1. As we conduct our structured social life, we are guided by norms and values thatmake
our behavior patterned, recurrent and settled. However, sometimes, we encountered
situations were norms do not apply and this is what we called “Collective Behavior”.
For Zanden he defined collective behavior “refers to ways of thinking, feeling and acting
among a large number of people which are relatively spontaneous and unstructured”.
Relatively spontaneous means that the behavior is somewhat spontaneous but also
somewhat planned, while relatively unstructured means that the behavior is somewhat
organized and predictable but also somewhat unorganized and unpredictable. This
means that this is not organize behavior because it lacks of official from division of
labor, hierarchy of authority and establishrules, procedures, and it also lack of
institutionalized norms to govern behavior, that is why this is in contrast to organized
and institutional behavior which is regulated by established group norms and clearly
defined roles and positions. This number of people who act together is what we called
collectivity that violates dominant group-norms and values. In the Philippines, collective
behavior occurs in the forms of demonstrations, rumors, protest, riots, cults, religious
revival and even revolution. For instance, the impeachment of President Erap Estrada
wherein a large number of people voluntarily joined the protest at the EDSA shrine last
January 19, 2001. These people composed of students, youth, workers, peasants,
professionals, artist-urging Erap to resign his position from a president because he was
accuse that he allegedly received 400 million from jueteng and 130 million kickbacks
from the tobacco excise tax. From that, different people with different kind of behavior
showed their anger, hatred, disappointment nahindinaayonsa norms and values natin at
may posibilidadnamkaimpluwensyangibangtaonaandunsaprotestangiyon.
Kasihindilahatngtaonasumali dun is parehoyung purpose or yungmotibonila sometimes
kasiyung ay gumayalang or gaya-gaya, gusto langmagpasikat, mkitasatv or
mkipagdatesa bf/gf or gumalamkibondingsamgabarkada.
CONVERGENCE PERSPECTIVE- this approach holds that common forces within
them, such as similarity or commonality of aspirations, characteristics, social class,
income, education, interest and needs, motivate participants in a collective behavior.
Because of their individual characteristics, many people have a predisposition to
participates in certain types of activities. The participants were poor and working class
who felt that their status was threatens by the presence of successful person.
FOR EXAMPLE:
Emergent norm perspective-it states that collective behavior is not characterizeby
unanimity but by differences in expressions and emotions.
>this means thatonce individuals find themselves in a situation ungoverned by previously
established norms, they interact in small groups to develop new guidelines on how to behave. As

2. soon as any member of the group engages in any behavior, all other of the groups wait
to see what will happen if there are no negative reactions to the behavior, then they all
assume that the behavior is acceptable within the group.
The first condition is structural conduciveness, which describes when people are aware of the
problem and have the opportunity to gather, ideally in an open area. Structural strain, the second
condition, refers to people’s expectations about the situation at hand being unmet, causing tension
and strain. The next condition is the growth and spread of a generalized belief, wherein a problem is
clearly identified and attributed to a person or group.
Fourth, precipitating factors spur collective behavior; this is the emergence of a dramatic event. The
fifth condition is mobilization for action, when leaders emerge to direct a crowd to action. The final
condition relates to action by the agents. Called social control, itis the only way to end the collective
behavior episode (Smelser 1962).
Let us consider a hypothetical example of these conditions. In structure conduciveness (awareness
and opportunity), a group of students gathers on the campus quad. Structural strain emerges when
they feel stress concerning their high tuition costs. If the crowd decides that the latest tuition hike is
the fault of the Chancellor, and that she will lower tuition if they protest, then growth and spread of a
generalized belief has occurred. A precipitation factor arises when campus security appears to
disperse the crowd, using pepper spray to do so. When the student body president sits down and
passively resists attempts to stop the protest, this represents mobilization of action. Finally, when
local police arrive and direct students back to their dorms, we have seen agents of social control in
action.
While value-added theory addresses the complexity of collective behavior, it also assumes that such
behavior is inherently negative or disruptive. In contrast, collective behavior can be non-disruptive,
such as when people flood to a place where a leader or public figure has died to express condolences
or leave tokens of remembrance.
CROWD-is a large number of people who gather together with a common short-term or long-term
purpose.
A casual crowd is a 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. An example of a
casual crowd is a gathering of people who are waiting to cross the street at a busy intersection in a large
city. True, they are all waiting to cross the street and to this degree do have a common goal, but this goal is
temporary and this particular collection of people quickly disappears once this goal is achieved. As Erich
[2]
Goode (1992, p. 22) emphasizes, “members of casual crowds have little else in common except their

