Social Psycholory Edward Ross Cane Ridge
CLICK: THE KENTUCKY REVIVAL ST. VITUS DANCE.
MEAD PROJECT
INVENTORY: SOURCE
CHAPTER 3
THE CROWD
THE strength of multiplied suggestion is at its maximum
when the individual is in the midst of a throng, helpless
to
control his position or movements. The same pressure on
the body that prevents voluntary movement conveys promptly to
him all the electrifying swayings and tremors that
betray the emotions of the mass. This squeeze of the crowd tends
to depress the self-sense. Says James: [1]
Individuality and voluntary movement
"In a sense, then. . . . the 'Self of selves,' when carefully
examined, is found to consist mainly of the collection of these
peculiar motions in the head and between the head and
the throat. I do not for a moment say that this is all
it consists of . . . but I feel quite sure that these cephalic
motions are the portions of my innermost activity of which I am
most distinctly aware.
If the dim portions which I cannot yet define should prove to
be like unto these distinct portions in me, and I like other
men, it would follow that our entire feeling of spiritual
activity, or what commonly passes by that name, is
really a feeling of bodily activities, whose exact
nature is by most men overlooked.
Sidis [2] goes further in declaring: "If anything gives us a
strong sense of our individuality, it is surely our voluntary
movements.
We may say that the individual self (44) grows
and expands with the increase of variety and intensity
of its voluntary activity;
and conversely, the life of the individual self sinks,
shrinks with the decrease of variety and intensity of
voluntary movements." Often a furious naughty child will
suddenly become meek and obedient after being held a moment as
in a vise. On the playground a saucy boy will abruptly
surrender and "take it back" when held firmly on the ground
without power to move hand or foot. The cause is not fear, but
deflation of the ego.
Here, perhaps, is the reason why individuality is so wilted
in a dense throng, and why persons of a highly
developed but somewhat fragile personality have a
horror of getting nipped in a crowd. It is said that in
the French theatre of the old regime the standing portion of the
audience (pit) was always more emotional and violent in its
demonstrations than the sitting portion (parquet), and that the
providing of seats for the pit spectators greatly quieted their
demeanor. The experienced orator knows that a standing open-air
crowd is very different in response from a seated indoor
audience, and changes his style accordingly.
Nevertheless, a holiday jam in a railroad station or at a
race-course is no mob.
A crowd self will not arise unless there is an orientation
of attention, expectancy, a narrowing of the
field of consciousness that excludes disturbing
impressions.
When a crowd is entering the critical state, we hear of "strained
attention," "Sea of upturned faces," "bated breath," "ominous
hush," "a silence such that you can hear a fly buzz or a pin
drop." The following newspaper account [3] of a Paderewski
matine shows the rule of expectancy and inhibition:
(45)" There is a chatter, a rustling of programmes, a waving of
fans, a nodding of feathers, a general air of expectancy, and
the lights are lowered. A hush. All eyes are turned to a small
door leading on to the stage; it is opened. Paderewski enters. .
. . A storm of applause greets him, . . . but after it comes a tremulous
hush and a prolonged sigh. . . . created by the long,
deep inhalation of upward of three thousand women. . . .
Paderewski is at the piano. . . . Thousands of eyes watch every
commonplace
movement [of his] through opera-glasses with an intensity
painful to observe. He the idol, they the idolaters.
. . . Toward the end of the performance the most decorous women
seem to abandon themselves to the influence. . . . There are
sighs, sobs, the tight clinching of the palms, the bowing of the
head. Fervid exclamations: 'He is my master 1' are heard in the
feminine mob."
An excited throng easily turns mob because excitement weakens
the reasoning power and predisposes to suggestions
in line with the master emotion. Thus, frightened
persons are peculiarly susceptible to warnings, angry persons to
denunciations, expectant persons to promises, anxious persons to
rumors. An agitated gathering is tinder, and the throngs that
form in times of public tension are very liable to become mobs.
