actions taken.

The main mechanisms for the formation of the crowd and the development of its specific qualities are circular reaction(growing mutually directed emotional contagion), as well as gossip.

Even the main stages of crowd formation are defined.

Crowd core formation. The emergence of a crowd rarely goes beyond the causal relationships of social phenomena, the awareness of which is far from always spontaneous. Despite the fact that one of the essential features of the crowd is the random composition of the people who form it, often the formation of the crowd begins with a certain core, which is the instigators.

The initial core of the crowd can be formed under the influence of rationalistic considerations and set itself quite definite goals. But in the future, the core grows like an avalanche and spontaneously. The crowd is growing, absorbing people who, it would seem, had nothing in common with each other before. Spontaneously, a crowd is formed as a result of some incident that attracts the attention of people and gives rise to interest in them (more precisely, at the very beginning - curiosity). Being agitated by this event, the individual who has joined those already gathered is ready to lose some of his usual self-control and receive exciting information from the object of interest. A circular reaction begins, prompting the audience to show similar emotions and meet new emotional needs through psychic interaction.

The circular reaction constitutes the first stage in the formation and functioning of the crowd.

whirling process. The second stage begins at the same time as the whirling process, during which the senses become even more acute and there is a readiness to respond to information coming from those present. The internal swirling on the basis of the ongoing circular reaction is growing. And the excitement grows. People are predisposed not only to joint, but also to immediate action.

The emergence of a new common object of attention. The whirling process prepares the third stage of crowd formation. This stage is the emergence of a new common object of attention, on which the impulses, feelings and imagination of people are focused. If initially the general object of interest was an exciting event that gathered people around it, then at this stage the image created in the process of whirling in the conversations of the crowd participants becomes a new object of attention. This image is the result of the creativity of the participants themselves. It is shared by all, gives individuals a common orientation and acts as an object of joint behavior. The appearance of such an imaginary object becomes a factor that unites the crowd into a single whole.

Activating individuals through arousal. The last stage in the formation of the crowd is the activation of individuals by additional stimulation through the excitation of impulses corresponding to an imaginary object. Such (based on suggestion) stimulation occurs most often as a result of the leadership of the leader. It encourages the individuals that make up the crowd to take concrete, often aggressive, actions. Among those gathered, instigators usually stand out, who deploy vigorous activity in the crowd and gradually direct its behavior. These may be politically and mentally immature and extremist-minded individuals. Thus, the composition of the crowd is clearly defined.

The core of the crowd, or the instigators, are the subjects whose task is to form the crowd and use its destructive energy for the set goals.

Crowd members are subjects who have joined it as a result of identifying their value orientations with the direction of the crowd's actions. They are not instigators, but they find themselves in the sphere of influence of the crowd and actively participate in its actions. Of particular danger are aggressive individuals who join the crowd solely because of the opportunity that has arisen to release their neurotic, often sadistic, inclinations.

In the midst of the participants of the crowd there are also honestly mistaken ones. These subjects join the crowd due to an erroneous perception of the situation, they are driven, for example, by a falsely understood principle of justice.

The crowd joins the crowd. They don't show much activity. They are attracted to excess as an exciting spectacle that diversifies their boring, dreary existence.

Highly suggestible people who succumb to the general contagious mood find their place in the crowd. They surrender without resistance to the power of natural phenomena.

Crowd members are also just curious, watching from the sidelines. They do not interfere in the course of events, however, their presence increases the mass character and enhances the influence of the elements of the crowd on the behavior of its participants.

2 Crowd classification

Like any other social phenomenon, the crowd can be classified on various grounds. If we take such a feature as controllability as the basis for the classification, then we can distinguish the following types of crowds.

spontaneous crowd. It is formed and manifested without any organizing principle on the part of a particular individual.

driven crowd. It is formed and manifested under the influence, influence from the very beginning or subsequently of a specific individual who is its leader in this crowd.

Organized crowd. This variety is introduced by G. Lebon, considering as a crowd both a collection of individuals who have embarked on the path of organization, and an organized crowd. It can be said that he sometimes makes no difference between an organized crowd and an unorganized one. Although it is difficult to agree with this approach. If some community of people is organized, therefore, it has structures of control and subordination. This is no longer a crowd, but a formation. Even a squad of soldiers, as long as there is a commander in it, is no longer a crowd.

If we take the nature of the behavior of people in it as the basis for classifying the crowd, then we can distinguish several of its types and subtypes.

occasional crowd. It is formed on the basis of curiosity about an unexpected incident (traffic accident, fire, fight, etc.).

Conventional crowd. It is formed on the basis of interest in some pre-announced mass entertainment, spectacle or other socially significant specific occasion. Ready only temporarily to follow rather diffuse norms of behavior.

expressive crowd. Formed - like a conventional crowd. It jointly expresses a general attitude towards an event (joy, enthusiasm, indignation, protest, etc.)

Ecstatic crowd. Represents an extreme form of expressive crowd. It is characterized by a state of general ecstasy based on mutual, rhythmically growing infection (mass religious rituals, carnivals, rock concerts, etc.).

acting crowd. Formed - like conventional; performs actions on a specific object. The current crowd includes the following subspecies.

1. Aggressive crowd. United by blind hatred for a specific object (any religious or political movement, structure). Usually accompanied by beatings, pogroms, arson, etc.
2. panic crowd. Spontaneously escaping from a real or imagined source of danger.
3. Grassroots crowd. Enters into an unordered direct conflict for the possession of any values. It is provoked by the authorities, ignoring the vital interests of citizens or encroaching on them (taking by storm places in outgoing transport, rush grab products in trade enterprises, destroying food warehouses, depositing financial (for example, banking) institutions, manifests itself in small quantities in places of major disasters with significant human victims, etc.).

4. Rebel crowd. It is formed on the basis of general just indignation at the actions of the authorities. The timely introduction of an organizing principle into it is capable of elevating spontaneous mass action to a conscious act of political struggle.

G. Lebon distinguishes types of crowds on the basis of homogeneity:

• heterogeneous;
• anonymous (street, for example);
• personified (parliamentary assembly);
• uniform:
• sects;
• castes;
• classes.

Modern ideas on the typology of the crowd are somewhat different from the views of G. Lebon. The organized crowd has already been discussed above. It is also difficult to consider as a crowd a personified meeting of people such as a production meeting, a parliamentary meeting, a jury (G. Lebon refers these formations to the category of “crowd”), which only in potency can turn into a crowd, but initially they are not. Classes are also difficult to attribute to the category of crowds - they have already been discussed. Still, the main system-forming feature of the crowd is its spontaneity.

