MOB MENTALITY: Looters and onlookers outside a smashed up Foot Locker on Walworth Road in London. Image: Courtesy of hozinga, via Wikimedia Commons
The deadly mob violence that wracked England this past week has abated, as police came out in force and used surveillance images to track down and arrest some 1,900 alleged rioters. As London and other cities in the nation recover, officials and the public may be left wondering how to prevent such rioting in the first place. A key misunderstanding, however, seems to pervade popular thinking: that mobs are irrational and are driven to violence by a few bad apples. In fact, the scientific evidence shows that individuals in mobs do behave rationally, although not always wisely. The findings suggest that understanding the logic behind mob behavior may offer ways to short-circuit riots before they start.
The recent riots broke out across England after the shooting of north Londoner Mark Duggan by police last weekend. Many official and media accounts place the blame on "a violent few" who swept thousands of others into a destructive frenzy. These analyses echo the 1896 work of Gustave Le Bon, who published The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. "Crowds, after a period of excitement, enter upon a purely automatic and unconscious state, in which they are guided by suggestion," he wrote.
That idea, however, is a myth; social psychologists debunked it in the 1980s. "When people form a psychological group, what happens isn't that they lose a sense of identity but that they think of themselves in terms of group membership," explains social psychologist Stephen Reicher of the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland.
Individuals cannot act with group goals in mind until they see themselves as members of that group. In situations such as the recent London riots, this group identity seems to form spontaneously, but studies of the riots in England 30 years ago suggest a more complex buildup.
"Riots are the endpoint of a very long and entrenched process of social sense-making," Reicher says. "When an event comes along that clicks in perfectly to this broader social understanding, then suddenly it's much more likely to make you see yourself as a group member."
If the residents of Tottenham, where the first riot broke out, had the general feeling that they were being mistreated by the police, then the Mark Duggan incident provided an egregious and highly public example to confirm that. (Other social and economic factors, of course, were also at play as the rioting spread in the days that followed to other neighborhoods and cities.) When people gathered in the streets to protest, the physical group began to take the form of a psychological group, with shared values and a clearly defined out-group—the police.
The Londoners eventually turned to violence, but not necessarily because of mob madness or because the group was made up of individuals with a tendency toward unfettered aggression. ("While the trouble has been largely blamed on feral teenagers," The Daily Mail reported, "many of those paraded before the courts yesterday led apparently respectable lives.")
"One thing science does tell us is that we can't understand it if we treat it as irrational [or] if we think of these people as a gathering of people with individual predispositions to violence," says Clifford Stott, a social psychologist at the University of Liverpool.
Stott's previous research with John Drury of the University of Sussex (pdf) and others (pdf) has demonstrated that a crowd of nonviolent individuals can become a violent, and notas previously thoughtbecause a few violent protestors take control of an impressionable mob. Instead, the unilateral force that is sometimes used against a mostly nonviolent crowd can backfire, cementing the unity of the group against the now-violent authorities. This newly combative dynamic can change what's considered acceptable group behavior for everyone and leave group members with an intoxicating feeling of empowerment.
Reicher explains: "Crowd events tend to be mixed events with some people who do intend to be violent and some who don't. The response of authorities is to see the group as a whole as dangerous. At that point, precisely those people not originally violent have the experience of being treated with hostility and often physical force. Under those circumstances, they see the police as illegitimate and violence escalates."
Within this context, a violent crowd is not necessarily out of control but may be acting meaningfully and deliberately, with the "us versus them" values of the group in mind. This behavior is not irrational, Stott says, and "is consistent with how the social identity of the group is defined."
Even what appears to be a clear case of crowd violence can be misleading. A recent review of crowd behavior theories (pdf) pointed to the old idea of a mob, where "individuals lose all sense of self-responsibility... and primitive behavior results." But in reality, any riot includes both collective action and individual acts of opportunism, and these are hard to tease apart. Some individuals, Reicher explains, will use a crowd as a "cover," to do things they would not normally do. These single-minded actions do not necessarily represent the behavior of the group as a whole, even though it can appear so.
In the end, group identity is a precondition for a riot: people will only riot when they think their actions are aligned with the worldview of the group as a whole. Reicher suggests then that the key to preventing riots may be for authorities to regularly engage community members who will publicly oppose violence and looting, shifting the perception of group's needs and desires in advance. This early intervention—similar to approaches used to combat gang violence—could intercept the possibility of a violent group identity before it can begin to form.
