In psychoanalysis and other psychological theories, the unconscious mind is the part of the psyche that is not available to introspection. Although these processes exist beneath the surface of conscious awareness, they are thought to exert an effect on conscious thought processes and behavior. Empirical evidence suggests that unconscious phenomena include repressed feelings and desires, memories, automatic skills, subliminal perceptions, and automatic reactions. The term was coined by the 18th-century German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
A category of social psychology known as "crowd psychology" or "mob psychology" examines how the psychology of a group of people differs from the psychology of any one person within the group. The study of crowd psychology looks into the actions and thought processes of both the individual members of the crowd and of the crowd as a collective social entity. The behavior of a crowd is much influenced by deindividuation and by the person's impression of the universality of behavior, both of which conditions increase in magnitude with size of the crowd. Notable theorists in crowd psychology include Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931), Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904), and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Many of these theories are today tested or used to simulate crowd behaviors in normal or emergency situations. One of the main focuses in these simulation works aims to prevent crowd crushes and stampedes.
Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon was a leading French polymath whose areas of interest included anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, invention, and physics. He is best known for his 1895 work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, which is considered one of the seminal works of crowd psychology.
Gabriel Tarde was a French sociologist, criminologist and social psychologist who conceived sociology as based on small psychological interactions among individuals, the fundamental forces being imitation and innovation.
The expression collective behavior was first used by Franklin Henry Giddings and employed later by Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, Herbert Blumer, Ralph H. Turner and Lewis Killian, and Neil Smelser to refer to social processes and events which do not reflect existing social structure, but which emerge in a "spontaneous" way. Use of the term has been expanded to include reference to cells, social animals like birds and fish, and insects including ants. Collective behavior takes many forms but generally violates societal norms. Collective behavior can be tremendously destructive, as with riots or mob violence, silly, as with fads, or anywhere in between. Collective behavior is always driven by group dynamics, encouraging people to engage in acts they might consider unthinkable under typical social circumstances.
A crowd is as a group of people that have gathered for a common purpose or intent. Examples are a demonstration, a sports event, or a looting. A crowd may also simply be made up of many people going about their business in a busy area.
Herd mentality is the tendency for people’s behavior or beliefs to conform to those of the group they belong to. The concept of herd mentality has been studied and analyzed from different perspectives, including biology, psychology and sociology. This psychological phenomenon can have profound impacts on human behavior.
Political psychology is an interdisciplinary academic field, dedicated to understanding politics, politicians and political behavior from a psychological perspective, and psychological processes using socio-political perspectives. The relationship between politics and psychology is considered bidirectional, with psychology being used as a lens for understanding politics and politics being used as a lens for understanding psychology. As an interdisciplinary field, political psychology borrows from a wide range of disciplines, including: anthropology, economics, history, international relations, journalism, media, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology.
Deindividuation is a concept in social psychology that is generally thought of as the loss of self-awareness in groups, although this is a matter of contention. For the social psychologist, the level of analysis is the individual in the context of a social situation. As such, social psychologists emphasize the role of internal psychological processes. Other social scientists, such as sociologists, are more concerned with broad social, economic, political, and historical factors that influence events in a given society.
The Nancy School was a French hypnosis-centered school of psychotherapy. The origins of the thoughts were brought about by Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault in 1866, in Nancy, France. Through his publications and therapy sessions he was able to gain the attention/support from Hippolyte Bernheim: another Nancy Doctor that further evolved Liébeault's thoughts and practices to form what is known as the Nancy School.
Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter, FRS was an English surgeon, a pioneer in neurosurgery. He was also known for his studies on social psychology, most notably for his concept of the herd instinct, which he first outlined in two published papers in 1908, and later in his famous popular work Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, an early classic of crowd psychology. Trotter argued that gregariousness was an instinct, and studied beehives, flocks of sheep and wolf packs.
Collective mental state is generally a literary or legal term, mostly used in sociology and philosophy, to refer to the condition of someone's being-state when around others. An assessment of a collective mental state includes a description of thought processes, memory, emotions, mood, cognitive state, and energy levels, including the meta overlay of interactions between individuals.
Enrico Ferri was an Italian criminologist, socialist and student of Cesare Lombroso, the founder of the Italian school of criminology. While Lombroso researched the purported physiological factors that motivated criminals, Ferri investigated social and economic aspects. He served as editor of the socialist daily Avanti! and, in 1884, saw his book Criminal Sociology published. Later, his work served as the basis for Argentina’s penal code of 1921. Although at first he rejected the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Ferri later became one of Mussolini and his National Fascist Party's main external supporters.
Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War is the title of an influential book by English surgeon Wilfred Trotter, published in 1916. Based on the ideas of Gustave Le Bon, it was very influential in the development of group dynamics and crowd psychology, and the propaganda of Edward Bernays. Trotter's book was also a key influence on Q. D. Leavis' book Fiction and the Reading Public (1932).
Collective wisdom, also called group wisdom and co-intelligence, is shared knowledge arrived at by individuals and groups with collaboration.
Crowds and Power is a 1960 book by Elias Canetti, dealing with the dynamics of crowds and "packs" and the question of how and why crowds obey power of rulers. Canetti draws a parallel between ruling and paranoia. Also, the memoirs of Daniel Paul Schreber are analyzed with an implicit critique of Sigmund Freud and Gustave Le Bon.
Herd behavior is the behavior of individuals in a group acting collectively without centralized direction. Herd behavior occurs in animals in herds, packs, bird flocks, fish schools and so on, as well as in humans. Voting, demonstrations, riots, general strikes, sporting events, religious gatherings, everyday decision-making, judgement and opinion-forming, are all forms of human-based herd behavior.
Crowd manipulation is the intentional or unwitting use of techniques based on the principles of crowd psychology to engage, control, or influence the desires of a crowd in order to direct its behavior toward a specific action. This practice is common to religion, politics and business and can facilitate the approval or disapproval or indifference to a person, policy, or product. The ethicality of crowd manipulation is commonly questioned.
Collective depression is one of many collective mental states, such as collective elation, collective paranoia, collective trauma, or collective grief, which may affect a group, community or whole nation. It is characterised by a prevailing and seemingly permanent sense of inadequacy, despondency, lack of vitality, sadness and hopelessness, shared by a high proportion of the members of a collectivity. As shown by Gustave Le Bon in 1895, it can be passed by contagion, in a way similar to a physical condition.
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego is a 1921 book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis.