3 Psychological properties of the crowd

Social psychologists note a number of psychological characteristics of the crowd. They are characteristic of the entire psychological structure of this formation and manifest themselves in various areas:

• cognitive;
• emotional-volitional;
• temperamental;
• moral.

In the cognitive sphere, the crowd expresses various oddities of its psychology.

Inability to be aware. Important psychological characteristics of the crowd are its unconsciousness, instinctiveness and impulsiveness. If even one person rather weakly succumbs to the messages of reason, and therefore most of the actions in life are done thanks to emotional, sometimes completely blind, impulses, then the human crowd lives exclusively by feeling, logic is contrary to it. An uncontrollable herd instinct comes into play, especially when the situation is extreme, when there is no leader and no one is shouting out restraining commands. The heterogeneous in each of the individuals - a particle of the crowd - is buried in the homogeneous, and unconscious qualities take over. General qualities of character, controlled by the unconscious, join together in a crowd. An isolated individual has the ability to suppress unconscious reflexes, while a crowd does not have this ability.

Features of the imagination. The crowd has a highly developed capacity for imagination. The crowd is very receptive to impressions. Images that strike the imagination of the crowd are always simple and clear. The images evoked in the mind of the crowd by someone, the idea of ​​some event or case, in their liveliness, are almost equal to real images. It is not the facts themselves that strike the imagination of the crowd, but the way they are presented to it.

Another very important effect of the crowd is collective hallucinations. In the imagination of people gathered in a crowd, events are distorted.

Features of thinking. The crowd thinks in images, and the image evoked in its imagination, in turn, evokes others that have no logical connection with the first. The crowd does not separate the subjective from the objective. She regards as real images that are conjured up in her mind and often have only a very distant connection with the fact she observes. The crowd, capable of thinking only in images, is receptive only to images.

The crowd does not reason or think. It accepts or rejects whole ideas. She does not tolerate any disputes or contradictions. The reasoning of the crowd is based on associations, but they are connected with each other only by seeming analogy and consistency. The crowd is able to perceive only those ideas that are simplified to the limit. The judgments of the crowd are always imposed on it and never the result of an exhaustive discussion.

The crowd never seeks the truth. She turns away from the obvious, which she does not like, and prefers to worship delusions and illusions, if only they seduce her.

For a crowd incapable of reflection or reasoning, there is nothing improbable, but the improbable is what strikes the most.

There is no premeditation in the crowd. She can consistently experience and go through the whole gamut of conflicting feelings, but she will always be under the influence of the excitations of the moment. The association of heterogeneous ideas that have only an apparent relation to each other, and the immediate generalization of particular cases - these are the characteristic features of the reasoning of the crowd. The crowd is constantly under the influence of illusions. Some important features of crowd thinking should be emphasized.

categorical. Feeling no doubt about what is truth and what is error, the crowd expresses the same authority in their judgments as intolerance.

Conservatism. Being fundamentally extremely conservative, the crowd has a deep aversion to all innovation and an unbounded reverence for tradition.

Suggestibility. Freud put forward a very productive idea for describing the phenomenon of the crowd. He viewed the crowd as a human mass under hypnosis. The most dangerous and most essential thing in crowd psychology is its susceptibility to suggestion.

Any opinion, idea or belief inspired by the crowd, it accepts or rejects entirely and refers to them either as absolute truths or as absolute errors.

In all cases, the source of suggestion in the crowd is an illusion born in one individual due to more or less vague memories. The evoked representation becomes the nucleus for further crystallization that fills the entire area of ​​the mind and paralyzes all critical abilities.

It is very easy to inspire the crowd, for example, with a feeling of adoration, forcing them to find happiness in fanaticism, submission and readiness to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their idol.

No matter how neutral the crowd, it is still in a state of expectant attention, which facilitates any suggestion. The birth of legends, easily spreading in the crowd, is due to its gullibility. The same direction of feelings is determined by suggestion. As with all beings under the influence of suggestion, the idea that has taken possession of the mind seeks to express itself in action. Impossible for the crowd does not exist.

infectivity. Psychological infection contributes to the formation of special properties in the crowd and determines their direction. Man tends to imitate. Opinions and beliefs are spread to the crowd by infection.

For emotional-volitional sphere of the crowd also characterized by numerous psychological features.

Emotionality. In the crowd there is such a socio-psychological phenomenon as emotional resonance. The people involved in the kurtosis are not just next door to each other. infect others and become infected by them. The term “resonance” is applied to this phenomenon because the crowd members, when exchanging emotional charges, gradually inflame the general mood to such an extent that an emotional explosion occurs, which is hardly controlled by consciousness. The onset of an emotional explosion is facilitated by certain psychological conditions for the behavior of a person in a crowd.

high sensuality. The feelings and ideas of individuals who form a whole called a crowd take one and the same direction. A collective soul is born, which, however, is temporary. The crowd knows only simple and extreme feelings.

The various impulses to which the crowd obeys may, depending on the circumstances (namely, the nature of the excitements), be magnanimous or evil, heroic or cowardly, but they are always so strong that no self-interest, even a sense of self-preservation, is able to suppress them.

In the crowd, the exaggeration of feelings is due to the fact that this feeling itself, spreading very quickly through suggestion and infection, causes universal approval, which contributes to a significant extent to the increase in its strength.

The strength of the feelings of the crowd is further increased due to the lack of responsibility. Confidence in impunity (all the more powerful, the larger the crowd) and the consciousness of significant (albeit temporary) power enable crowds of people to express such feelings and perform such actions that are simply unthinkable and impossible for an individual person.

Whatever the feelings of the crowd, good or bad, their characteristic feature is one-sidedness. The one-sidedness and exaggeration of the feelings of the crowd lead to the fact that it knows neither doubt nor hesitation.

In its eternal struggle against reason, feeling has never been defeated.

Extremism. The forces of the crowd are aimed only at destruction. The instincts of destructive ferocity lie dormant in the depths of the soul of almost any individual. To succumb to these instincts is dangerous for an isolated individual, but being in an irresponsible crowd, where he is guaranteed impunity, he can freely follow the dictates of his instincts. In a crowd, the slightest squabble or slander on the part of any speaker immediately causes furious cries and violent curses. The normal state of a crowd that stumbles upon an obstacle is rage. A crowd never values ​​its life during a riot.

