Crowd and Collective Behaviour

Crowds can help as well as harm

A crowd brings people together, but being surrounded by others does not produce one inevitable kind of behaviour. Collective behaviour is behaviour shared by people acting as part of a group or crowd.

Prosocial behaviour is intended to help or benefit others. For example, people taking part in a charity event may cooperate to raise money for others. Antisocial behaviour harms people or damages their property: examples include football fans rioting after a match and a group bullying another child. A crowd can also gather peacefully without harming anyone; simply being in a crowd is not evidence of antisocial behaviour.

Psychologists distinguish between social factors, which arise from the situation, and dispositional factors, which are characteristics of the individual. The first help explain why someone might behave differently in a crowd; the second help explain why people in the same crowd do not all behave alike.

Social loafing: doing less when effort is shared

Social loafing occurs when someone puts less individual effort into a shared task than they would into the same task alone. Imagine a tug-of-war team. A person may pull less hard because they expect the other team members to make up for their reduced effort.

Several beliefs can encourage loafing. Someone may think their contribution will make little difference, assume that others will do the work, or reduce their effort because they do not want to work harder than everyone else. When the group's overall performance is visible but each person's contribution is difficult to identify, reduced effort can go unnoticed.

Ringelmann's rope-pulling research found that individual effort decreased as team size increased. This illustrates an important distinction: a larger team can produce more total effort while each member contributes less. However, poorer group performance can also arise from difficulty coordinating people's actions, so a fall in performance does not by itself prove reduced motivation.

Social loafing can undermine a prosocial activity. A group may be working towards a helpful goal, but that does not mean every member contributes equally. Making individual contributions identifiable can increase effort because people know their own work will be noticed.

Deindividuation: feeling less identifiable and responsible

Deindividuation involves reduced awareness of oneself as a separate individual and a reduced sense of personal responsibility. In a crowd, a person may feel anonymous: less likely to be recognised or held accountable for what they do.

Masks, darkness and clothing that makes people look alike can increase anonymity. Someone who would normally avoid damaging property might join other people doing so because they feel hidden within the crowd. Reduced concern about individual responsibility can weaken the restraints that normally guide their behaviour, making it easier to follow the group.

This differs from social loafing. Loafing concerns how much effort someone contributes to a task; deindividuation concerns their sense of individuality and responsibility. A person joining a riot may be very active rather than putting in less effort.

Deindividuation does not necessarily lead to aggression. The expectations associated with a group matter too. For example, a nurse's uniform is associated with helping and caring, rather than harming others. An explanation that assumes losing individuality always produces antisocial behaviour therefore cannot explain the full range of group behaviour.

Culture: what the group expects

Culture consists of shared beliefs, values, norms and practices learned within a social group or society. Norms are expectations about acceptable behaviour. These expectations can affect whether cooperation, individual achievement or loyalty to the group is especially valued.

An individualistic culture places greater emphasis on independence, personal goals and individual achievement. A collectivist culture places greater emphasis on interdependence, cooperation and duties towards the group. The USA is often described as relatively individualistic and China as relatively collectivist, but these are broad tendencies rather than descriptions of every person.

Social loafing may be less likely where people strongly value contributing to the group. They may see doing their share as an obligation even when no one is judging their individual performance. Earley's research found that American participants made more effort when judged individually, whereas Chinese participants put in similar effort whether or not they were judged individually. This supports a connection between cultural values and effort in groups.

However, countries contain many different communities and individuals. Someone's family, religious group or other social groups may have different expectations. National culture alone is therefore too simple a basis for predicting how a particular person will behave.

Personality: different people in the same crowd

Personality refers to relatively enduring characteristics that influence how someone typically thinks, feels and behaves. One person may become excitable in a crowd while another becomes quiet. Dispositional explanations recognise these individual differences.

One relevant characteristic is locus of control. People with a more internal locus of control believe that their own actions influence outcomes. They are more likely to accept personal responsibility and may be more willing to resist group pressure. People with a more external locus of control believe that outcomes depend more on outside forces, such as other people or circumstances. They may be more likely to follow the group rather than see themselves as able to choose a different action.

These are tendencies, not fixed rules. Personality helps explain differences between people, but a person's behaviour also depends on the crowd and the situation they encounter.

Morality: deciding whether to join in

Morality means an individual's beliefs about right and wrong. Strong moral convictions can help someone resist a crowd when the group's actions conflict with those convictions.

Suppose a group at a party starts stealing drinks from the host's cupboard. One person joins in to gain the group's approval, while another refuses because they believe taking someone else's property is wrong. The refusal illustrates how morality can counter group pressure. Accepting personal responsibility could also help the person resist, but morality and locus of control are not the same thing: one concerns right and wrong, the other concerns control over outcomes.

Moral beliefs do not always agree with the law or wider society. An activist might believe damaging an animal-testing laboratory is morally justified, even though it involves damaging property. Strong convictions can therefore motivate joining a crowd as well as resisting it; they do not automatically produce prosocial behaviour.

Bringing the explanations together

Social explanations help account for changes in behaviour when people enter crowds. Dispositional explanations help account for different responses within the same crowd. Both are useful: anonymity may encourage someone to follow a group, while their moral convictions may lead them to refuse.

There are limits to the evidence. When morality is measured through questionnaires, people may report how they think they should behave rather than how they actually would behave under pressure. Similarly, reduced group effort is not inevitable in every task or culture.

The most reasonable conclusion is that collective behaviour reflects both the social situation and individual characteristics. No single factor guarantees helping, reduced effort or aggression.