"You can only take part in these events to the extent that you believe you have collective support from others," Reicher says. "Nobody riots on their own."
40 Comments
Add CommentThe latter for some, the former for others.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a Londoner and living in Croydon where some of the worst violence took place I am appalled at this so called scientific article. Once again Scientific American show itself up. Phycology is at best a very clumsy science at worst its mostly just opionion and to paraphrase a saying 'When two people have a debate you get two different opions but when two Phycologists have a debate you get three opionions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs someone who has spent 20 years with a keen interest in Psychology I am not ignorant of its origins and many competing theories none of which have ever been scientifically proven. One day in the distant future their maybe a scientific basis for this discipline but I am afraid we are a long way off.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFact is Human beings are very complex and the study of them amounts to a study of chaos which is itself a science little understood. So before we jump to trying to understand the motivations of crowds maybe we should restrict ourselves to the study of individuals and when we have a handle on that we can move on to the more complex understanding of groups and finally the physiology of the masses but until then lets learn to walk before we declare the science proven. And please resist the impulse to attribute crackpot theories to what has become a regrettable tragedy.
I have no idea why Mike Organ thinks one must master the entire human mind to answer the question "Were the London Riots a Spontaneous Mass Reaction or a Rational Response?" Whatever his reasoning, he's wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe actions of groups or crowds can be reasonably assessed by simple observation and interview. With little difficulty one could come to the correct conclusion. People have been studying and judging each other since one first laid eyes on another.
All the psychobabble aside, it comes down to some fairly simple & logical ideas:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this- If you don't want a crowd to become violent don't attack them & escalate the tensions
- If you want to have decent relations with a community, don't attack or tear down the local leaders they trust even if they aren't the people you like or prefer to work with.
While this doesn't guarantee a future with no disturbances, it surely would stop many from escalation.
As others have pointed out, there is so much tendentiousness to these studies, one must ask oneself whether they aren't politically motivated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is sjn calling for? Making deals with criminal "local leaders", allowing the creation of no-go areas?
This has been tried in the past and may achieve short-term pacification but leads to long-term breakdown of society.
Characterising attempts to apprehend malefactors within a group as attacking the crowd, is also probably intended to pour oil on the flames.
that would be 'psychology'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisno scientific theories have been 'proven', and surely a scientific response, however tentative, is better than an irrational, emotional one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot always accurately.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell said!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen the restraints of the society are removed this behavior is expected. There are elements of race, societal ills, economics all at play here. But, the bottom line, these types of breakdowns must be handled immediately by whatever force is required. The difference between London and Syria is one of revolution as opposed to mob action.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe reason we exhibit group behaviour is because such beahaviour has helped secure our evolutionary success - co-operation wins out over the pursuit of self-interest. But that does not hold true if the group is itself acting selfishly and so exposing us to external threat or harm. In such cases, it might be more rational to defect. The question then is whether we are more afraid of the consequences of 'disloyalty' to our group, or the longer-term consequences of 'doing what is right'. Our decision will be influenced by the extent to which the external forces can successfully crack down on the selfish 'corrupt' members of the group whilst re-assuring and rewarding us for not joining them. The evidence from the London Riots suggests to me that whilst some had anger issues that they irrationally directed at property, others had just grown up without a proper understanding of social bounds and did not perceive the police as an effectual deterrent. Much of the violence was premeditated and organised - those who recognised it as wrong stayed away. In the longer term, prevention relies on re-inforcing the message that anti-social behaviour will not be tolerated, coupled with an attempt to understand and help those with genuine cause for grievance (tough love).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYoung males between 15 and 25 are primed and ready to be hell raisers regardless of cause, circumstance, etc. They can work themselves into a collective foaming lather for the shear fun of it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEveryone knows that the UK has more CCTV cameras per person than anywhere else in the world, right? So how rational is this behavior in that environment?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGiven the response to the CCTV footage with all the arrests I think that this behaviour will be minimised in the future for fear of being caught.
Last week was a field day for psychologists what with the global sharemarket volitility and riots in UK and Syria. The academics may get insights as to the relationship between the individual and the collectective but with the numerous variable in each instance you'll never figure it out. You might be able to fool the government for another grant though and sponge off the taxpayers for another year but the answer is simple. When in a collective you have a certain critical number of people behaving in such a way others will tend to follow due to fear (making a loss/not being coherent with the crowd) or opportunism (making a gain).