The peculiarity of the crowd also lies in the specifics of the socio-psychological phenomena that determine the uniformity of the behavior of its participants. The fact is that the crowd is created mainly on the basis of opposing a given community to an object of discontent. What often makes a crowd a community is precisely what is "against them." It's certainly not a blind hatred for anything people don't identify with. Nevertheless, in a crowd, the opposition between “we” and “they” reaches a socially significant, often very dangerous value.

The crowd does not have a critical attitude towards itself and there is "narcissism" - "we" are impeccable, "they" are to blame for everything. "They" cast in the image of the enemy. The crowd considers only strength, and kindness does not touch it much; for the crowd, kindness is one of the forms of weakness.

Motivation. Self-interest is very rarely a powerful mover in a crowd, while in an individual it comes first. Although all the desires of the crowd are very passionate, they still do not last long, and the crowd is just as little able to show a persistent will, as well as prudence.

Irresponsibility. It often gives rise to the incredible cruelty of the aggressive crowd, incited by demagogues and provocateurs. Irresponsibility allows the crowd to trample on the weak and bow before the strong.

In the temperamental sphere, the psychological characteristics of the crowd are manifested in physical activity and diffuseness.

Physical activity. The desire to immediately turn inspired ideas into action is a characteristic feature of the crowd.

diffuseness. The stimuli that act on the crowd that obeys them are very diverse - this explains its extreme variability. Above the well-established beliefs of the crowd lies a superficial layer of opinions, ideas and thoughts, constantly arising and disappearing. The opinion of the crowd is fickle.

The absence of clear goals, the absence or diffuseness of the structure give rise to the most important property of the crowd - its easy convertibility from one species (or subspecies) to another. Such transformations often occur spontaneously. Knowledge of their typical patterns and mechanisms makes it possible to deliberately manipulate the behavior of the crowd for adventurous purposes or in order to consciously prevent its especially dangerous actions.

IN moral sphere the psychological characteristics of the crowd are most often found in morality and religiosity.

Morality. The crowd can sometimes demonstrate very high morality, very lofty manifestations: selflessness, devotion, selflessness, self-sacrifice, a sense of justice, etc.

Religiosity. All the convictions of the crowd have the features of blind obedience, ferocious intolerance, the need for the most violent propaganda, which is inherent in religious feeling.

The crowd needs religion, since all beliefs are assimilated by it only if they are clothed in a religious shell that does not allow for challenge. The beliefs of the crowd always take a religious form.

4 Psychological characteristics of an individual in a crowd

In a crowd, an individual acquires a number of specific psychological characteristics that may be completely uncharacteristic of him if he is in an isolated state. These features have the most direct influence on his behavior in the crowd.

A person in a crowd is characterized by the following features.

Anonymity. An important feature of the self-perception of an individual in a crowd is the feeling of one's own anonymity. Lost in the "faceless mass", acting "like everyone else", a person ceases to be responsible for his own actions. Hence the cruelty that usually accompanies the actions of an aggressive mob. A member of the crowd appears in it, as it were, nameless. This creates a false sense of independence from organizational ties by which a person, wherever he is, is included in the work collective, family and other social communities.

instinctiveness. In the crowd, the individual gives himself over to such instincts that he never, being in other situations, gives free rein. This is facilitated by the anonymity and irresponsibility of the individual in the crowd. It reduces the ability to rationally process the perceived information. The capacity for observation and criticism, which exists in isolated individuals, completely disappears in the crowd.

unconsciousness. The conscious personality disappears in the crowd, dissolves. The predominance of the unconscious personality, the same direction of feelings and ideas, determined by suggestion, and the desire to immediately turn the suggested ideas into action is characteristic of an individual in a crowd.

The state of unity (association). In the crowd, the individual feels the power of human association, which affects him with its presence. The impact of this force is expressed either in the support and strengthening, or in the containment and suppression of individual human behavior. It is known that people in the crowd, feeling the mental pressure of those present, can do (or, on the contrary, not do) what they would never do (or, on the contrary, what they would certainly do) under other circumstances. For example, a person cannot, without prejudice to his own safety, help a victim when the crowd itself is hostile to this victim.

G. Le Bon notes the most striking fact observed in the crowd: whatever the individuals that make it up, their way of life, occupations, characters, mind, their transformation into a crowd is enough for them to form a kind of collective soul that makes them to feel, think and act in a completely different way than each of them felt, thought and acted individually. There are ideas and feelings that arise and turn into actions only in the individuals who make up the crowd. The spiritualized crowd represents a temporary organism, merged from heterogeneous elements, united together for an instant.

Hypnotic trance state. The individual, after spending some time among the active crowd, falls into a state that resembles the state of a hypnotized subject. He is no longer aware of his actions. In him, as in a hypnotized person, some abilities disappear, while others reach an extreme degree of tension. Under the influence of the suggestion acquired in the crowd, the individual performs actions with an irresistible impetuosity, which, moreover, increases, since the influence of the suggestion, which is the same for all, is increased by the force of reciprocity.

Feeling of irresistible power. An individual in a crowd acquires the consciousness of an irresistible force, thanks to sheer numbers. This consciousness allows him to succumb to hidden instincts: in the crowd he is not inclined to curb these instincts precisely because the crowd is anonymous and does not answer for anything. The sense of responsibility that usually restrains individual individuals completely disappears in the crowd - here the concept of impossibility does not exist.

infectivity. In a crowd, every action is contagious to such an extent that the individual very easily sacrifices his personal interests to the interest of the crowd. Such behavior is contrary to human nature itself, and therefore a person is capable of it only when he is a part of the crowd.

Amorphous. In the crowd, the individual features of people are completely erased, their originality and personal uniqueness disappear.

The psychic superstructure of each personality is lost and an amorphous homogeneity is revealed and comes to the surface. The behavior of the individual in the crowd is determined by the same attitudes, motives and mutual stimulation. Not noticing the shades, the individual in the crowd perceives all impressions as a whole and does not know any transitions.

Irresponsibility. In a crowd, a person completely loses a sense of responsibility, which is almost always a deterrent for an individual.

Social degradation. Becoming a particle of the crowd, a person, as it were, descends several steps lower in his development. In an isolated position - in ordinary life, he was most likely a cultured person, but in a crowd - this is a barbarian, i.e. being instinctive. In the crowd, the individual reveals a tendency to arbitrariness, violence, ferocity. A person in a crowd also suffers a decrease in intellectual activity.

The person of the crowd is also characterized by an increased emotional perception of everything that he sees and hears around him.