Excitement
Elements in the crowd that profit by the heightened
suggestibility
Although crowding, fixation of attention, and excitement
exalt suggestibility, all members of the crowd do not
experience this in the same degree. There are at least two
descriptions of people who, in the give-and-take of the throng,
are more likely to impose suggestions than to accept them.
The intelligent are able to criticise and appraise
the suggestions that impinge upon them. They are quick to
react if a suggestion clashes with their in-(46) -terests or
their convictions, whereas the ignorant are a the mercy of
the leader or the claque, and may be stampeded into a
course of action quite at variance with their real desires.
The fanatical and impassioned are little
responsive to impressions from without, because of their
inner tension. Being determined from within, they emit powerful
suggestions, but are hard to influence.
There is thus a tendency for the warped and inflamed
members to impart their passion to the rest and to sweep along
with them the neutral and indifferent. This is why, as
the crowd comes under the hypnotic spell, the extremists
gain the upper hand of the moderates
Feelings, having more means of vivid expression, run through
the crowd more readily than ideas. Masked by their
anonymity,
people feel free to give rein to the expression of their
feelings.
To be heard, one does not speak; one shouts.
To be seen, one does not simply show one's self; one
gesticulates.
Boisterous laughter, frenzied objurgations, frantic
cheers, are needed to express the merriment or wrath
or enthusiasm of the crowd.
Such exaggerated signs of emotion cannot but produce in suggestible
beholders exaggerated states of mind. The mental
temperature rises, so that what seemed hot now seems lukewarm,
what felt tepid now feels cold. The intensifying of the
feelings in consequence of reciprocal suggestion will be most
rapid when the crowd meets under agitating circumstances. In
this case the unbridled manifestation of feeling prevails from
the first, and the psychic fermentation proceeds at a
great rate.
Emotionalism of the crowd
To the degree that feeling is intensified, reason is
paralyzed. In general, strong emotion inhibits the
intellectual processes. In a sudden crisis we expect the
sane act
Arrest of thought in the crowd
(47) from the man who is " cool," who has not " lost his head."
Now, the very hurly-burly of the crowd tends to distraction.
Then, the high pitch of feeling to which the crowd gradually
works up checks thinking and results in a temporary
imbecility. There is no question that, taken herdwise,
people are less sane and sensible than they are dispersed.
In a real deliberative assembly there is a possibility
that the best thought, the soundest opinion, the shrewdest plan
advanced from any quarter will prevail. Where there is cool
discussion and leisurely reflection, ideas
struggle with one another, and the fittest are accepted by all.
In the fugitive, structureless crowd, however, there can
be
no fruitful debate. Under a wise leader the crowd may act
sagaciously. But there is no guarantee that the master of the
crowd shall be wiser than his followers. The man of biggest
voice or wildest language, the aggressive person
who first leaps upon a table, raises aloft a symbol, or utters a
catching phrase, is likely to become the bell-wether.
The crowd leader
Under these conditions - heightened suggestibility and emotion,
arrested thinking -three things will happen when an
impulse, whether emanating from a spectacle, an event, or a
leader, runs through the crowd.
The psychic process in the crowd
I. Extension. -By sheer contagion it extends to unsympathetic
persons. Thus by-standing scoffers have been drawn into a
revival maelstrom,[4] law-abiding persons (48) have been sucked
into the vortex of a brutal lynching bee, hard-headed
workingmen with dependent families have been stampeded into a
sympathetic strike. In his story "On the City Wall" Kipling
introduces a young native just back to Madras from Oxford. He is
a typical product of Western culture, polished, sceptical,
utterly aloof from his people, and contemptuous of the foolish
religious riots between Hindu and Mohammedan fanatics.
