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Crowd: Meaning and Features of Crowd in Social Science!
The crowd may be defined as a collection of individuals united temporarily and in close proximity to each other whose object may be of diverse kinds. MacIver defines it as “a physically compact aggregation of human beings brought into direct, temporary and unorganized contact with one another.”
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According to Kimball Young, “A crowd is a gathering of a considerable number of persons around a center or point of common attraction.” According to Britt, “A crowd involves a temporary physical gathering of people experiencing much of the same reaction from the same stimuli.”
Contrill says, “Crowd is a congregate group of individuals who have temporarily identified themselves with common values and who are expressing similar emotions.” According to Thou less “A crowd is transitory contiguous group organised with completely permeable boundaries, spontaneously formed as a result of some common interest.” A crowd is quickly created and quickly dissolved.
It is an unorganized manifestation occurring in a world of organization. Often the people collected in a garden for a picnic are called crowd but instead of calling them a crowd they may be termed ‘aggregates’. A collection of students invading a cinema hall is a mob and unruly crowd. The distinction between ‘crowd’ ‘mob’, ‘aggregates’ is one of degree rather than of kind.
The ‘crowd’ is a “physical, compact aggregation of human beings brought into direct, temporary and unorganized contact, reacting mostly to the same stimuli and in a similar way.” According to Mazumdar, a crowd “is an aggregation of individuals drawn together by an interest without premeditation on the part of any of them and without even tentative provision of what to expect.”
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Horton and Hunt define crowd as “temporary collection of people reacting together to stimuli.” According to Anderson and Parker, crowd is “that form of collectivity in which a number of people are brought together in a particular place by their concerted attention to a common stimulus to which all react in a manner which creates an affinity among them.”
A crowd is always a transitory and unstable organization. Thus a group of students recreating by the seashore are an aggregate; if they hear a film actor they become a crowd, but if the actor makes insulting remarks to the country they may become unruly and turn into a mob.
Characteristics of a Crowd:
The following are the characteristic features of a crowd:
One criterion of the crowd is physical presence. Without such physical presence there can be no crowd. The size of the crowd is limited by the distance which the eye can see and the ear can hear. Since people cannot remain physically present for any great length of time, this means that the crowd is a temporary social group.
It is “occasion” entity which is transitory, a creature of the moment and comes to an end as soon as its purpose is realized. The crowd is unorganized. It may have a leader but it has no division of labour. As members of the crowd all the individuals are alike because it has no organisation which can utilize the individual differences.
Besides, the following features of a crowd may also be noted:
(i) Anonymity:
Crowds are anonymous, both because they are large and because they are temporary. A crowd usually consists of a relatively large number of people. The members of a crowd do not know each other. They do not pay any attention to other members as individuals. The individual in a crowd is free to indulge in behaviour which he would ordinarily control. In a crowd moral responsibility is shifted from the individual to the group.
(ii) Narrow Attention:
The crowd is devoid of a wide attention. It directs its attention only to one or two things at one time. It is incapable of rationality and is easily carried by intuition. The members of the crowd easily come under the magic influences of skillful oratory. The crowd leader with the use of “bigger terms” builds up images that present reality in the colours of dominant emotion.
(iii) Suggestibility:
The members of the crowd are not open to conviction. They do not tolerate any opposition to their views, rather any opposition enrages them. They blindly accept the stories that suit their temper and openly reject any suggestion opposed to it. The power of suggestion in many cases is tantamount to hypnosis.
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This is the reason why it is difficult to carry the crowd in a different direction when it is bent on committing a mischief. The crowd can be weaned from its wrong direction only by a very skillful handling.
(iv) Credulity:
With an increase in the capacity of suggestibility, the credulity of a crowd also increases. According to Ross, “Rational analysis and test are out of question. The faculties we deal with are asleep.”
(v) Low Mental Level:
The ideas of a crowd are not wide or deep. They are charged with emotion. They do not see any reason in others’ arguments. One may talk a crowd into anything. The individual’s power of volition is lost. It is all due to low mental level of the crowd.