5 Crowd behavior

In the behavior of the crowd, both ideological influences are manifested, with the help of which certain actions are prepared, and changes in mental states that occur under the influence of any specific events or information about them. In the actions of the crowd, there is a docking and practical implementation of both ideological and socio-psychological influences, their interpenetration into the real behavior of people.

Joint feelings, will, moods turn out to be emotionally and ideologically colored and amplified many times over.

The situation of mass hysteria serves as a backdrop against which the most tragic actions often unfold.

As already mentioned, one of the types of crowd behavior is panic. Panic is an emotional state that occurs as a result of either a lack of information about some frightening or incomprehensible situation, or its excessive excess and manifests itself in impulsive actions.

There are many factors that can cause panic. Their nature can be physiological, psychological and socio-psychological. There are known cases of panic in everyday life as a result of catastrophes and natural disasters. In panic, people are driven by unaccountable fear. They lose self-control, solidarity, rush about, do not see a way out of the situation.

The factors that have a particularly strong influence on the behavior of the crowd are as follows.

Superstition- a fixed false opinion that arises under the influence of fear experienced by a person. However, there may be a superstitious fear, the causes of which are not recognized. Many superstitions are associated with belief in something. They affect a variety of people, regardless of the level of education and culture. For the most part, superstition is based on fear, and it is magnified many times over in a crowd.

Illusion- a kind of false knowledge, entrenched in public opinion. It may be the result of a deception of the sense organ. In this context, we are talking about illusions related to the perception of social reality. A social illusion is a kind of ersatz-likeness of reality, created in the imagination of a person instead of genuine knowledge, which for some reason does not accept. Ultimately, the basis of the illusion is ignorance, which can produce the most unexpected and undesirable effects when manifested in a crowd.

prejudice- false knowledge that has turned into a belief, more precisely, into a prejudice. Prejudices are active, aggressive, assertive, and desperately resist true knowledge. This resistance is so blind that the crowd will not accept any arguments that contradict prejudice.

The psychological nature of prejudice lies in the fact that a person's memory captures not just an opinion (knowledge), it also retains the feeling, emotion, attitude that accompanies this knowledge. As a result, memory is highly selective. Facts and events that contradict a certain opinion are not always analyzed at the level of consciousness. And, of course, they are discarded under the influence of emotions, which usually overwhelm, overwhelm the crowd.

In cases where the widespread stereotypes of public opinion are oversaturated with emotions, a mass psychosis may occur, during which people are able to commit the most reckless acts, cease to be aware of all the consequences of their actions.

The factors that determine the character of the opinions and beliefs of the crowd are of two kinds: immediate factors and distant factors. The immediate factors influencing the crowd act on the ground already prepared by distant factors - without this they would not have caused such crushing results, which often strike a raging crowd. Factors capable of impressing the crowd itself always appeal to their feelings, and not to reason.

6 Crowd leadership and crowd control mechanisms

Often the behavior of the crowd is determined by the presence or absence of a leader in it. The leader in the crowd can appear as a result of a spontaneous choice, and often - in the order of self-appointment. The self-proclaimed leader usually adapts to the moods and feelings of the people of the crowd and can relatively easily induce its members to a certain type of behavior.

Any collection of individuals instinctively submits to the authority of the leader. The hero worshiped by the crowd is truly a god for it. In the soul of the crowd, it is not the desire for freedom that prevails, but the need for submission. The crowd is so eager to obey that it instinctively submits to the one who declares himself to be its master.

People in the crowd lose their will and instinctively turn to the one who retained it. Always ready to rise up against a weak government, the crowd grovels and bows before a strong government. Left to their own devices, the mob soon tire of their own disturbances and instinctively yearn for slavery.

The crowd is as intolerant as it is gullible with respect to authority. She respects strength and is little affected by kindness, which for her means only a kind of weakness. She demands strength and even violence from the hero, she wants to be possessed, she is suppressed. She yearns to fear her master. The power of the leaders is very despotic, but it is precisely this despotism that makes the crowd obey.

In a crowd of people, the leader is often only the leader, but, nevertheless, his role is significant. His will is the core around which opinions crystallize and unite. The role of leaders is mainly to create faith, no matter what. This explains their great influence on the crowd.

Most often, the leaders are mentally unbalanced people, half-mad, on the verge of insanity. No matter how absurd the idea they proclaim and defend, and the goal towards which they strive, their convictions cannot be shaken by any arguments of reason. There is another quality that usually distinguishes the leaders of the crowd: they do not belong to the number of thinkers - they are people of action.

The leader class is divided into two categories:

• people are energetic, with a strong, but appearing in them only for a short time will;
• people with a strong and at the same time persistent will (they are much less common).

One of the important factors that determine the leader's influence on the crowd is his charm. Charm is a kind of dominance of some idea or personality over the mind of an individual. It can be made up of opposite feelings, such as admiration and fear, and can be of two types: acquired and personal. Personal charm is different from artificial or acquired and does not depend on either title or power. It is based on personal superiority, on military glory, on religious fear, but not only on this. There are many different factors involved in the nature of charm, but one of the most important has always been and remains success.

Crowd management has a dual nature, because the crowd is almost always the object of control of two forces: on the one hand, it is led by leaders, leaders; on the other hand, the forces of protection of public order, power administrative structures are engaged in the crowd.

The possibilities of crowd control differ significantly depending on who aspires to be the leader in it - a demagogue or an intellectual. As they say in the East, he who wants to control the crowd tries to ride the tiger. However, managing individuals is much more difficult than managing a crowd.

The mechanisms of mass behavior can be used by a politician with any views and any moral level. In such cases, the crowd becomes a plaything in the hands of the leader. Usually, people who want to lead the crowd intuitively know how to influence it. They know that in order to convince the crowd, you must first understand what feelings inspire it, pretend to share them, and then conjure up in the imagination of the crowd images that attract it. The crowd should always be presented with any ideas in solid images, without indicating their origin.

A speaker who wants to captivate a crowd must abuse strong language. To exaggerate, to assert, to repeat, and never to try to prove anything by reasoning - these are the ways of argumentation for the crowd.

The statement only affects the crowd when it is repeated many times in the same expressions: in this case, the idea is embedded in the minds so firmly that in the end it is perceived as a proven truth, and then crashes into the deepest regions of the unconscious. This technique is also quite successfully used by the leaders or leaders of the crowd.