3. physical location.” In fact, Goode thinks that casual crowds do not really act out collective behavior, since
their behavior is relatively structured in that it follows conventional norms for behaving in such settings.
A conventionalcrowd is a collection of people who gather for a specific purpose. They might be
attending a movie, a play, a concert, or a lecture.
Expressive Crowd
An expressive crowd is a collection of people who gather primarily to be excited and to express one or
more emotions. Examples include a religious revival, a political rally for a candidate, and events like
[4]
Mardi Gras. Goode (1992, p. 23) points out that the main purpose of expressive crowds
is belonging to the crowd itself. Crowd activity for its members is an end in itself, not just a
means. In conventional crowds, the audience wants to watch the movie or hear the lecture; being
part of the audience is secondary or irrelevant. In expressive crowds, the audience also wants to
be a member of the crowd, and participate in crowd behavior—to scream, shout, cheer, clap, and
stomp their feet.
A conventional crowd may sometimes become an expressive crowd, as when the audience at a movie
starts shouting if the film projector breaks. As this example indicates, the line between a conventional
crowd and an expressive crowd is not always clear-cut. In any event, because excitement and emotional
expression are defining features of expressive crowds, individuals in such crowds are engaging in
collective behavior.
Acting Crowd
As its name implies, an acting crowd goes one important step beyond an expressive crowd by behaving in
violent or other destructive behavior such as looting.
A mob—an intensely emotional crowd that commits or is ready to commit violence—is a primary example
of an acting crowd. Many films and novels about the Wild West in U.S. history depict mobs lynching cattle
and horse rustlers without giving them the benefit of a trial. Beginning after the Reconstruction period
following the Civil War, lynch mobs in the South and elsewhere hanged or otherwise murdered several
thousand people, most of them African Americans, in what would now be regarded as hate crimes.
Apanic—a sudden reaction by a crowd that involves self-destructive behavior, as when people stomp over
each other while fleeing a theater when a fire breaks out or while charging into a big-box store when it

4. opens early with an amazing sale—is another example of an acting crowd. Acting crowds sometimes
become so large and out of control that they develop into full-scale riots, which we discuss momentarily.
Protest Crowd
[5]
As identified by Clark McPhail and Ronald T. Wohlstein (1983), a fifth type of crowd is the protest
crowd. As its name again implies, a protest crowd is a collection of people who gather to protest a
political, social, cultural, or economic issue. The gatherings of people who participate in a sit-in,
demonstration, march, or rally are all examples of protest crowds.
Riots
A riot is a relatively spontaneous outburst of violence by a large group of people. The term riot sounds
very negative, and some scholars have used terms like urban revolt or urban uprising to refer to the riots
that many U.S. cities experienced during the 1960s. However, most collective behavior scholars continue
to use the term riot without necessarily implying anything bad or good about this form of collective
behavior, and we use riot here in that same spirit.
Terminology notwithstanding, riots have been part of American history since the colonial period, when
colonists often rioted regarding “taxation without representation” and other issues (Rubenstein,
[6]
1970). Between 75 and 100 such riots are estimated to have occurred between 1641 and 1759. Once war
broke out with England, several dozen more riots occurred as part of the colonists’ use of violence in the
American Revolution. Riots continued after the new nation began, as farmers facing debts often rioted
against state militia. The famous Shays’s Rebellion, discussed in many U.S. history books, began with a
riot of hundreds of people in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Rioting became even more common during the first several decades of the 19th century. In this period
[7]
rioting was “as much a part of civilian life as voting or working” (Rosenfeld, 1997, p. 484), with almost
three-fourths of U.S. cities experiencing at least one major riot. Most of this rioting was committed by
native-born whites against African Americans, Catholics, and immigrants. Their actions led Abraham
Lincoln to observe in 1837, “Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the every-day news of the
[8]
times…Whatever their causes be, it is common to the whole country” (quoted in Feldberg, 1980, p. 4).
Rioting continued after the Civil War. Whites attacked Chinese immigrants because they feared the
immigrants were taking jobs from whites and keeping wages lower than they otherwise would have been.