(vi) Emotional:
The members of a crowd are highly emotional. They respond not only to the emotional situation but also to the emotions of other members of the crowd. Some members of the crowd get excited because the other members are excited. These other members get more excited because the former are excited, and so this cumulative character of crowd inter- stimulation tends to make the behaviour of the crowd ascend to a climax.
The individual is for the moment ‘lost in the spirit of the crowd’ and works himself up “to a high pitch”. The members of the crowd do not know what they are doing. In the words of Bernhard, “It is usually some strong emotions or curiosity impulse which integrates the crowd.” There can be no prediction what it is likely to do at any moment. Ross writes, “Its hero one moment may be its victim the next.”
(vii) Irresponsibility:
From the viewpoint of responsibility the members of the crowd show very poor sense of it. When panic or hatred seizes them, they do the most shameful acts of which they themselves repent afterwards. A crowd in action can be a terrifying thing. Lebon has written, ‘The sense of responsibility which always controls individuals disappears entirely in a crowd.” The social is twisted around into giving approval of behaviour which the culture normally forbids.
The college students do not ordinarily burn the buses or pull down telephone posts; in a strike they do. The crowd behaviour deviates from the normal behaviour, which is momentarily supported by the members of the crowd providing the individual a short lived social sanction for the acts forbidden in everyday life. The murders that are committed by revolutionaries in a state of frenzy show the bluntness of their intellectual and moral powers.
“Masked by their anonymity people feel free to give rein to the expression of their feelings”. According to Bernhard, “They approximate most closely to the packs and herds of the lower animals.” McDougall writes, “A crowd is excessively emotional, impulsive, fickle, inconsistent, irresolute and extreme in action, extremely suggestible, careless in deliberation, hasty in judgment, easily swayed and led, lacking in self-consciousness, carried away by the consciousness of its force.”
Hence its behaviour is like that of any unruly child or untutored passionate savage in a strange situation and in the worst it is like that of a wild beast.
The difference between crowd, audience, public, mass and assembly may also be noted. The audience is a form of institutionalized crowd or follows certain rules and an accepted pattern of conduct. The crowd is not organised whereas audience is always organised. The crowd is led by emotions whereas the audience is guided by intellect.
The behaviour of the crowd is not based on rules. The public is an aggregation of persons, moving in a common universe of discourse, confronted by an issue or a value, divided in their opinions regarding ways to meet the issue or to appraise the value, and engaging in discussion.
The mass is an anonymous group of individuals, physically separated from one another, exhibiting little direct interaction or exchange of experience, unable to act collectively, but capable of generating symbols and stereotypes which, in turn, can galvanize localized groups into crowds or audiences.
The assembly is a temporary association of persons, drawn together by an interest, moving in a common universe of discourse with definite collective awareness of the value to be realized.”
Thus, the crowd manifests undesirable features like narrowness of outlook, suggestibility, emotional approach and irresponsibility. Having no permanent organization it can have no culture or tradition of its own. Being possessed of suggestibility and unpredictability it has practically no measure of self control.
The social norms try to prevent the formation of crowds. Prior precautions are taken against riots, stampedes, panics and revolts. In the case of crowd an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, because once a crowd goes into action, it becomes a potent engine of destruction hard to stop.
The general consensus is that crowds are destructive rather than constructive and that they make beasts out of the otherwise normal men. The primarily emotional rather than intellectual character of the crowd connected with its lack of organisation and internal control renders it incapable of any worthy accomplishment. It can destroy more easily than it can build. In short, the crowd is considered an undesired social phenomenon, an anarchical element in an ordered society.
Though considered undesirable, the crowd still fulfills a role in society. Martin interpreted the crowd situation as an occasion and an instrumentality for release of the repressed wishes of its members. Usually a crowd comes into being when the pent up feelings and emotions of certain people do not find an adequate outlet for expression. When the normal channels of expression are closed, people organise themselves into a crowd and indulge in destructive activities.
The crowd situation is constantly being planned for and utilized by every type of social system. The circular response and augmented excitement of the crowd is a highly effective device for instilling the group values and the traditional norms by which society lives. Religion, political parties, governments and colleges make use of crowd situation for maintaining their hold upon the people or students. Crowd in the right situation may become an asset.