A theoretical analysis of the mechanisms of crowd formation can, to some extent, help administrative bodies to control its behavior. They face a twofold task:

1) to awaken awareness by individuals of the crowd of their actions, to return to them the lost sense of self-control and responsibility for their behavior;

2) prevent the formation of a crowd or disband an already formed crowd.

• reorientation of the attention of individuals who make up the crowd. As soon as the attention of people in the crowd is divided among several objects, separate groups immediately form, and the crowd, just united by the "image of the enemy" or readiness for joint action, immediately disintegrates. The features of the personality structure of individuals suppressed by the influence of the crowd come to life - each person individually begins to regulate his behavior. The crowd ceases to be active, functioning and gradually dissipates;
• loudspeaker announcement that hidden cameras are filming crowd members;
• appeal to the crowd members with the name of specific surnames, names, patronymics, the most common in the area;
• the use of measures to capture and isolate the leaders of the crowd. If, by some accident, the leader disappears and is not immediately replaced by another, the crowd again becomes a mere gathering without any connection or stability. In this case, it is easier to carry out crowd dispersal measures.

In fact, it is very difficult to speak with the voice of reason with the crowd. She only accepts orders and promises.

7 Communication in the crowd

Communication plays a particularly important role in the emergence of a crowd as a process of exchanging messages between people that are meaningful to them.

It is known that an individual becomes a participant in spontaneous behavior, either by becoming infected with the directly observed behavior of others, or by learning about it through the channels of official or unofficial communication. Some of these behaviors occur in conditions of acute information scarcity or ineffective messaging systems.

People are ready to succumb to the contagious action of others when this action is consistent with their ideas and beliefs. Obviously, mental infection would be impossible if people did not see the actions and deeds of others and did not hear about them. Mental contagion can generate feelings along the entire length of the emotional scale - both positive, enthusiastic, and negative, feelings of despondency and depression.

Where the individual is deprived of the opportunity to directly perceive the picture of the behavior of others, the mass media play an increasingly important role - newspapers, radio, television and cinema.

In any society, along with official communication systems, informal systems also operate in parallel. They touch at different points. For example, the content of informal communication - conversations, gossip, gossip, rumors - go to the pages of printed publications or become the topic of conversations of a television commentator, who contributes to their distribution. And even more so, important messages of the mass media are usually discussed among friends or family.

Therefore, in the mind of an individual there is often an interpretation shared by his neighbors, friends, relatives, fellow travelers on the road. The anger caused, say, by a message about the introduction of a new tax or an increase in prices, is easily understood by the interlocutor, because he experiences the same feelings ... This is the first condition for preparing mass behavior.

Literature:

1. American sociological thought. - M., 1994.
2. Lebon G. Psychology of peoples and masses. - St. Petersburg, 1996.
3. Mitrokhin S. Treatise on the crowd // XX century and the world. - 1990. No. 11.
4. Moskovichi S. Age of crowds. - M., 1996.
5. Criminal mob. - M., 1998.
6. Psychology of domination and submission: Reader. - Minsk, 1998.
7. Psychology of the masses: Reader. - Samara, 1998.
8. The psychology of crowds. - M., 1998.
9. Rutkevich A.M. The Man and the Crowd // Dialogue. - 1990. - No. 12.
10. Freud 3. "I" and "It". - Tbilisi, 1991.

Social Psychology. Tutorial. Series "Higher education" Authors-compilers: R.I. Mokshantsev, A.V. Mokshantsev. Moscow-Novosibirsk, 2001

Crowd is a temporary accumulation of a large number of people in a territory that allows for direct contact, who spontaneously respond to the same stimuli in a similar or identical way.

The crowd has no established organizational norms and no set of moral precepts and taboos. What appears here are primitive but strong impulses and emotions.

The crowd is usually divided into four kinds:

• aggressive crowd;
• fleeing (escaping) crowd;
• the hungry crowd;
• demonstrating crowd.

In all these types of crowds, there are many common phenomena:

• deindividualization, i.e. partial disappearance of individual personality traits and a tendency to imitate;
• a sense of standardization, which entails a weakening of ethical and legal norms;
• a strong sense of the correctness of the actions taken;
• a sense of one's own strength and a decrease in the sense of responsibility for one's actions.

In the crowd, a person is involuntarily transmitted hyperexcitability about one's own social feelings, there is a multiple mutual amplification of the emotional impact. From here, in the crowd, even an accidentally thrown word that insults political preferences can become an impetus for pogroms and violence.

Unconscious anxiety for what has been done often exacerbates the feeling of persecution - a special excitability of the crowd towards their true or illusory enemies.

The influence of the crowd on the individual is transient, although the mood that has arisen in him may persist for a long time. The bond that binds the crowd is broken if new stimuli create different emotions:

• the crowd disperses under the influence of the instinct of self-preservation or fear (if the crowd is doused with water or fired upon);
• the crowd can also disperse under the influence of such feelings as hunger, a sense of humor, excitement directed to other goals, etc.

On the use of this kind of mental mechanisms, methods are built to overcome or psychologically disarm the crowd, just as technical methods are based on the knowledge of the mechanisms that unite the crowd, with the help of which the crowd is manipulated.

crowd formation

Crowd- a temporary and casual meeting of individuals of any nationality, profession and gender, regardless of the reason for this meeting. Under certain conditions, the participant in such an assembly - the "man of the crowd" - has completely new features that differ from those that characterize individual individuals. The conscious personality disappears, and the feelings and ideas of all the individual units that form the whole, called the crowd, take the same direction. A “collective soul” is formed, which, of course, is temporary, but the meeting in such cases becomes what the Frenchman G. Lebon (1841-1931) called an organized crowd or a spiritualized crowd, constituting a single being and obeying the law of the spiritual unity of the crowd.

Without a doubt, the mere fact of the chance occurrence of many individuals together is not enough for them to take on the character of an organized crowd; this requires the influence of some pathogens. According to the French sociologist and psychologist S. Moscovici, the masses are a social phenomenon: individuals "dissolve" under the influence of suggestion that comes from the leader. The social machine of massing people makes them irrational when people, irritated by some event, gather together and the conscience of individuals cannot restrain their impulses. The masses are carried away, spurred on by the leader (“the mad lead the blind”). In such cases, politics acts as a rational form of using the irrational essence of the masses. Having said "yes" to the leader, the exalted crowd changes its faith and is transformed. The emotional energy throws her forward and gives her the courage to endure suffering and at the same time insensitivity. The energy that the masses draw from their hearts is used by leaders to push the levers of government and lead many people to a goal dictated by reason.