He shows us this same scoffer a few hours later fighting
furiously in the thick of the riot on behalf of his Mohammedan
coreligionists for whose faith he cares not a straw. Sidis [5]
cites an incident of the riots of certain military colonists in
Russia in 1831: "While Sokolov was fighting hard for his life, I
saw a corporal lying on the piazza and crying bitterly. On my
question, 'Why do you cry?' he pointed in the direction of the
mob and exclaimed, 'Oh, they do not kill a commander, but a
father!' I told him that instead of it he should rather go to
Sokolov's aid. He rose at once and ran to the help of his
commander. A little later when I came with a few soldiers to
Sokolov's help, I found the same corporal striking Sokolov with
a club. 'Wretch, what are you (49) doing? Have you not
told me he was to you like a father?' To which he answered, 'It
is such a time, your honor; all the people strike him; why
should I keep quiet?"' An English prison matron confesses that
sometimes when she hears the women under her care "break out"
and commence smashing and destroying everything they can get
hold of, it is as much as she can do to restrain herself from
joining in.
2. Intensification. -Each individual impressed feels
more intensely the moment he perceives that so many
others share his feeling. Hence, a secondary wave,
a reverberation, runs through the crowd that is becoming
aware of itself.
3. Predisposition. - The perceived unison begets
a sympathy that makes like response easier the next time.
Since each fulfilled suggestion increases the emotion of the
mob in volume and pitch, the passing of the crowd into the mob
is more or less gradual. A mob is a formation that takes time.
The revivalist expects little response during his first
half-hour. No matter how brilliant his work in the earlier
scenes, an actor will not elict the wildest demonstrations from
his audience until the closing acts.
There are always several steps in the decline of an orderly
crowd into a riotous mob. It is not a single blow, but a
quick succession of shocks, that throws an army into
a panic.
In all these cases, with the growing fascination of the
mass for the individual, his consciousness contracts
to the pin-point of the immediate moment, and the volume
of suggestion needed to start an impulse on its conquering
career becomes less and less. He becomes automatic, in
a way unconscious. The end is a tranced impressionable
condition akin to hypnosis.
THE KENTUCKY REVIVAL ST. VITUS DANCE. Also known as St. Vitus's dance, between the
eleventh and seventeenth centuries, manias swept across
Europe as tens of thousands of people participated in frenzied public orgies and wild dances lasting for days and
sometimes weeks. It is little wonder why psychiatrists and
medical historians classify such episodes as group mental disorder affecting those overwhelmed by the
stresses of the period. During outbreaks many immodestly tore off
their clothing and pranced naked through the streets. Some
screamed and beckoned to be tossed into the air; others danced furiously in
what observers described as strange, colorful attire. A few
reportedly laughed or weeped to the point of death.
Women howled and made obscene gestures
while others squealed like animals. Some rolled themselves in
the dirt or relished being struck on the soles of their
feet.
(50) There is no assignable limit to the mastery of the crowd
self over the selves of the members. McMaster [6] thus describes
a famous Kentucky revival, 1799-1800 " One of the brothers was
irresistibly impelled to speak.... The words which then fell
from his lips roused the people before him 'to a pungent sense
of sin.' Again and again the woman shouted, and would
not be silent.
He started to go to her. The crowd begged him to turn back.
Something within him urged him on, and he went through the house
shouting and exhorting and praising God. In a moment the floor,
to use his own words, 'was covered with the slain.'
Their cries for mercy were terrible to hear. Some found
forgiveness, but many went away 'spiritually wounded'
and suffering unutterable agony of soul. Nothing could
allay the excitement. Every settlement along the Green River and
the Cumberland was full of religious fervor. Men fitted their
wagons with beds and provisions, and travelled fifty miles to
camp upon the ground and hear him preach. The idea was new;
hundreds adopted it, and camp-meetings began.
"At no time was the 'falling exercise' so prevalent as at night.