I do concur with the article that you have to prevent the critical number being attained of the ones with the objectionable behavior. However, with media and social networks that number can be reached faster than ever before.
Of course study of a single event can't be termed as scientific study. It can at best be termed as just a study of an event. For this rational response to be proven they have to come up with a case where this can be disproven. It would be interesting to see if at the next riots if the police targets only the violent rioters whether that would stop rioting straight away.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScienceOverFaith said, "you might be able to fool the government for another grant though and sponge off the taxpayers for another year" and "others will tend to follow due to fear."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's obvious what collective ScienceOverFaith joined due to his own fears brought about by the present economic turmoil.
Somebody always has to bring up their "government is evil" dogma as financed by the Koch brother, Dick Armey, and other elites. Where is the evidence that Lauren Friedman, Stephen Reicher, or Clifford Stott are "sponging off the taxpayer" through government grants?
It would be interesting to see our world without government funded science: no polio vaccine, no moon landing, no GPS, no Large Hadron Collider or Tevitron. Government financing as always laid the foundation in science. Do you believe a corporation or a large consortium of corporations would finance and build the LHC? Where is the tangible ROI (return on investment)? No financial profits, no private financing. There is such a thing as intangible and indirect returns (positive externalities) of publically funding NASA, the LHC, and other projects. And many corporations have made loads of profits off those positive externalities. Is that also considered sponging off the taxpayer?
It should also be mentioned that the black and white, good vs evil thinking as represented by the belief that the contributors to this article are "sponging off the taxpayer" is exactly the thinking that leads to riots. Is it rational to believe that others who are different are enemies that must be demonized?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe will know better after all the information are collected from ongoing analysis. This theory does not tell why similar things do not happen elsewhere after a similar incident. Score 4/10
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Riots are the endpoint of a very long and entrenched process of social sense-making," Reicher says. "When an event comes along that clicks in perfectly to this broader social understanding, then suddenly it's much more likely to make you see yourself as a group member."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Similar incidents" do not have similar "social sense-making." Why does one straw break the camel's back, but other straws do not? It not about only the "incident." This was clear from the article about group psychology. Your critique: score 3/10.
I can't agree with U more. This article, bad or not, is trying to analyse this issue scientifically.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince the London police have been implicated in the complex web of wrong-doing centered on Rupert Murdoch's organization, one can imagine this might spark high levels of anger and distrust. Perhaps the shooting of Duggan should be seen in this context.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is widely reported and without contradiction that 333 people have died in police custody in London since 1998. If proportional deaths happened in a major city of the U.S. or Europe, one would expect reactions in the street. That a response such as Cameron's would escalate the violence can be predicted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the logic that sjn is talking about is the same tactic used (and it usually works) if you want to STOP the isolation of an already broken down society and eventually demonstrate a better way than those in the "mob" have been brainwashed to behave or believe in? Any idiot (or police with the proper training and motivation-that is to stop violence and maintain ORDER) would have known under those circumstances that this would happen if they did not handle it properly and they didn't.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisstudy of individuals? What planet are you from? You make the individual sound like an experiment in a petri dish. Study freakin politics, economics, and maslows hierarchy of needs and its all there. too bad our leaders seem also to think of certain classes of "individuals" as deserving of less dignity and needs than animals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe riots after the Stanley cup hockey finals in Vancouver are a little harder to analyse according to the theory of the article. The rioters were hockey fans from all over the city who were not assaulted by the police until they began looting. In this case I think that there were some looters who wanted to generate a riot to cover their activities, and used the anger at the home team's loss as well as the consumption of a lot of alcohol to begin the crowd formation process.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAngela,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn two short paragraphs you've blamed both the police and the socioeconomic condition of the community for the criminality of the looters.
The fact is the mob is always comprised of individuals. It can be readily assumed that every
man-jack of them know the law regarding looting an hooliganism.
The fact that someone, somewhere in England was abused by the police will in no way provide the slightest mitigation when the accused stand before the dock to plead their cases.
Does what you say mean that I am entitled to burn your home to the ground and steal your car because I don't think life is fair? I'm unemployed, and if you have a job then by default you are oppressing the hell out of me.