"Social involvement" may be a factor that reinforces the behavioral component. For example, street riots, riots, pogroms, and other similar aggressive mass actions activate individual attitudes (negative attitudes towards the authorities, the police, or any “hostile” group), which under normal conditions are manifested only in verbal assessments or moods. In such situations, an additional reinforcing factor is the phenomenon of emotional infection that occurs in large crowds of people, the crowd.

Characterizing the collective behavior and role, there are three types of formation of spontaneous groups:

Crowd, which is formed on the street about a variety of events (traffic accident, detention of the offender, etc.). At the same time, the element, being the main background for the behavior of the crowd, often leads to its aggressive forms. If there is a person capable of leading the crowd, centers of organization arise in it, which, however, are extremely unstable;

Weight- a more stable formation with fuzzy boundaries, which is more organized, conscious (rallies, demonstrations), although heterogeneous and rather unstable. In the masses, the role of organizers is more significant, who are not put forward spontaneously, but are known in advance;

Public, which usually gathers for a short time together in connection with some kind of spectacle. The audience is quite divided; its specific feature is the presence of a psychic connection and a single goal. Thanks to a common goal, the public is more manageable than the crowd, although an incident can turn its actions into uncontrollable (say, the behavior of fans in a stadium in the event of a loss to their favorite team).

Thus, under crowd understand a temporary and random meeting of people, characterized by a spiritual and emotional community, spatial proximity and the presence of an external stimulus. Weight - somewhat more stable and conscious education of individuals (for example, participants in a rally or demonstration); the organizers of the masses do not appear spontaneously, but are predetermined. public - this is a community of people who are consumers of the same spiritual and information product; unlike the crowd, the public is united not on a territorial, but on a spiritual basis. Spontaneous groups as a whole are a constant element of social life at all stages of its development, and their role in the development of many social processes is very significant.

Behavior of people in a socially unorganized community

Let us consider the essential features of an unorganized social community. A variety of such a community, along with the public and the masses, is the crowd.

The behavior of people in a crowd is distinguished by a number of mental features: there is some deindividualization of the personality, a primitive emotional-impulsive reaction dominates, the imitative activity of people is sharply activated, and the prediction of the possible consequences of their actions is reduced. In a crowd, people exaggerate the legitimacy of their actions, their critical assessment decreases, the sense of responsibility becomes dull, and a sense of anonymity dominates. Against the background of the general emotional stress caused by this or that situation, people entering the crowd quickly succumb to mental infection.

A person in a crowd acquires a sense of anonymity, of self-liberation from social control. Along with this, in the conditions of the crowd, the conformity of individuals sharply increases, their compliance with the models of behavior offered to the crowd. Thrill seekers easily enter the casual crowd. The so-called expressive crowd easily includes impulsive and emotionally labile people. Such a crowd is easily carried away by rhythmic influences - marches, chants, chanting of slogans, rhythmic gestures. An example of the behavior of this kind of crowd can be the behavior of fans in the stadium. An expressive crowd easily develops into an active crowd of an aggressive type. Her behavior is determined by hatred for the object of aggression and directed by random instigators.

Spontaneous behavior of people is provoked in a number of cases by spontaneous information - rumors. Rumors cover events not covered by the media, they are a specific type of interpersonal communication, the content of which is mastered by an audience subject to certain situational expectations and prejudices.

The regulatory mechanism of the behavior of the crowd - collective unconsciousness - is a special class of mental phenomena, in which, according to the ideas of the psychoanalyst C. G. Jung, the instinctive experience of mankind is contained. General a priori behavioral schemes, transpersonal schemes of behavior suppress the individual consciousness of people and cause genetically archaic behavioral reactions, "collective reflexes", in the terminology of V. M. Bekhterev. Homogeneous, primitive assessments and actions unite people into a monolithic mass and sharply increase the energy of their one-act impulsive action. However, such actions become maladaptive in cases where the need for consciously organized behavior arises.

The phenomenon of the crowd, impulsive stereotypes of behavior are widely used by totalitarian politicians, extremists and religious fanatics.

The predominance of a one-sided interest in a social community can cause crowd-like patterns of behavior, a sharp demarcation into “us” and “them”, and the primitivization of social relations.

Behavioral characteristics vary four kinds of crowd:

• random (occasional);
• expressive (jointly expressing general affective feelings - jubilation, fear, protest, etc.);
• conventional (based on some spontaneously formulated positions);
• acting, which is divided into aggressive, panic (rescuing), acquisitive, ecstatic (acting in a state of ecstasy), insurrectionary (outraged by the actions of the authorities).

Any crowd is characterized by a common emotional state and a spontaneously emerging direction of behavior; growing self-reinforcing mental infection - the spread of an increased emotional state from one individual to another at the psychophysiological level of contact. The absence of clear goals and the organizational diffuseness of the crowd turn it into an object of manipulation. The crowd is always in an extremely excited prelaunch, installation state; only an appropriate start signal is needed to activate it.

One of the types of disorganized behavior of the crowd is panic - a group conflict emotional state that arises on the basis of mental infection in a situation of real or imaginary danger, with a lack of information necessary for reasonable decision-making.

Panic blocks the ability to adequately reflect the situation and its rational assessment, people's actions become defensive and chaotic, consciousness narrows sharply, people become capable of extremely selfish, even antisocial actions. Panic occurs in a state of mental tension, in conditions of increased anxiety caused by the expectation of extremely difficult events (fire, famine, earthquakes, flooding, armed attack), in conditions of insufficient information about the sources of danger, the time of its occurrence and methods of counteraction. Thus, the inhabitants of one village, who were expecting an attack by Turkish troops, fell into a state of panic, seeing in the distance the reflections of the braids of their fellow villagers.

It is possible to get the crowd out of a panic state only with a very strong counteracting irritant, purposeful, categorical commands of authoritative leaders, presentation of brief soothing information and an indication of the real possibilities of getting out of the critical situation that has arisen.

Panic is an extreme manifestation of the spontaneous, impulsive behavior of people in the absence of their social organization, a state of mass passion that occurs in response to a shocking circumstance. The crisis situation creates the need for immediate action, and their conscious organization is impossible due to information-oriented insufficiency.

Using the example of people's behavior in a crowd, we see that the absence of a social organization, a system of regulated norms and ways of behavior leads to a sharp decrease in the socio-normative level of people's behavior. The behavior of people in these conditions is characterized by increased impulsiveness, subordination of consciousness to one actualized image, narrowing of other spheres of consciousness.