Nothing was then wanting that could strike terror into minds
weak, timid, and harassed. The red glare of the
camp-fires reflected from hundreds of tents and wagons; the
dense blackness of the flickering shadows, the darkness
of the surrounding forest, made still more terrible by the groans
and screams of the 'spiritually wounded,' who had fled
to it for comfort; the entreaty of the preachers; the sobs and
shrieks of the downcast still walking through the dark valley of
the Shadow of Death; the shouts and songs of praise of
the happy ones (51) who had crossed the Delectable Mountains,
had gone on through the fogs of the Enchanted Ground,
and entered the Land of Beulah, were too much for those
over whose minds and bodies lively imaginations held full sway.
The heart swelled, the nerves gave way, the hands and
feet grew cold, and, motionless and speechless, they fell
headlong to the ground. In a moment crowds gathered about them
to pray and shout. Some lay still as death. Some passed
through frightful twitchings of face and limb. At Cabin
Creek so many fell that, lest the multitude should tread
on them, they were carried to the meeting-house and laid in
rows on the floor. At Cane Ridge the number was three
thousand."
"The excitement surpassed anything that had been known. Men who
came to scoff remained to preach. All day and all night the
crowd swarmed to and fro from preacher to preacher, singing,
shouting, laughing, now rushing off to listen to some new
exhorter who had climbed upon a stump, now gathering around some
unfortunate who, in their peculiar language, was 'spiritually
slain.' Soon men and women fell in such numbers that it became
impossible to move about without trampling them, and they were
hurried to the meeting-house. At no time was the floor less than
half covered. Some lay quiet, unable to move or speak. Some
talked, but could not move. Some beat the floor with their
heels. Some, shrieking in agony, bounded about, it is said, like
a live fish out of water. Many lay down and rolled over and over
for hours at a time. Others rushed wildly over the stumps and
benches, and then plunged, shouting Lost! Lost! into the forest.
"As the meetings grew more and more frequent, this
(52) nervous excitement assumed new and more terrible forms.
One was known as jerking; another, as the barking
exercise; a third, as the Holy Laugh. 'The jerks' began
in the head and spread rapidly to the feet. The head would be
thrown from side to side so swiftly that the features would be
blotted out and the hair made to snap. When the body was
affected, the sufferer was hurled over hindrances that came in
his way, and finally dashed on the ground to bounce about like a
ball. At campmeetings in the far South, saplings were cut off
breasthigh and left 'for the people to jerk by.' One who visited
such a camp-ground declares that about the roots of from fifty
to one hundred saplings the earth was kicked up 'as by a horse
stamping flies."'
"From the nerves and muscles the disorder passed to the mind.
Men dreamed dreams and saw visions, nay, fancied
themselves dogs, went down on all fours, and barked till
they grew hoarse. It was no uncommon sight to behold numbers of
them gathered about a tree, barking, yelping, 'treeing the
devil.'
Two years later, when much of the excitement of the great
revival had gone down, falling and jerking gave way to hysterics.
During the most earnest preaching and exhorting,
even sincere professors of religion would, on a sudden, burst
into loud laughter; others, unable to resist, would
follow, and soon the assembled multitude would join in. This was
the 'Holy Laugh,' and became, after 1803, a recognized part of
worship."
Psychology of the revival
Coe[7] thus accounts for the extraordinary phenomena often
manifested in religious assemblies. "The striking psychic
manifestations which reach their climax among
(53) us in emotional revivals, camp-meetings, and negro
services have a direct relation to certain states of an essentially
hypnotic and hallucinatory kind. In various forms such
states have appeared and reappeared throughout the history of
religion. Examples of what is here referred to are found in the
sacred frenzy of the Bacchantes, the trance of the Sibyls,
the ecstasy of the Neo-Platonists, the enlightenment
that came to Gautama Buddha under the sacred Bo-tree, the
visions of the canonized saints, the absorption into God
experienced by various mystics, and the religious epidemics
of the Middle Ages, such as tarantism and St.
Vitus's dance. All these and a multitude of similar
phenomena were produced by processes easily recognized by any
modern psychologist as automatic and suggestive.
