Mass psychology

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Mass psychology is a branch of social psychology and deals with the behavior of people in crowds. Output for the theory of mass psychology is the general experience of belonging fact that large crowds an often surprising and irrational appearing behavior show, for example, triggering a panic because of a rather insignificant event.

According to studies by Davis and Harless, important decisions in a group are not made by individual individuals , but are brought about by the masses in coordination in order to achieve a goal through cooperation. Throughout history , large crowds have been able to introduce dramatic and sudden social changes outside of the established legal process. Collective collaboration is condemned by some, supported by others. Social scientists have put forward a number of different theories to explain mass psychological phenomena and how group behavior differs significantly from the behavior of individuals within the group .

Contagion theory

The French sociologist Gustave Le Bon formulated an early theory on collective behavior with his major work Psychology of the Masses (1895). According to Le Bons contagion theory , social groups exert a hypnotic effect on their members . Protected in the anonymity of the crowd, people give up their personal responsibility and surrender to the contagious feelings of the crowd. The crowd develops a life of its own, stirs up feelings and tends to induce people to act irrationally. As Clark McPhail points out, however, systematic studies reveal that “the crazy crowd” does not lead a life of its own separate from the thoughts and intentions of its members. Norris Johnson , researching a panic during a Who Concert in 1979, concluded that the crowd consisted of many small groups whose members mostly tried to help one another.

Le Bon's work forms the starting point of Sigmund Freud's study of mass psychology and analysis of the ego , but Le Bon worked on "unstable, rotting masses (...), while Freud analyzed more highly organized, stable masses such as church and army ."

Wilhelm Reich formulated his work Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus from his own further development of psychoanalysis in 1933 , Elias Canetti substantiated this thesis in his more literary work Mass and Power .

Approximation theory

The approximation theory (English Convergence theory ) postulates that the behavior of the masses does not proceed from the mass itself, but is carried into the group by individual individuals. The group formation itself amounts to the rapprochement of individuals with similar attitudes. In other words, contagion theory says that groups induce people to act; the approximation theory, on the other hand, says the opposite: people who want to act in a certain way unite.

An example of the approximation theory is a phenomenon that can sometimes be observed when more immigrants appear in a previously homogeneous area and members of the already existing community (apparently spontaneously) join forces to threaten the newcomers. Supporters of the convergence theory believe that in such cases it is not the masses that generate racial hatred or violence, but that hostility has simmered in many residents for a long time. The crowd arises from the rapprochement of those people who are against the new neighbors. Convergence theory holds that the behavior of the masses themselves is not irrational, rather the people express the views and values ​​that exist in the group, so that the mob's reaction is only the rational product of widespread popular feelings.

Leadership theory

Not necessarily but often at Le Bon (and Gabriel Tarde ) the masses are guided by self-chosen - or at least collectively recognized - leaders and sometimes seduced into deeds that they would probably not commit outside the masses, as individuals . A special case of such mass leadership is when the leader knows how the clenched Community solidarity of the mass and thus their powerful self-esteem to relate to. The leader then "embodies" the crowd, their goals and values, their thinking and their emotions ; He presents himself as her "highest servant" and only becomes her master through this apparent submission . This can lead to the point that the extraordinarily pronounced mutual sympathy that the members of the masses showed for one another is now more and more concentrated on the leader: the masses begin to love and glorify their leader as a lover loves the object of his desire without criticism and glorified. This creates what is to be understood in social psychology (e.g. by Gabriel Tarde) under the term charismatic (or nimbus-led) mass leadership. The glorification of the leader leads to the attribution of special "ingenious", "wonderful", almost "divine" qualities, or "gifts of grace" which enable the leader to lead the crowd and the "blind trust" that is placed in him, justify. Imaginative legends , anecdotes and rumors of the masses, but also targeted mass propaganda by the Führer and his followers, confirm and consolidate such valuable attributions. The masses begin to believe in their leader , as in a salvific figure. Blind mass obedience to the point of "death" is sometimes voluntarily shown to the Fiihrer and demanded from him as a matter of course after his establishment . Charismatic mass leadership of this extreme form, which occurs most frequently in the case of religious , military and political leadership, is favored by the "messianism of the masses" (Michael Günther) , an expression of the particularly pronounced religiosity of the masses , of which Le Bon already speaks is. This messianism creates a power vacuum that creates a "charismatic gap" ( ibid. ): The masses develop the desire for clarity and leadership, especially when strong collective emotions (such as fear of death or extreme confusion) and a low level of horizontal organization prevail. Their will to survive is focused on the hope of a gifted leadership, the more so the more desperate their situation appears. If their self-esteem is damaged in this way, the crowd is convinced that they can no longer free themselves from a hopeless situation on their own , they are also ready to subordinate themselves, to recognize a higher value than their own. The bearer of hope who cleverly uses the charismatic void is greeted like a messiah sent by fate. Salvation from adversity seems to be within reach, joy and relief spread, gratitude is shown to the one who embodies the "last hope". The Führer skillfully exploits the suggestibility of the highly emotionalized mass and strengthens his supernatural nimbus by taking up the collective hopes of the masses and presenting himself as a messiah who was sent by higher powers to fulfill a certain mission .