Crowd

An accumulation of people deprived of a clearly perceived commonality of goals and organization, but interconnected by a similarity of emotional state and a common center of attention. The main mechanisms for the formation of T. and the development of its specific qualities are considered circular (increasing mutually directed emotional), as well as. There are four main types of T.:

1) occasional T., bound by curiosity about an unexpected incident (traffic accident, etc.);

2) conventional t., bound by an interest in some pre-announced mass entertainment (for example, certain types of sports, etc.) and ready, often only temporarily, to follow more or less diffuse norms of behavior;

3) expressive T., jointly expressing a general attitude to an event (joy, enthusiasm, indignation, protest, etc.), its extreme form is represented by ecstatic T., which, as a result of mutual rhythmically growing infection, reaches a state of general ecstasy (as in some ry mass religious rituals, carnivals, rock music concerts, etc.);

4) acting T., which, in turn, includes the following subspecies: a) aggressive T. (see), united by blind hatred for a certain object (lynching, beating of religious, political opponents, etc.);

b) panicked T., spontaneously escaping from a real or imaginary source of danger (see): c) acquisitive T., entering into disordered direct for the possession of any valuables (money, places in outgoing transport, etc.); d) insurrectionary politics, in which people are bound by a common, just indignation at the actions of the authorities, it often constitutes an attribute of revolutionary upheavals, and the timely introduction of an organizing principle into it can elevate a spontaneous mass uprising to a conscious act of political struggle. The absence of clear goals, the absence or diffuseness of the structure give rise to the most important property of T. - its easy convertibility from one species (subspecies) to another. Such transformations often occur spontaneously, however, knowledge of their typical patterns and mechanisms makes it possible to deliberately manipulate the behavior of T. for adventurous purposes, and on the other hand, to consciously prevent and stop her especially dangerous actions.

Brief psychological dictionary. - Rostov-on-Don: PHOENIX. L.A. Karpenko, A.V. Petrovsky, M. G. Yaroshevsky. 1998 .

Crowd

A structureless accumulation of people, deprived of a clearly perceived commonality of goals, but mutually connected by the similarity of their emotional state and a common object of attention. The main mechanisms for the formation of the crowd and the development of its specific qualities are the circular reaction (growing mutually directed emotional infection), as well as rumors.

There are four main types;

1 ) an occasional crowd - bound by curiosity for an unexpected incident (traffic accident, etc.);

2 ) the crowd is a conventional crowd - bound by an interest in some pre-announced mass entertainment (sports, etc.) and ready, often only temporarily, to follow fairly diffuse norms of behavior;

3 ) expressive crowd - jointly expressing a general attitude to a certain event (joy, enthusiasm, indignation, protest, etc.); its extreme form is an ecstatic crowd, reaching a state of general ecstasy from mutual, rhythmically growing infection - as at some mass religious rituals, carnivals, rock music concerts, etc.;

4 ) crowd acting - contains subspecies:

a) an aggressive crowd - united by blind hatred for a certain object (lynching, beating of religious, political opponents, etc.);

With ) the crowd is acquisitive - entering into an unordered direct conflict for the possession of certain values ​​\u200b\u200b(money, places in outgoing transport, etc.);

d ) a rebel crowd - where people are connected by a common just indignation at the actions of the authorities; it often forms the basis of revolutionary upheavals, and the timely introduction of an organizing principle into it is capable of elevating spontaneous mass action to a conscious action of political struggle.

The absence of clear goals, the absence or diffuseness of the structure give rise to practically the most important property of the crowd - its easy convertibility from one species (subspecies) to another. Such transformations are often spontaneous, but knowledge of their laws and mechanisms allows one to deliberately manipulate the behavior of the crowd for adventurous purposes, or to consciously prevent and stop its dangerous actions.

Dictionary of practical psychologist. - M.: AST, Harvest. S. Yu. Golovin. 1998 .

Crowd

   CROWD (With. 593)

The first capital works, which can be called socio-psychological, appeared at the turn of the 20th - 20th centuries. First of all, they should include the work of the French psychologist, sociologist and historian Gustave Lebon "Psychology of the Crowd" (1895; in 1898 translated into Russian under the title "Psychology of Peoples and Masses", new edition - St. Petersburg, 1995), and also the works of his compatriot Gabriel Tarde, devoted to the psychology of social relations. To this day, these books are read with constant interest, which cannot be said about the cumbersome "Psychology of Peoples" by Wilhelm Wundt. In these books, as well as in "Social Psychology" by W. McDougall (which is recognized by many as the first proper socio-psychological work), ideas were developed concerning the psychology of large groups - "peoples and masses". In socio-psychological research, this problem subsequently receded into the background, although remarkable works on the psychology of large groups appeared later. The "Psychology of the Masses and Fascism" by W. Reich (1933; Russian translation - 1997), as well as "The Age of Crowds" by S. Moskovichi (1981; Russian translation - 1996), which, by the way, is largely based on to the performances of Lebon and Tarde. Moscovici concretizes the psychology of the masses in a whole system of ideas, among which the following are especially significant: Psychologically, a crowd is not a cluster of people in one place, but a human aggregate that has a mental community.

1. The individual exists consciously, and the mass, the crowd - unconsciously, since consciousness is individual, and the unconscious is collective.

2. Crowds are conservative despite their revolutionary mode of action. They end up restoring what they first overthrew, because for them, as for all those in a state of hypnosis, the past is much more significant than the present.

3. The masses, the crowds need the support of the leader, who captivates them with his hypnotizing authority, and not with the arguments of reason and not with submission to force.

4. Propaganda (or) have an irrational basis. This overcomes the obstacles that stand in the way of action. Since in most cases our actions are the result of beliefs, a critical mind, lack of conviction and passion interfere with actions. Such interference can be eliminated by hypnotic, propagandistic suggestion, and therefore propaganda addressed to the masses must use an energetic and figurative language of allegories with simple and imperative formulations.

5. In order to control the masses (party, class, nation, etc.), politics must be based on some higher idea (revolution, Motherland, etc.), which is introduced and nurtured in the minds of people. As a result of such suggestion, it turns into collective images and actions.