Similarly, the phenomenon in Methodist history known as
the 'power' was induced by hypnotic processes now
well understood,
though hidden until long after the days of the Wesleys."
"The explanation of the 'power' and similar outbreaks
is simple. Under the pressure of religious excitement
there occurs a sporadic case of hallucination, or of motor
automatism, or of auto-hypnotism, taking the
form of trance, visions, voices, or catalepsy.
The onlookers naturally conceive a more or less distressing
fear lest the mysterious power attack their own
persons.
Fear acts as a suggestion, and the more suggestible soon
realize their expectations In accordance with the law
of suggestion, every new case adds power to the real
cause and presently the conditions are right for an epidemic
of such experiences."
"Suggestion works in proportion as it secures a monopoly
of attention. Let us ask what, according to this law,
will happen to passably suggestible persons who submit them-
(54) -selves to certain well-known revival practices.
Let us suppose that the notion of a striking transformation has
been held before the subject's mind for days, weeks, or even
years; let us suppose that the subject has finally been induced
to go to the penitent form; here, we will suppose, prayers full
of sympathy and emotional earnestness are offered for him, and
that everything has been so arranged as to produce a climax
in which he will finally believe that the connection between
himself and God is now accomplished.
The leader says to him: 'Do you now believe? Then you are
saved.' Is it not evident that this whole process favors the
production of a profound emotional transformation directly
through suggestion?"
The crowd cannot last
The crowd self is ephemeral. Not for long can it
supersede the individual self. The straining of
attention leads to fatigue, lessened power of response to
further suggestions. Then, stimuli from within help to break the
spell. Sensations of hunger, cold, and weariness become so
insistent as to distract the attention. Presently the bond
dissolves, and the crowd scatters. Mobs have been broken
up by a downpour of rain or an alarm of fire. The little
Corsican disperses a turbulent crowd with grape; the humane
philosopher turns a fire hose on it. It is easy to tell whether
a riot is a collective aberration or a work of intent by
noticing whether the crowd returns the next day. If it does,
there is more behind it than mass psychology.
The crowd is unstable
Whether its members be saints or knaves, sages or hodmen, the self
of the crowd exhibits certain characteristics. It is
unstable, as the word "mob" (mobile) indicates. Its hero
one moment may be its victim the next. It may pass abruptly from
reckless courage to
(55) dastard fear. Little things turn its purpose. Taine [8]
tells of a street mob bent on hanging a supposed monopolizer. By
some words uttered on his behalf it was brought to embrace him,
drink with him, and make him join them in a mad dance about
a liberty pole. At the close of the Paris Commune, a
crowd, irritated by the defiant air of one of the communist
women, howls, " Death to her! " An old gentleman cries, " No
cruelty, after all it is a woman ! " In a moment the wrath of
the- crowd is turned on him. "He is a communist, an incendiary!"
But in this critical moment the shrill voice of a gamin is
heard, "Don't hurt him, she's his girl!" Thereupon a great burst
of laughter about the old gentleman, and he is saved.[9]
The crowd is credulous, irrational, and simple minded
The crowd self is credulous. The "holding-off "
atttitude is a kind of inhibition, for we tend to believe what
we hear reiterated with fire. Now, in a psychological a crowd,
individuals are "out of themselves." For them the past does not
exist. Rational analysis and test are out of the question. The
faculties we doubt with are asleep. Again, the crowd self is
irrational. It cannot dissect, weigh, and compare, cannot apply
remembered teachings. Under the sway of vivid impressions
through eye or car the man in the crowd cannot relate his
present problem to his previous experiences. His actions are
near to reflexes. The crowd self shows simplicity. Like children
and savages, it cannot embrace in a single judgment several
factors and details. It sees only one aspect of a thing at a
time.[10] It may face about completely when
(56) some other aspect is thrown into the focus of its
attention. Unable to think things in their actual complexity,
the crowd trusts to impressions or prejudices, if it is
heterogeneous; to glittering generalities or abstract principles
if it is a political or legislative assembly.
