Flash mobs - "Crowds and Power" by Elias Canetti

With all the rioting of late, I remembered reading a lot about this phenomenon long ago in the classic study by Nobel Prize winner Canetti Crowds and Power. In German it's called Masse und Macht. I read the Dutch translation of it.

For the author, see: _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_Canetti and also his amazon page here: _http://www.amazon.com/Elias-Canetti/e/B000AQ43QG/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0/176-8715533-9693217

For the book and reviews of it: _http://www.amazon.com/Crowds-Power-Elias-Canetti/dp/0374518203

The author also wrote a threefold autobiography with some additional materials about this topic, dispersed through other memories about the inter bellum period (1919-1939) in Austria mainly, which is on equal footing with the more well known Sebastian Haffner books The Meaning of Hitler(1978) and Defying Hitler (2000). For details see: _http://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Elias-Canetti-Tongue-Torch/dp/0374527148/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_6

obyvatel/Daniel Goleman http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic said:

Elias Canetti, in his study "Crowds and Power" observes that what coalesces a mass of individuals into a crowd is their domination by a "single passion" everyone shares - a common emotion that leads to united action: collective contagion. A mood can sweep through a group with great rapidity, a remarkable display of parallel alignment of biological subsystems that puts everyone there in physiological synchrony. The swiftness of shifts in activity of crowds looks suspiciously like mirror neuron coordination writ large.............
Crowd contagion goes on even in the most minimal of groups, three people sitting face to face with each other in silence for a few minutes. In the absence of a power hierarchy, the person with the most emotionally expressive face will set the shared tone.
Similar dynamics have been observed in business simulation studies at Yale University. Such convergence bespeaks a subtle,inexorable magnetism, a gravity like pull toward thinking and feeling alike about things in general among people who are in close relationships of any kind - family members, workmates, and friends.

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All this is highly recommended reading (osit) for understanding much better the nuts and bolts of what is likely about to unfold - as far as I can see...

Very interesting, thank you Palinurus! :)

I have too noticed these dynamics in play, in my daily life. For example if I am in a que in a shop, I would look to the left of me at say, the bars of chocolate, and the person behind me would also look at the same thing as me. It also happens with a group of people who don't know each other, one person can set the 'tone' for the group and then everyone follows suit.

Related to this idea, OSIT, is that if ten(and or more) percent of people within a group agree on something, then the group shall hold this viewpoint as the consensus. I think that it can apply to any social situation, depending on peoples social skills, who is the dominant individual within the group etc.

I read this somewhere on the forum, so I shall try to find it.

FWIW :)

Paragon said:

Related to this idea, OSIT, is that if ten(and or more) percent of people within a group agree on something, then the group shall hold this viewpoint as the consensus. I think that it can apply to any social situation, depending on peoples social skills, who is the dominant individual within the group etc.

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Yes, you're right about that - it's about the definition of the situation at hand and the dominating role of spellbinders and 'leaders' in it.

I started studying this topic out of sheer necessity. In my younger years (student days and beyond) I was very active in all sorts of social/political movements. In those days the swift deterioration of the 'mood' of a crowd into mob like behavior was a rarity, frankly - but it did occasionally occur. I did wonder why and found some profound answers in the works of Canetti.
The 'hijacking' of a demonstration was even more rare. Nowadays, there are all sorts of disgruntled groups and substrata of the population who form a sort of 'reservoir' of people keen on doing just that. A striking example would be the riots in the wake of G-7 meetings, such as in Canada lately. It seems almost endemic now with every single political protest or union inspired actions. Not the least due to 'agents provocateurs' from dubious origins (including the police force and/or secret service themselves).

This knowledge also proved useful for recognizing the exact moment of increasing danger as to determining when to pull out of it in self defence and to not endanger oneself and company unnecessarily.