Summarizing all these important ideas of mass psychology coming from Le Bon, Moscovici emphasizes that they express certain ideas about human nature - hidden while we are alone, and declaring themselves when we are together. In other words, the fundamental fact is this: “Taken individually, each of us is ultimately intelligent; taken together, in a crowd, during a political rally, even in a circle of friends, we are all ready for the latest folly. Moreover, the crowd, the mass is understood as a social animal that has broken the chain, as an indomitable and blind force that is able to overcome any obstacles, move mountains or destroy the creations of centuries. For Moscovici, it is very important that the differences between people are erased in the crowd and people splash out their passions and dreams in often cruel actions - from base to heroic and romantic, from frenzied delight to martyrdom. Such masses play a particularly important role precisely in the 20th century (as a result of industrialization, urbanization, etc.). Therefore, according to Moscovici, the psychology of the masses, along with political economy, is one of the two sciences about man, the ideas of which made up history, since they specifically pointed to the main events of our era - to “massification”, or “massovization”.

Thus, (the crowd) is based primarily on the sharp opposition of the individual outside the crowd to him, who is in the crowd. Only in the second case does collectivity exist (a collective soul, in Le Bon's terminology) or even sociality.

A century ago, in his Psychology of Crowds, Le Bon wrote: “The main characteristic feature of our era is precisely the replacement of the conscious activity of individuals by the unconscious activity of the crowd”. The latter is almost exclusively controlled by the unconscious, that is, according to Le Bon, its actions are subject to the influence of the spinal cord rather than the brain.

The cited conclusion was made even before the emergence and development of Freud's psychoanalysis, which revealed the enormous role of the unconscious in the life of any "separately taken" human individual, and also in the life of society, civilization, crowds, etc. This means that, according to the general criterion of the unconscious, it is hardly possible to oppose each other the individual and the crowd. The same difficulty persists when such an opposition is carried out according to the criterion of sociality (if the latter is attributed only to the crowd, and not to an individual human individual).

However, it must be taken into account that in the psychology of the masses the crowd is understood very broadly. This is not only a spontaneous, unorganized accumulation of people, but also a structured, more or less organized association of individuals. For example, Le Bon has already proposed the following classification of crowds, the starting point of which is a "simple gathering" of people. First of all, it's a crowd heterogeneous: a) anonymous (street, etc.); b) non-anonymous (trial by jury, parliamentary meetings, etc.). And secondly, the crowd uniform: a) sects (political, religious, etc.); b) castes (military, workers, clergy, etc.); c) classes (bourgeoisie, peasantry, etc.). And according to Tarde, in addition to anarchic, amorphous, natural, etc. crowds, there are also organized, disciplined, artificial crowds (for example, political parties, state structures, organizations such as churches, armies, etc.). It was the artificial crowds that subsequently attracted the greatest attention of Z. Freud.

Analyzing these and other "transformed" forms of the crowd in depth, Muscovites, following Tarde, emphasize one more and, perhaps, the most significant transformation of the crowd ... into the public. If initially a crowd is an accumulation of people in one closed space at the same time, then the public is a scattered crowd. Thanks to the means of mass communication, there is no longer a need to organize meetings of people who would inform each other. These means penetrate into every house and turn every person into a member of a new mass. Millions of such people are part of a new type of crowd. Staying each at home, newspaper readers, radio listeners, TV viewers, users of electronic networks exist all together as a specific community of people, as a special kind of crowd.

In the field of psychoanalysis, the problems of large groups were elucidated in Freud's later works, primarily in the book Psychology of the Masses and the Analysis of the Human Self. In describing group behavior and, above all, intergroup aggression, Freud borrowed a lot from Le Bon and McDougall. Freely admitting his own gaps in the empirical study of the problem, Freud readily accepted the main ideas of both authors regarding the aggressive aspects of crowd behavior, but gave them a complete psychological, more precisely, psychoanalytic interpretation. In Le Bon's work, Freud was particularly impressed by the "brilliantly executed picture" of how, under the influence of the crowd, individuals discover their basic instinctive nature, how unconscious impulses suppressed for the time being are manifested in the crowd, how a thin layer of civilized behavior is torn apart and individuals demonstrate their true, barbaric and primitive beginning . At the same time, the starting point (and then the fundamental conclusion) of Freud's analysis of interpersonal relations and the psychology of the masses was his position that the study of various phenomena of culture and psychology of groups does not reveal patterns that differ from those that are revealed when studying the individual.

Turning to the study of various social communities, Freud specifically identified two of their supporting types: the crowd (an unorganized conglomerate, a gathering of people) and the mass (a crowd organized in a special way, in which there is some commonality of individuals with each other, expressed in their common interest in some object, homogeneous feelings and the ability to influence each other). Freud considered the presence in the community of libidinal attachment to the leader (leader) and the same attachment between the individuals that make it up as an essential distinguishing feature of the mass. At the same time, it was assumed that just such a community is a "psychological mass". Being aware of the existence of various masses and even distinguishing two main types of them: natural masses (self-organizing) and artificial masses (formed and existing with some external violence), Freud at the same time noted the similarity between the mass and the primitive horde and proposed an understanding of the mass as continuation and, in a certain sense, re-creation of the primitive horde.

Exploring the differences and identity of the masses and the horde, he came to the conclusion that conscious individuality is suppressed in them, the thoughts and feelings of people acquire a certain uniformity and are oriented in the same directions, and in general they are dominated by collective motives with a high degree of unconsciousness, impulsiveness and efficiency. Insisting on the existence of a libidinal structure and constitution of the mass, Freud especially noted the role of attachment to the leader, with the disappearance of which the mass disintegrates.

In the psychoanalytic psychology of groups, the foundations of which were laid by Z. Freud himself, certain attention is paid to the role of various negative feelings and factors in the social relations of people. In particular, Freud came to the conclusion that, for example, hatred towards some object can also unite individuals, like positive feelings, and envy can act as a source of ideas of equality and other pseudo-humanistic ideals.

Popular psychological encyclopedia. - M.: Eksmo. S.S. Stepanov. 2005 .

Crowd

In addition to the obvious definition (large gathering of people), the term has a special meaning in the study of youth. Here he refers to a large, loosely organized group that can give the adolescent a sense of identity based on the apereotype of the group before he has developed a sense of his own ideation.

Psychology. AND I. Dictionary-reference book / Per. from English. K. S. Tkachenko. - M.: FAIR-PRESS. Mike Cordwell. 2000 .

See what "crowd" is in other dictionaries:

Crowd- in China, the Crowd (other Greek ... Wikipedia

crowd- n., f., use. very often Morphology: (no) what? crowds, why? crowd, (see) what? crowd what? crowd, about what? about the crowd; pl. What? crowds, (no) what? crowds, why? crowds, (see) what? crowds, what? crowds about what? about crowds 1. A crowd is a large ... Dictionary of Dmitriev