The crowd lacks virtue
Finally, the crowd self is immoral. To be sure, it is
capable of courage and generosity, even of honesty. The
perpetrators of the September massacres in the French Revolution
faithfully turned in the money and valuables found on their
victims, while the mob that invaded the Tuileries in 1848
refrained from carrying away any of the priceless objects they
saw. The crowd is emotional, and some of its emotions may be
moral. On the whole, however, the virtues grow on an
intellectual stalk. Right conduct is thought-out conduct.
Conscience is a way of thinking things. Now, thronging paralyzes
thought, and while the crowd may be sentimental and heroic, it
will lack the virtues born of self-control - veracity, prudence,
thrift, perseverance, respect for another's rights, obedience to
law.
The crowd is the lowest form of association
It is safe to conclude that amorphous, heterogeneous
gatherings are morally and intellectually below the average of
their members. This manner of coming together
deteriorates. The crowd may generate moral fervor, but it never
sheds light. If at times it has furthered progress, it is
because the mob serves as a battering-ram to raze some
mouldering, bat-infested institution and clean
(57) the ground for something better. This better will be the
creation of gifted individuals or of deliberative bodies, never
of anonymous crowds. It is easier for masses to agree on a Nay
than on a Yea. Hence crowds destroy despotisms, but never build
free states; abolish evils, but never found works of
beneficence. Essentially atavistic and sterile, the crowd ranks
as the lowest of the forms of human association.
How deliberative assemblies escape the crowd vortex
A free people is obliged to settle matters of common concern in
a deliberative assembly. But the big assembly skirts
ever the slippery incline that leads down to mob madness, and
guard-rails in the form of fixed modes of procedure are
necessary to save it a misstep. Its chief protection is the
Parliamentary Rules of Order, wrought out in the venerable House
of Commons and certainly not the least among England's gifts to
the world. The rules requiring that a meeting shall have a
chairman, that the chairman shall not take part in debate, that
no one shall speak without recognition, that the speaker shall
address the chair and not the assembly, that remarks shall
pertain to a pending motion, that personalities shall be taboo,
and that members shall not be referred to by name -what are they
but so many devices to keep the honey-tongued or brazen-throated
crowd leader from springing to the centre of the stage and
weaving his baleful spells ! The rules that the hearers be in
order, that they remain seated, that they forbear to interrupt,
that they patiently listen to all speakers regularly recognized,
and that their signs of approval or disapproval be decorous -are
not these so many guardrails to help the assembly get safely by
certain vertiginous moments?
Mob mind in city dwellers
(58) It has long been recognized that the behavior of city
populations under excitement shows the familiar
characteristics of the mob, quite apart from any thronging. Here
we get unanimity, impulsiveness, exaggeration of feeling,
excessive credulity, fickleness, inability to reason, and sudden
alternations of boldness and cowardice. Here, indeed, are the
chief counts in the indictment which historians have drawn
against the city democracies of old Greece and mediaeval Italy.
Bearing of mental intimacy on booms and panics
These faults are due in part to the nervous strain of great
cities. The bombardment of the senses by
innumerable impressions tends to produce neurasthenia,
the peculiar affliction of the city dweller. Moreover, in the
sheltered life of the city live many degenerates that
would be unsparingly eliminated by the sterner conditions of
existence in the country.
In the main, however, the behavior of city dwellers under
excitement can best be understood as the result of mental
contacts made possible by easy communication.
Even in the crowd, the main thing is the contact of minds.
Let this be given and the three consequences above pointed out
must follow.
An expectant or excited man learns that thousands of his
fellow-townsmen have been seized by a certain
strong feeling and meets with their expression of this
feeling.
Each of these townsmen learns how many others are feeling
as he does.