One cannot break the law; one can only break oneself against the law. If I break the law, then am I not a criminal? Of what good does it do to ruin myself in this way?
"In the end, group identity is a precondition for a riot: people will only riot when they think their actions are aligned with the worldview of the group as a whole".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis position is plausible but does not, in my view answer all the questions relative to group behaviour.
People are known to do in groups not only what they would not do alone, but what they often would not even think of doing at all. Some, like those in a gang, will go along with the group out of fear of reprisal, of losing face, or self esteem or out of a sense of needing the group.
Also, how does the "group identity as a precondition" account for the disparity of the rioting London "group", when we are told this group cut across all social classes, colours and racial barriers? What is there in the "worldview" of a rich, young, white suburban, female A student, that would lead her to loot and burn alongside her urban, uneducated counterpart?
And how do you explain the eleven and twelve year olds who, for the most part, may not even as yet have developed a coherent "worldview"? Would their behaviour be due to group identity, or could it possibly be due to group imitation, or the tutelage of some significant adult?
I would also not rule out two other factors, that of motivational and/or inspirational leadership, and need or(in this case)greed rather than group identity.
To accept the position of the writer - that a shared worldview is a "precondition for a riot", would lead one to seriouly ponder the kind of worldview that could cause people from all walks of life to plunder and maim like so many 19th century pirates. What kind of "worldview" produces groups like this in a 'civilized' society?
What a pile of psychobabble CRAP! These mindless mobs are a result of the welfare/entitlement mentality the government has engendered. There is no autonomy or ideals in these government induced thugs. By the way, if the responsible private individuals were permitted to protect themselves and their businesses, I believe the majority of these thugs would have thought twice about harming innocent individuals and destroying the businesses of the armed responsible citizens.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMike you are making it way too complex. These amoral people do not need deep therapy or observation. Start with getting the government out of promoting the entitlement mentality with all the destructive welfare and entitlement programs. These stunted mindless clods need to grow up and learn self sufficiency (which doesn't entail taking from someone else).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReal cause of London riots is passive life people are living.Man have tremendous energy, there is no way to spend this energy in modern world.All modern amenities T.V.Internet, mobile, extra extra made life too easy and passive.There is no scope for aggressiveness, adventures, play,challenges.Energy is freezes This is very dangerous situation. In this riot that exposed.Social psychologists,economists thinkers must find out solution for this chronic diseases other wise this diseases spread in all mega cities of world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article's author, like many other scientist, has a real problem coping with the fact of emergent behavior, that is, self-organization that so common with complex systems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe word is sheer.
While you clearly have a pretty distorted view of the "entitlement mentality" which actually infests the rich far more than it does the poor, and are obviously anti-Christian, you did get one thing right - everyone has the God given right to defend themselves and their families from harm.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf these idiots have a problem with the police then they should deal with the police. They should not attack store owners and certainly not the low paid workers in the stores who would lose their jobs and ability to support their families if the damage to the stores is great enough.
"While you clearly have a pretty distorted view of the "entitlement mentality" which actually infests the rich far more than it does the poor, and are obviously anti-Christian, you did get one thing right."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBucket, if I become a billionaire by working all my life, honestly earning every penny I have, in what way do I behave as though I am entitled? What do you know about the wealthy to make a statement like that?
Further, any billionaire will necessarily pay more in State, federal and Local taxes in ONE YEAR than you will most likely EARN in a lifetime. A lot of that money will go to pay for Government programs to serve your vaunted poor. What have YOU done for them lately besides bitch about the rich on their behalf? How much do YOU actually pay in taxes each year?
When someone comes to expect and rely on a check from the government, a check he or she didn't EARN, that's called entitlement. What the hell ELSE would you call it? Nothing enslaves a people more than Government handouts without any effort in return.
Our "war on poverty" has cost trillions more than the war on drugs ever will, and has only served to solidify the poor into the largest entitlement class voting block this country has ever seen.
As to Christianity, you betray your ignorance there as well. Christ was no "community organizer He was not here to organize the masses for revolt, or to lead them into a utopian socialist collective. He spoke to enormous groups of people or to single individuals as just that; INDIVIDUALS!!! At one point, he answered a question regarding the payment of taxes by taking a coin from a Pharisee and saying "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.