The complex interplay of mass hopes and leadership opportunities of the charismatized only works as long as the leadership figure proves itself: If everything fails, if the charismatized all too obviously disappoints the overwhelming hopes of the masses, the legitimacy that he had gained as a mass leader quickly becomes apparent to him withdrawn again, the crowd follows and no longer obeys him and withdraws their affection from him. The instability of charismatic mass power lies in the possibility of rapid disenchantment of the charism in the event of a lack of probation. For this reason, too, charismatized mass leaders often try to combine their power with rational and traditional rule psychology (and sociology), which guarantees more stability and can also help over defeats and strokes of fate - which , taken by itself , could hardly survive charismatic mass power . Paradigms of such entanglements of charismatic mass leadership with rational and traditional domination psychology can be found across history: Alexander the Great gives an example, as does Gaius Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte . The 20th century brought a particularly large number of charismatized mass leaders to power, such as Benito Mussolini , Vladimir Ilyich Lenin , Josef Stalin , Adolf Hitler , Mao Tse-Tung and numerous lesser-known leaders.

methodology

In the scientific processing of mass psychology, classic methods quickly reach their limits. In contrast to questions relating to individual psychology , hypotheses from mass psychology cannot be tested using experiments in the laboratory. Interviews and questionnaires are unsuitable means, field studies also prove to be rather unsuitable as they are hardly feasible in this context. Recent research uses agent-based models to analyze collective phenomena.

application areas

In addition to politics , the financial market is an important area of ​​application in which mass psychological research can establish itself. The merging of knowledge about investor behavior with the findings of mass psychology reveals new models and approaches for more realistic explanatory concepts of financial market dynamics. For the economy of boom and depression is a recurring element in financial market history and traditional economic theories and financial models (eg. As efficient-market hypothesis ) fail but in explaining and predicting such trends and their underlying behavior of market participants. Because they do not take into account the entire human being, but only an academic abstraction of those aspects of human behavior that they consider to be economically relevant. And they also forget the society with which the markets are inextricably linked. And it is precisely at this point that mass psychology, which is based, among other things, on the concepts of mutual social and psychological contagion and the human tendency to orientate and imitate others in the social environment, comes in. Research into collective dynamics makes a further contribution to a better understanding of the processes in the financial markets by pointing out the connection between short-term developments and long-term change processes. Based on the principle of long and short cycles, mass psychology differentiates between consciously recognized, short-lived effects and the slow, subtle and often unrecognized developments on which they are based. With this central finding, which essentially goes back to Gustave LeBon, mass psychological research makes a contribution to the description of the interaction of a mountain of debt that has been accumulating since the 1960s and the periodic emergence of boom-crisis cycles over the past decades.

