Crowd

For other uses, see Crowd (disambiguation).

This street in Hong Kong is crowded with both people and advertisements.

A crowd of people returning from a show of fireworks spill in to the street stopping traffic at the intersection of Fulton Street and Gold Street in Lower Manhattan. City crowds are surprisingly peaceful considering their size and the potential for chaos.

A crowd leaves the Vienna station on the Washington Metro on July 4, 2006. The crowd behaves like a granular fluid, and people, having the same aim, are more confined than they would normally choose to be. This induces frustration and loss of manners, possibly up to putting individuals into jeopardy.

A crowd is a large and definable group of people, while "the crowd" is referred to as the so-called lower orders of people in general (the mob). A crowd may be definable through a common purpose or set of emotions, such as at a political rally, at a sports event, or during looting (this is known as a psychological crowd), or simply be made up of many people going about their business in a busy area (e.g. shopping). Everybody in the context of general public or the common people is normally referred to as the masses.

Terminology

The term crowd is often defined in contrast to other group nouns for collections of humans or animals: aggregation, audience, group, mass, mob, populous, public, rabble and throng. For example in "Public Opinion"^[1] Vincent Price compares masses and crowds:

Crowds are defined by their shared emotional experiences, but masses are defined by their interpersonal isolation.

In human sociology, the term "mobbed" simply means "extremely crowded", as in a busy mall or shop. In animal behaviour mobbing is a technique where many individuals of one species "gang up" on a larger individual of another species to drive them away. Mobbing behaviour is often seen in birds.

Social aspects of crowds

Social aspects are concerned with the formation, management and control of crowds, both from the point of view of individuals and groups. Often crowd control is designed to persuade a crowd to align with a particular view (e.g., political rallies), or to contain groups to prevent damage or mob behaviour. Politically organised crowd control is usually conducted by law enforcement but on some occasions military forces are used for particularly large or dangerous crowds.

Social aspects of crowds for adolescent peer groups

Adolescent culture is a relatively new feature of society, affecting most teenagers in the United States since the 1930s.^[2] The research on adolescent culture began with the search for identities: who the adolescents and their peer groups are and the differences and how adolescent culture differed from adult culture.^[3] Many researchers are making efforts to develop an understanding of the functions of crowds.^[4] But the findings are complicated due to multiple definitions of the crowd. Now in adolescence, peer affiliation becomes more important than ever before.^[5] Youths tend to categorize themselves and each other based on stereotypes and reputations.^[6] These categories are known in the developmental psychology literature as peer crowds.^[7] Crowds are defined as reputation based collectives of similarly stereotyped individuals who may or may not spend much time together.^[8] Crowds also refer to collectives of adolescents identified by the interests, attitudes, abilities, and/or personal characteristics they have in common.^[9] Crowds are different from cliques, which are interaction based peer groups who hang out together.^[10] Crowds are not simply clusters of cliques; the two different structures serve entirely different purposes.^[11] Because the clique is based on activity and friendship, it is the important setting in which the adolescent learns social skills like how to be a good friend and how to communicate effectively.^[12] These and other social skills are important in adulthood as well as in adolescence.^[13] Crowds are based on reputation and stereotypes than on interaction; they probably contribute more to the adolescent sense of identity and self-conception.^[14] For example jocks and burnouts are more likely to be interaction based than such crowds as loners and nerds.^[15]

Psychological aspects of crowds

Psychological aspects are concerned with the psychology of the crowd as a group and the psychology of those who allow their will and emotions to be informed by the crowd (both discussed more comprehensively under crowd psychology), and other individual responses to crowds, such as crowd-sickness, claustrophobia and agoraphobia. At a general level, crowd psychology is concerned with the behaviour and thought processes of individual crowd members and the crowd as a whole. Given the prevalence of crowd events, and the potential safety issues associated with such large gatherings of people, the topic is receiving increasing attention from agencies responsible for crowd management and also from governments.^[16]

See also

	Society portal
	Sociology portal

• Agent-based social simulation
• Crowd manipulation
• Crowd psychology
• Crowd funding
• Crowdsourcing
• Flocking (behavior)
• Group behaviour
• Crowd simulation

References

1. ^ Public Opinion By Carroll J. Glynn, Susan Herbst, Garrett J. O'Keefe, Robert Y. Shapiro
2. ^ Jennifer Riedl Cross & Kathryn L. Fletcher (2008). The Challenge of Adolescent Crowd Research: Defining the Crowd. Journal of Youth Adolescence.
3. ^ Jennifer Riedl Cross & Kathryn L. Fletcher (2008). The Challenge of Adolescent Crowd Research: Defining the Crowd. Journal of Youth Adolescence.
4. ^ Jennifer Riedl Cross & Kathryn L. Fletcher (2008). The Challenge of Adolescent Crowd Research: Defining the Crowd. Journal of Youth Adolescence.
5. ^ Nejra Bešić & Margaret Kerr (2009). Punks, Goths, and Other Eye-Catching Peer Crowds: Do they Fulfill a Function for Shy Youths? Journal of Research on Adolescence, 19(1), 113-121.
6. ^ Nejra Bešić & Margaret Kerr (2009). Punks, Goths, and Other Eye-Catching Peer Crowds: Do they Fulfill a Function for Shy Youths? Journal of Research on Adolescence, 19(1), 113-121.
7. ^ Nejra Bešić & Margaret Kerr (2009). Punks, Goths, and Other Eye-Catching Peer Crowds: Do they Fulfill a Function for Shy Youths? Journal of Research on Adolescence, 19(1), 113-121.
8. ^ Jennifer Riedl Cross & Kathryn L. Fletcher (2008). The Challenge of Adolescent Crowd Research: Defining the Crowd. Journal of Youth Adolescence.
9. ^ Jennifer Riedl Cross & Kathryn L. Fletcher (2008). The Challenge of Adolescent Crowd Research: Defining the Crowd. Journal of Youth Adolescence.
10. ^ Jennifer Riedl Cross & Kathryn L. Fletcher (2008). The Challenge of Adolescent Crowd Research: Defining the Crowd. Journal of Youth Adolescence.
11. ^ Sternberg, Laurence (2008). Adolescence. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
12. ^ Sternberg, Laurence (2008). Adolescence. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
13. ^ Sternberg, Laurence (2008). Adolescence. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
14. ^ Sternberg, Laurence (2008). Adolescence. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
15. ^ Jennifer Riedl Cross & Kathryn L. Fletcher (2008). The Challenge of Adolescent Crowd Research: Defining the Crowd. Journal of Youth Adolescence.
16. ^ Challenger, R., Clegg, C. W., & Robinson, M. A. (2009). Understanding crowd behaviours. Multi-volume report for the UK Government’s Cabinet Office. London: Cabinet Office. http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/understanding-crowd-behaviours-documents

External links

• Understanding crowd behaviours