5. Labor riots also became common, as workers rioted to protest inhumane working conditions and
substandard pay.
Race riots again occurred during the early 20th century, as whites continued to attack African Americans
in major U.S. cities. A major riot in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1917 took the lives of 39 African Americans
and 9 whites. Riots begun by whites occurred in at least seven more cities in 1919 and ended with the
[9]
deaths of dozens of people (Waskow, 1967). During the 1960s, riots took place in many Northern cities
as African Americans reacted violently to reports of police brutality or other unfair treatment. Estimates
of the number of riots during the decade range from 240 to 500, and estimates of the number of
[10]
participants in the riots range from 50,000 to 350,000 (Downes, 1968; Gurr, 1989).
A rumor is a story based on unreliable sources that is nonetheless passed on from one person to another
person. A rumor may turn out to be true, but it often turns out to be false or at least to be an exaggeration
or distortion of the facts. The defining feature of a rumor, though, is that when it arises it is not based on
[19]
reliable evidence and thus is unsubstantiated (Goode, 1992). In today’s electronic age, rumors can be
spread very quickly over the Internet and via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. In October 2010,
a rumor quickly spread that Apple was planning to buy Sony. Although there was no truth to the rumor,
[20]
Sony’s stock shares rose in value after the rumor began (Albanesius, 2010).
Fads and Crazes
Fads and crazes make up the second category of beliefs and perceptions that are considered to be
collective behavior. A fad is a rather insignificant activity or product that is popular for a relatively
short time, while a craze is a temporary activity that attracts the obsessive enthusiasm of a relatively
small group of people (Goode, 1992). [23] American history has witnessed many kinds of fads and
crazes throughout the years, including goldfish swallowing, stuffing people into a telephone booth,
and the notorious campus behavior known as streaking. Products that became fads include Rubik’s
Cube, Pet Rocks, Cabbage Patch dolls, and Beanie Babies. Cell phones were a fad when they first
appeared, but they have become so common and important that they have advanced far beyond the
definition of a fad.
Convergence Theory
Convergence theory argues that the behavior of a crowd is not an emergent property of the crowd but is a
result of like-minded individuals coming together. In other words, if a crowd becomes violent (a mob or
riot), convergence theory would argue that this is not because the crowd encouraged violence but rather
because people who wanted to become violent came together in the crowd.

6. The primary criticism of convergence theory is that there is a tendency for people to do things in a crowd
that they would not do on their own. Crowds have an anonymizing effect on people, leading them to
engage in sometimes outlandish behavior. Thus, while some crowds may result from like-minded
individuals coming together to act collectively (e.g., political rally), some crowds actually spur individuals
into behavior that they would otherwise not engage in.
[edit]Emergent-Norm Theory
Emergent-Norm Theory combines the above two theories, arguing that it is a combination of like-minded
individuals, anonymity, and shared emotion that leads to crowd behavior. This theory takes a symbolic
interactionist approach to understanding crowd behavior. It argues that people come together with
specific expectations and norms, but in the interactions that follow the development of the crowd, new
expectations and norms can emerge, allowing for behavior that normally would not take place.
Mass action in sociology refers to the situations where a large number of people behave simultaneously
in a similar way but individually and without coordination.
For example, at any given moment, many thousands of people are shopping - without any coordination
between themselves; they are nonetheless performing the same mass action.
his chapter opens with a description of Elijah Harper’s blockage of the ratification of the Meech Lake
Accord and the confrontation of Natives with the Quebec police and the Canadian Army. It is argued
that a social movement was galvanized by these events.
A major focus of this chapter is social movements, or organized activity that encourages or
discourages social change. Social movements are one of the most important types of collective
behaviour, referring to activity involving a large number of people, often spontaneous, and typically
in violation of established norms.
STUDYING COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR
Studying collective behaviour is difficult for several reasons, including its wide-ranging nature,
its complexity, and the fact that it is often transitory. It is pointed out that this is perhaps true for
all issues studied by sociologists. However, a particularly significant problem here is limited theoretical
analysis in this domain of social inquiry.
A collectivity is a large number of people who interact little if at all in the absence of well-defined and
conventional norms. Two types of collectivities are (1) localized collectivities, referring to people in
physical proximity to one another, and (2) dispersed collectivities, meaning people influencing one
another, often from great distances.
These collectivities are distinguished from social groups on the basis of three characteristics, including
limited social interaction, unclear social boundaries, and weak or unconventional norms.
Localized Collectivities: Crowds
A crowd is a temporary gathering of people who share a common focus of attention and whose
members influence one another.
Herbert Blumer identifies four types of crowds, based in part on their level of emotional intensity.
These include: the casual crowd, or a loose collection of people who have little interaction;
the conventional crowd, resulting from deliberate planning of an event and conforming to norms
appropriate to the situation; the expressive crowd, which forms around an event that has emotional

