Collective Behavior

Voluntary activity

Often spontaneous

Goal oriented

By a large number of people typically violating dominant norms and values

Difference of Collective Behavior from Social Group

Social Groups

1.Social groups engage in direct and frequent interactions

2. People in social group have common identity that derives from their membership

3. Social groups are governed by a set of norms defining conventional behaviors

Collective Behavior

1. Collectivities are usually temporary and in some cases face to face interaction does not occur

2. Members do not usually feel this sense of belongingness

3. Norms guiding behaviors are weak because they are newly emerging and often unconventional developing in response to uncertainty, strain or threat.

Two Types of Collectivities

Localized collectivity

People who are in close physical proximity to one another act together

Dispersed Collectivity

The actions of people who are not in close physical proximity nevertheless affect one another.

The activity of dispersed collectivity is sometimes referred to mass behavior because it involves large number of people who are spread our geographically even through out the world but engaged in basically the same behavior or concerned with the same phenomenon

Types of Localized collectivity

Crowds

1

Mobs and riots

Panics and hysteria

Types of Dispersed Collectivity

Rumors and Gossips

Public Opinions

Fashions and Fads

Crowd

A temporary gathering of people with a common focal point who influence one another .

The size of crowd is sometimes a source of pride

The size of crowd can be a cause for concern, especially among social control agents.

Main Types of Crowds

Casual Crowd – Forms spontaneously around a specific incident, but people in the gathering engage in a little, if any , interaction with one another

Conventional crowd- collects for a specific event, but their gathering is planned, not spontaneous. Conventional crowd abides by the norms that govern such occasions.

Expressive crowd- gathers for an event that is highly emotional or exciting. It is the expected emotional charge or promised excitement that draws the people to the gathering.

Acting crowd - Is emotion charged and forms spontaneously for one specific purpose. The emotion that characterizes the acting crowd is more intense than the emotion of an expressive crowd, so acting crowds have the greatest likelihood of being unmanageable.

Mobs

If an acting crowd becomes violent it can turn into a mob, an intensely emotional crowd set on doing violence to specific others or property.

Mobs are relatively short-lived because their intense emotion is difficult to sustain

A mob does not disperse until it has at least partially achieved its goal or agents of social control prevent it from achieving its goals.

2

Riot

Is another intensely emotional crowd, but its violent behavior is not purposely directed like that of a mob

Riot erupts when a triggering incident ignites a crowd’s emotion and they lash out in frenzied, seemingly unfocused violence and destructions.

Sometimes riots stem from longstanding, but repressed anger

Riot can also erupt during celebrations

Panics and Hysteria

Panic is a feeling of overwhelming fear or terror, that can lead to impulsive actions that put people in greater danger

Panic is the collective behavior that occurs when people who are confronted with a crisis or serious threat respond irrationally and actually worsen their situations

Another form of collective behavior that involves fear and irrational behavior

In hysteria, the behavior is usually a response to an imagined event or a real event that has been misinterpreted or distorted.

Rumors and Gossips

Rumor is a collective behavior engaged in both localized and dispersed collectivities.

These are information transmitted among people, usually informally and from unconfirmed sources. It may be true or false, but typically as it spreads, it becomes a little of both because in telling and in retelling, distortions, omissions, and embellishments frequently occur.

Gossip is a rumor about individuals’ personal lives rather than an issue or event.

Gossip is spread by a small group of people personally associated with the individual they’re gossiping about

3

Public Opinion

Consist of the attitudes expressed by members of the society, or those selected to represent them.

When we speak about the “public” we must keep in mind that there is no single public but many publics. These publics differ in terms of sex, race, ethnicity, social class, age, sexual orientation and a host of other factors.

Public Opinion is rarely, if ever, unified

It changes over time

Fashions

Refers to currently favored styles of appearance or behaviors.

Are expressions of people’s contradictory needs to be unique on the one hand, but to fit in with the group on the other. In other words, by adopting the latest fashions, one is not just a trendsetter, but part of a group of trendsetters.

Fashions do not just appear spontaneously. Many fashions are carefully developed and marketed.

It is often very expensive which is why historically, trendsetters have been members of the upper class

Fashions are a form of collective behavior unique to economically developed societies.

Fads

Is more temporary than fashion and at least mildly unconventional.

Fads have tremendous mass appeal and catch on very quickly, but they tend to disappear just as fast.

Fads are also unique to high income industrial societies.

Theories of Collective Behavior

Contagion Theory

4

Convergence Theory

Emergent – Norm Theory

Contagion Theory

Emphasizes the emotional nature of collective behavior

Originally developed by social psychologist Gustave Le Bon and focused primarily on crowds, including mobs and riots though it could also be applied to panics and outbreaks of hysterias.

Le Bon argued that when people congregate in large numbers, a “collective mind” emerges that releases them from inhibitions and encourages them to behave irrationally.

People in crowds and other forms of collective behavior behave more like a herd of animals than rational human beings.

Convergence Theory

It holds that people who think basically the same way, or share the same attributes, come together or converge in collectivities.

Collective behavior is simply a way for likeminded people to express their common attitudes and beliefs. Thus, collective behavior is not irrational at all; it makes sense in light of the sentiments of the people engaged in it.

Emergent – Norm Theory

Sociologist Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian draw on the principle of symbolic interactionism to explain collective behavior. Their perspective known as emergence-norm theory maintains that although collective behavior often appears irrational, it is actually governed by norms just like other forms of social interactions. The difference is that the norms emerge as the behavior unfolds.

The norms that emerge are product of the collectivity’s definition of the situation which of course may change as the interactions continues.

5

Social Movements

Is an issue-oriented group specifically organized to bring about or prevent social change through collective actions.

It is considered a special type of collective behavior because they differ in important ways from the other types.

Types of Social Movements

Reform Movement- tries to bring about limited social change by working within the existing system.

Usually target policy makers and the courts, with the purpose of influencing legislations.

Reform Movements also invest considerable energy in education to raise awareness of their concerns and to persuade others to adopt their positions

Revolutionary Movements- The limits of reform movements lead some members to use drastic measures to bring about sweeping social change.

Revolutionary movement seeks to replace the existing systems with a fundamentally different one.

Members of the revolutionary movements work outside the system to cause change, using radical and often illegal tactics. Sometimes these movements resort to violence to achieve their goals

Religious Movements – also sometimes referred to as redemptive movements, focuses more on changing individuals than social systems, but it nevertheless seeks profound change deriving from unconventional spiritual or supernatural beliefs.

Members of religious movements sometimes live apart from non members and devote their lives to the cause.

6