Each stage in the subsequent growth of this feeling in extent
and in intensity is perceived, and so fosters sympathy
and a will to "go along."
Will we not inevitably, by this series of interactions, get
that "out look which characterizes the human atom in the
mob?
The city facilitates inter-suggestion
Says Jones:[11] "Inasmuch as the prevailing economic (59)
system enforces intimate association in a sense
in which no previous system ever did, this class of influences
tending to vitiate the economic reasoning of those who are
subject to market influences may well demand serious attention.
Businesses are being increasingly concentrated in large
cities, and especially are those who control them being
closely compacted together in the business sections of great
cities.
It has been asserted that these conditions originate the
influences which breed crises, and the case of
Australia, where the population is unusually concentrated in
cities, has been cited as evidence.
'A large city is characterized by an intensity of internal
imitation in proportion to the density of population,
and a multiform multiplicity of the relations of its
inhabitants.
Thus there is an epidemic and contagious
character given not only to its diseases, but to its styles
and views.' The so-called 'booms' of American towns illustrate
in acute form the occasional economic effect of these
influences.
The power of mental contagion is increased by such facilities
for assemblage and communication as the railway, telegraph,
and telephone. It is obviously enhanced by the practice of
transacting business in industrial assemblages such as stock
and produce exchanges. Attention may be called to the fact
that in periods of unusual business success or depression,
this physical concentration of traders in large markets is
greatly increased."
Bearing of mental intimacy on booms and panics
But the propinquity of city people may be more than
counteracted by their mental and moral heterogeneity. Says
Professor Giddings: [12] " The increasing density of
Crowd phenomena in city and in country
60) modern populations is seemingly favorable to popular
tumult, which might easily become insurrection or revolution. In
the literature of political science there is perhaps no more
familiar assumption than the one which associates all the
dangers of the mob spirit with the democratic organization of
great cities." Yet " a systematic grouping of observations from
many part,,,; of the world would demonstrate that the phenomena
of lawless popular action, as in insurrections, lynchings, and
riotous outbreaks in connection with labor strikes, are, on the
whole, phenomena of rural rather than of urban population. There
have been scenes of wild violence in Paris and in London; there
have been draft and other riots in New York City; but the
collective violence in all the great cities of Europe and
America for two hundred years would not make a great showing by
comparison with the epidemics of emotion - accompanied by
dancing and other manias - that surged through rural communities
in connection with the great revival movements under the
Wesleyans, the later revivals of 1837 and 1857, the
insurrections like Shays's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion,
the Ku Klux Klan outrages, the Vigilance Committee activities,
the conflicts between Gentiles and Mormons, the White Cap
outrages, and the lynchings in our Western and Southern states.
Obstacles to impulsive cooperation among city dwellers
" The reason for this curious fact is undoubtedly to be found
in the restraining effect of ethnic and mental difference. The
rural community is relatively homogeneous. The 'neighbors' for
miles in every direction are nearly all of one blood. They are
practically of one economic condition. For the most part they
are of one religious confession or of two or three
confessions not very unlike
impulsive cooperation among city dwellers
(61) in creeds and practices. All are acquainted with one
another. An exciting event or suggestion that moves one will,
almost certainly, move the others. Emotion among them is highly
contagious. They respond to like stimuli because they are alike.
The city population is composite and differentiated. In a mixed
crowd of hundreds that gathers on the street no one man of them
all recognizes a dozen others. They are of all sorts and
conditions, the well-to-do and the poor, and often of many
nationalities. Danger arises only when discontent and
inflammatory suggestion find homogeneous material to work upon
in a quarter whose denizens are of one nationality and of the
same economic condition, and among whom may be found, here and
there, small gangs of toughs who are already disciplined in
associating for lawless purposes. Only an extraordinary
influence can combine the impulsive tendencies among unlike
classes, differing nationalities, unacquainted neighborhoods, in
one great outbreak. Such things have happened, and doubtless
will happen again; but the normal influence of heterogeneity and
differentiation in a population is unfavorable to collective
action."
