The document discusses crowd behavior and different types of crowds, including casual crowds, conventional crowds, expressive crowds, and acting crowds, noting that crowds can turn into mobs when engaging in destructive behavior. It explores why people may act differently in crowds than individually and provides examples of crowd types like festival crowds and angry mobs engaging in riots. Theories from Freud and others are mentioned regarding how individual thoughts blend in crowds and influence crowd behavior.

1. Crowd Behavior
Dr. Purshottam
Assistant Professor (PT)
Department of Social Work
KUK

2. Crowd Behavior
• Crowd behavior is the behavior that is
conducted by individuals who gather in
a crowd, while a crowd is defined as a
gathering of people who share a
purpose.
• Why do people act differently in
crowds than they do individually?

3. Conti..
• In everyday life, the word crowd is used to indicate a
range of situations that involve an assembly of persons.
For example a crowd at a festival, or a crowd on the
internet to buy tickets for a concert .
• “A crowd is a temporary gathering of individuals who
share a common focus of interest” (Forsyth, 2006).
• For Reicher (2001) on the other hand, a crowd is only a
crowd when “individuals share a social identity”
• Regardless of the differences in the core of these
definitions, they all share the notion of a number of
people in the same place at the same time, i.e. a
gathering (Lofland, 1985).

4. Conti..
• Many people know or think they know
how they would behave in a difficult
circumstance or situation. But, would you
really know how you would behave in a
crowd?
• When we are in crowd, we seem to act like
sheep, our ‘normal’ behavior doesn’t
come into play we just follow what the
majority of the crowd are doing.

5. Conti..
• Sigmund Freud had a theory on crowd behavior.
He suggested that, ‘when a person is in a crowd
they act differently to when a person would be
thinking individually.
• The thoughts of the crowd would start to blend
and form a new way of thinking and this there
for would lead the crowd. Each member’s
enthusiasm would be increased as a result, and
one becomes less aware of the true nature of
one’s actions.’

6. Crowd Types
There are four different types of crowds
• Casual Crowd: a casual crowd is collection of
people who happen to be in the same place at the
same time. The people in this type of crowd have
no real common bond, long term purpose, or
identity, Not familiar with each other. Eg: gathering
of people who are waiting to cross the street, for
metro….
• Conventional Crowd: this crowd is starting to form
a circle around the man on the platform. They have
decided that this is the appropriate action to take.
Eg: holi crowd, festival crowd..

7. Conti..
• Expressive Crowds: Expressive crowds form
around an event that has an emotional appeal.
It seems the man on the platform is talking
about the recent tax hike that the city council
approved.
• Acting Crowd: An acting crowd refers to a
crowd where the members are actively and
enthusiastically involved in doing something
that is directly related to their goal. This crowd
is now chanting loudly, 'Lower our taxes now!'

8. The Mob
• When an acting crowd starts to engage in destructive
and sometimes violent behavior, they become a mob.
• A mob is a crowd that is easily persuaded to take
aggressive or violent action in order to gain attention or
solve their problem.
• Mobs are dangerous because they often lead to behavior
that an individual would not normally engage in and
cause a lot of damage to physical property and others. It
looks like this crowd has turned into an angry mob!
• Another example of a famous mob is when Boston beat
Vancouver in the 2011 Stanley Cup championship. The
disappointed fans turned on the city and lit cars on fire,
busted storefront windows, and caused a lot of
destruction. Jaat Andolan, Nirbhaya Kaand….

9. Active Crowd or Mob
• People gathering in a musical function is a
passive crowd. But, this passive crowd can turn
to an active crowd or mob at any moment.
When the hall is very small and a large number
of persons have turned up to attend the
musical show, there is enough disturbance due
to want of space and so it turns to a mob
where people start throwing chairs, tables at
other audiences, creating utter confusion and
there is a lot of emotional reaction.

10. Audience:
• An audience is defined as an institutionalized form of
crowd. It is a passive crowd. Sometimes some lectures by
eminent personalities are arranged and announced. So
people gather together to hear the lectures. There is also
face to face and shoulder to shoulder contact.
• In an audience there is a definite and specific purpose in
view. The purpose here is that people want to listen to a
particular lecture. It meets at a predetermined time and
place. But this is not found in a crowd. Though in an
audience interaction takes place between different
members such interaction is different from the
interaction taking place in an active crowd.