7. appeal; and an acting crowd which is a crowd energetically doing something. Crowds can change
from one type to another. A fifth type, or protest crowd, not identified by Blumer, is a crowd which
has some political goal, like the 4000 Quebec residents who clashed with the police when protesting
the bridge takeover during the Oka crisis.
Mobs and Riots
When an acting crowd becomes violent it is classified as a mob, a highly emotional crowd that
pursues some violent or destructive goal. Lynching is a notorious example in the history of the United
States. The freeing of the slaves, which provided blacks with political rights and economic
opportunities, were perceived by whites as a threat. Lynching was used as a form of social control to
exert white supremacy over blacks.
A violent crowd with no specific goal is termed a riot, or a social eruption that is highly emotional,
violent, and undirected. Throughout history riots have resulted from a collective expression against
social injustice. In 1907, as a response to steady Chinese immigration and a sudden influx of
Japanese, a riot broke out in Vancouver against Japanese individuals and their businesses. Sometimes
riots can result from positive feelings as they did in Montreal after the "Canadiens" won the Stanley
Cup in 1993.
Crowds, Mobs, and Social Change
Although crowds and mobs can be seen as a threat to those in power, not all call for social change,
some resist it.
Explaining Crowd Behaviour
Contagion Theory
One of the first social scientists to try and explain such behaviour was Gustave Le Bon, who
developed contagion theory. This theory maintains that a crowd can exert a hypnotic effect on its
members. Anonymity of a crowd creates a condition in which people lose their identity and personal
responsibility to a collective mind.
Critics claim that many crowds do not take on a life of their own separate from the thoughts and
actions of their members. Rather specific structural features may be found to be responsible for the
behaviour.
Convergence Theory
This theory leads researchers to see the motives which drive collective action as emerging prior to the
formation of a crowd. The argument is that people of like-mind come together for a particular purpose
and form a crowd. As opposed to contagion theory, which focuses our attention on irrational forces,
this perspective provides a view of rational processes creating a crowd.
Emergent-Norm Theory
Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian developed this theory, and argue like convergence theorists, that
crowds are not merely irrational collectivities. However, they further suggest that patterns of
behaviour emerge within the crowds themselves.
This view fits into the symbolic-interaction approach to the study of social life. Crowd behaviouris
seen, in part, as a response to its members' motives. Norms emerge and guide behaviour within the
development of the crowd itself.

8. DISPERSED COLLECTIVITIES: MASS BEHAVIOUR
Mass behaviour refers to collective behaviour among people dispersed over a wide geographic area
Rumour and Gossip
Rumour, or unsubstantiated information spread informally, often by word of mouth is one example.
Rumour has three essential characteristics, including thriving on a climate of ambiguity, being
changeable, and being difficult to stop. The Applying Sociology Box, (p. 580) illustrates how the
rumour of the death of a famous person can be self-sustaining.
Closely related to rumour is gossip, or rumour about the personal affairs of others. Gossip is referred
to as being more localized than rumour. It can be an effective means of social control.
Public Opinion and Propaganda
Public opinion is a form of highly dispersed collective behaviour. No one "public opinion" exists on
key social issues, but rather is represented by a diversity of opinion.
A public grows larger and smaller over time as interest in a particular issue changes. The women's
movement is used as an illustration. Certain categories of people are argued to have more social
influence than others when it comes to shaping public opinion.
Propaganda is defined as information presented with the intention of shaping public opinion. It can
be accurate or false, positive, or negative. Various forms exist from politics to advertising to
pronouncements on the Charlottetown Accord.
Panic and Mass Hysteria
Panic is a form of localized collective behaviour by which people react to some stimulus with
emotional, irrational, and often self-destructive behaviour. Generally some threat provokes a panic, as
in the case of a fire in a crowded theatre.
Mass hysteria is a form of dispersed collective behaviour in which people respond to a real or
imagined event with irrational, frantic behaviour. The 1938 CBS radio broadcast of a dramatization of
the novel War of the Worlds, is an example which illustrates how mass hysteria can emerge.
Fashions and Fads
Fashion is defined as a social pattern favoured for a time by a large number of people. Fashions are
transitory and occur for two reasons: the future-orientation of people in industrial societies and the
socially mobile who use consumption patterns to evaluate social standing.
American sociologist Thorstein Veblen originated the term conspicuous consumption, referring to
the practice of spending money with the intention of displaying one's wealth to others.
A fad is an unconventional social pattern that is enthusiastically embraced by a large number of
people for a short time. They are sometimes referred to as crazes. While fads are truly "passing
fancies," fashions tend to reflect fundamental human