SUMMARY
In the dense throng individuality wilts and droops.
A common orientation of attention and a state of excitement
predispose to the mob mood.
The heightened suggestibility of people under such conditions
exaggerates the influence of the fanatical and impassioned.
Crowd conditions facilitate the circulation of feelings, hinder
the circulation of ideas.
Under these conditions the dominant emotional note reaches an
extreme pitch.
(62)
In the crowd rational or accurate thinking is arrested.
Every impulse that traverses the crowd smooths the way for its
successor. The merging of many individual selves into a single
crowd self therefore takes time.
The crowd self is unstable, credulous, irrational,
and immoral.
The Rules of Order save the deliberative assembly from
degenerating into a crowd.
Show that each of these arts of the popular orator finds its
warrant in some psychological characteristic of the crowd. If
possible read Le Bon's " The Crowd," Bk. I, ch. III; Bk. II, ch.
II, sec. 1, ch. III.
I. At the outset seem to agree with it.
2. Vigorously affirm and reiterate with fire and passion.
3. Make each imagine you address him. By eye, voice, attitude,
and action rivet attention and keep the spell unbroken.
4. Cut out facts, statistics, valid proof, and evidence.
5. Never argue or follow out painstakingly the links of a
logical chain.
6. Use demonstration, ocular evidence, histrionism.
7. Use figures of speech, metaphors, emblems (flag, group
symbol, totem), and shibboleths (" family," " home," " the
Church," the Fathers," " Our Country," " our Cause," " the Right
").
8. Address passions (including, of course, cupidity), but not
rational interests.
ndnotes
1. "The Principles of Psychology," I, 301.
2. "The Psychology of Suggestion," 299.
3. See Sidis, "The Psychology of Suggestion," 301.
4. Davenport tells of a young man who happened to be standing
as a spectator on the fringe of a Southern camp-meeting of two
thousand people. "He had had no religious experience and at that
time did not wish any. The crowd was laboring under great
religious excitement, and reflex phenomena were abundantly in
evidence. Suddenly my friend found himself with his hands
pressed against his lungs, shouting, 'Hallelujah!' at the top of
his voice." In a Southern congregation brought to the revival
point by the preaching of Dr. Alexander, "the sympathetic wave
spread from the centre to the circumference, and the whole
audience was swayed like a forest in a mighty wind. Dr.
Alexander himself is on record as having found it necessary to
put forth a conscious effort of resistance in order to hold
himself steady in the violence of the storm, and he testified
that the old tobacco planters in the rear, who had not listened
to one word of the sermon, displayed tremulous emotion in every
muscle of their brawny faces, while the tears coursed down their
wrinkled cheeks ... . .. Primitive Traits in Religious
Revivals," 226, 227
#
# The Psychology of Suggestion," 305
# History of the People of the United States," II, 578-582.
# "The Spiritual Life," l41-143, 146.
"Revolution Fran # aise," II, 145
# Tarde, "Essais et m # langes sociologiques," 22.
# In Cincinnati, in 1884, a mob, outraged by the acquittal of a
brutal murderer, burned the Court House when balked of their
lynching purpose. Their idea was to rebuke tricky, dishonest
lawyers by destroying a building which had become a den of
corruption rather than a temple of justice. A moment's cool
reflection would have shown them that by burning the records of
a century regarding wills, marriages, property transfers,
mortgages, etc., they would produce enough litigation to fatten
the hated lawyers for a generation.
# "Economic Crises," 204-205.
# 'Forum, 35, PP. 251-252.
<a href="https://www.hitwebcounter.com"
target="_blank">
<img
src="https://hitwebcounter.com/counter/counter.php?page=8535613&style=0032&nbdigits=5&type=ip&initCount=0"
title="Free Counter" Alt="web counter" border="0"
/></a>