See also

literature

  • Richard A. Berk: Collective Behavior. Brown, Dubuque, Iowa 1974.
  • Michael Günther: Masse und Charisma , Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-631-53536-8 .
  • Edward Bernays : Propaganda - The Art of Public Relations . , 1928. From the American by Patrick Schnur. orange-press, Freiburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-936086-35-5 .
  • Hermann Broch : Theory of mass delusions. 1939 to 1948.
  • Thomas Brudermann: mass psychology. Psychological contagion, collective dynamics, simulation models. Springer Verlag, Vienna / New York 2010, ISBN 978-3-211-99760-4 .
  • Elias Canetti : Mass and Power . 1960.
  • Douglas D. Davis, David W. Harless: Group vs. Individual performance in a price-searching experiment. In: Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 66, 1996, pp. 215-227.
  • Birk Engmann, Holger Steinberg: Russian research on mass psychology from the 19th century. In: Fortschr Neurol Psychiatr 2017; 85 (05): 280-287, doi: 10.1055 / s-0043-105793.
  • Mario Erdheim : The social production of unconsciousness. An introduction to the ethno-psychoanalytical process. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1982.
  • Thomas Fenzl: The mass psychology of the financial market crisis. US housing bubble, subprime disaster, debt bubble and their effects. Springer Verlag, Vienna / New York 2009, ISBN 978-3-211-98090-3 .
  • Sigmund Freud : mass psychology and ego analysis . 1921. In: Sigmund Freud: study edition. Volume IX: Issues of Society. Origins of religion. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1982, pp. 61-134.
  • Peter R. Hofstätter , group dynamics. Critique of mass psychology. New edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1986.
  • Norris R. Johnson: Panic at 'The Who Concert Stampede': An Empirical Assessment. In: Social Problems. Vol. 34, No. 4, 1987, pp. 362-373.
  • Gustave Le Bon : La Psychologie des foules. 1895. engl. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind.
  • Thanos Lipowatz: The Politics of the Psyche. Turia & Kant, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-85132-156-1 .
  • C. Mackay: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Wordsworth Editions, 1841, ISBN 1-85326-349-4 .
  • Karl Marbe: Contemporary Popular Considerations for the Cultured World. From the estate of a German scholar. Edited by Armin Stock. Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2016, ISBN 978-3-631-66937-2 .
  • Serge Moscovici : The Age of the Masses. A historical treatise on mass psychology. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1986.
  • José Ortega y Gasset : La rebelión de las masas. Madrid 1929.
  • Paul Parin : The bleeding of torn wounds. Ethno-psychoanalytic reflections on the wars in the former Yugoslavia. 1993.
  • Wilhelm Reich : The mass psychology of fascism. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1986, ISBN 3-462-01794-2 .
  • Wilhelm Reich: Talk to the little man. 15th edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-596-26777-3 .
  • Paul Reiwald : From the spirit of the masses. 2nd Edition. Pan, Zurich 1946.
  • Ralph Turner, Lewis M. Killian: Collective Behavior. 4th edition. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1993.
  • Jaap van Ginneken: Kurt Baschwitz - A Pioneer of Communication Studies and Social Psychology Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2018. ISBN 978-94-6298-604-6 (Also in Dutch).
  • Harald Welzer : perpetrator. How normal people become mass murderers. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 2005, ISBN 3-10-089431-6 .

Web links

Wiktionary: mass psychology  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Douglas D. Davis, David W. Harless: Group vs. Individual Performance in a Price-Searching Experiment, 1996, pp. 215-227.
  2. ↑ Thomas Köhler: Freud's writings on culture, religion and society, 2006. P. 111.
  3. ↑ Michael Günther: Mass and Charisma . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 203-251 .
  4. ↑ Michael Günther: Mass and Charisma . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 240-268 .
  5. ^ Thomas Brudermann: Massenpsychologie 2010.
  6. ↑ Thomas Fenzl: The mass psychology of the financial market crisis , 2009.