He never once said, as you and people of your ilk seem to suggest, that he expected Caesar to take care of the poor, or that some government agency or other should. Christs entire purpose here on earth was to encourage us to love one another, to take care of and be accountable to one another; that does not mean he wanted us to hire an overbearing, monolithic, bureaucratic, cash devouring monster to do it for us.
I suggest you take caution when you start making statements about someone elses religious belief system, especially when you betray your ignorance with such silly, hackneyed, prepubescent statements. Someone might get the idea that youre yet again another feather-headed Atheist/Socialist, bereft of any sense of history or context.
while imprecise, the study of human behavior is an old and fruitful field. in fact, as social animals humans are very good at it, on a subconscious level. it is when they try to formulate rational explanations based on ideologies that they go so very wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisindividual behavior will vary with circumstance and individual emotional states. it is the same with groups and crowds, and individuals who are aware of this, and who can identify events that can serve as triggers to emotional states or motivation circumstances can in fact affect group or mob behavior.
all it takes is a few rock throwers to incite riot police to violence, which is all it takes to incite a mob to violence. a few broken windows is all it takes to incite people to break more windows, and that is all it takes for purposeful criminals to create cover for dedicated criminal activities, such as purposeful looting. which can in turn lead to indiscriminate looting by otherwise law abiding people, who become carried away by group identification and dynamics.
societies that work to enhance the us-v-them mentality, and where there is a real or perceived social, economic or class distinction are setting themselves up for such social disturbances.
when poor people, students, immigrants and underclasses see their governments cut funding to programs and services that serve those groups, when those groups are told by their political leaders, the media and social pundits that economic difficulties are the fault of such groups, such groups come to see the representatives of governmental authority (police) and the upper classes (high end retailers) as their natural enemies, and when feel provoked they will respond with violence. What surprises me most is that such social unrest was unanticipated and that the authorities were so woefully unprepared for it.
then again, i suppose i could be wrong.
the difference between syria and london is geographic, and nothing more. the restraints of society are based on group identification and loyalty, and mobs are restrained by the behavior that is acceptible to that particular group. when the authorities are seen as 'the other', the bad guys, whether in syria or london, the mob will react poorly. authoritarian crackdowns will do little more than to cement the us-v-them mentality in the minds of the various groups involved.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnonsense. human beings are not rational actors. the subconscious social programs that determine our attitudes and which have the leverage to control our behavior is not amenable to the coldly logical arguments that apply to 'game theory'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The fact is the mob is always comprised of individuals. It can be readily assumed that every
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisman-jack of them know the law regarding looting an hooliganism."
groups, and even mobs, do not behave as individuals. and groups or individuals do not follow laws because they are laws, they follow laws because the laws are just, and they break the laws when doing so is just, in the opinion of the individual or the group.
you want to burn someones home down because they have a job and you do not? you are not alone, read up on the French Revolution, and study what 'mobs' did to the homes and the pertsons of the nobility.
the rational reason was anger at the murder of a homeless person and the fact that so many of the Brits are like those in the USA, very close to being homeless and not eating in this depression. If it was only youth that rioted you should understand that they have less of a sense of hopelessness in doing something, anything. Older people have generally been beaten down or don't want to lose their stipend that is allotted by a corporation or the government. We had a great example of the power of youth in a protest by summer exchange students at the Hershey plant in the Harrisburg, Penna area this week as shown by the bravery of youth or foolhardiness depending on your outlook. And finally some of our unions joined the kids. No one listened over ten years ago when I told the union I belonged to about the problem, nor did my Republican representatives! But this week, some foreign youth expected better from my nation and hopefully it will result in no more enslavement of foreign workers. The youth are probably more aware of the fact that the City of London, INC. is one of the largest 'off shore banking tax havens' and so England needs to be set back on the track of caring for the Commons and commoners rather than the Royalty and the Wealthy. See Shaxon's Treasure Islands for more on the tax haven and corporate non payment of wealth for upkeep of the various countries where the corporations operate. The Weathermen were the children of our wealthy back in the 1960's and had seen their parents falsehood. Youth are expecting better of us old farts. There is no deep dark psycobable reason for the riots in England, Libya, etc. it is the lack of jobs, and therefore Masland's hierarchy of needs are not being met.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood points, sjn. And long recognized as commonsense ones at that. So why aren't they implemented?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPazuzu