What Are Collective Behaviors?
Imagine a football game where the teams never huddled before
each play. That’s the way things were in college football until a
bright Gallaudet quarterback noticed that the other teams were
trying to spy on their sign language signals. Thus, in the late
1800s the circular football huddle was born (read Gallaudet on
Wikipedia, 2008). Gallaudet is a national historic treasure in the
culture and development of education for the Deaf and in progress
toward the Americans with Disabilities Act. Gallaudet University
began as a federal effort to support the development and education
of Deaf persons. It has progressed and grown in many ways as a
subculture group that coexisted within, but not always a part of
the mainstream culture. There have been some fascinating collective
behaviors transpire at Gallaudet which can help you to better
understand how and why large numbers of people accomplish their
goals in society.
In 1988, Gallaudet experienced a Deaf civil rights process that
forever shaped the campus culture and the self-identity of its
student body and the Deaf throughout the country. When another
president, in a long string of hearing presidents was appointed by
the mostly hearing Board of Trustees, the campus collectively
expressed their discontent in what eventually came to be known as
the Deaf President Now Movement. The outcome was the eventual
appointment of a deaf president and the expectation of
consideration of the deaf community’s interest in their own
self-governance
In 2005-6, a new President, Dr. Jane K. Fernandez was appointed
president. Fernandez was born Deaf. She was born to a deaf mother
and hearing father. Most deaf children are born to hearing parents
and unless the parents exert tremendous effort to start them out
very early in ASL, most grow up as Fernandez did—learning ASL later
in their childhoods. As a potential president, she had extensive
experience in deaf education and in the leadership of Gallaudet
University.
The protest began with the Black Student Association on campus
when another presidential candidate who was black was eliminated
from consideration. The protest grew as more and more students and
faculty began to oppose her appointment. Eventually the faculty
voted no confidence and the students shut down the campus.
Fernandez stepped down. She refused to take it personally and,
instead, attributed it to cultural issues and growing pains. One
side said she was opposed because she wanted Gallaudet to enhance
its academic rigor. Another side said she was opposed for not being
in touch with the real needs of the Deaf campus. I have interviewed
former faculty and students from Gallaudet. I have observed that
each one has a strikingly different view of what transpired. But,
can we study it as outsiders using a sociological analysis and at
least come to understand some of the collective behaviors that took
place on campus in an objective way? Yes.
One former professor at Gallaudet, Margaret Weigers Vitullo,
wrote an article in the American Sociological Association’s
Footnotes about the sociological definition of trust
that was at the heart of Deaf culture not just at Gallaudet, but
throughout the United States (See “Protest and Trust at Gallaudet
University” 2006 found at http://www.asanet.org/footnotes/mar07/fn7.html
I took the article from the Internet on 21 Oct., 2008). Vitullo
argued that the issue makes sense when you understand two types of
trusts experienced within groups: Calculative
Trust is trust based on performance and competence
(instrumental relationships) and Normative
Trust is trust based on a sense of belonging and
feelings (families and communities).
Calculative is more common in modern societies while normative is
more common in small traditional societies—Gallaudet’s student body
and faculty were more traditional and normative and President
Fernandez more modern and calculative. In essence the collective
protests created solidarity among students and faculty, but many
educators are concerned about the overall outcome of the protest.
Among the culture of higher educators a feeling of belonging is not
so important. Educators are focused on instrumental
accomplishments. They want test scores, graduation rates, and
GPA’s. So educators and their task-driven cultural points of view
felt threatened by the solidarity that pushed Fernandez out. This
explains in part why the accrediting agency that provides Gallaudet
with its credentials placed Gallaudet on probation for a few
months, but had to rescind that placement because of weak
grounds.
The students, faculty, and interpreters who place much more
cultural emphasis on unity and taking charge of the destiny of
their university perceived themselves as victims (again) of a
non-deaf culture. The Deaf Culture is the
culture of those who were born deaf, raised using ASL to
communicate, and/or educated as adults to serve as interpreters for
the Native Deaf. One crucial component of the Deaf Culture
is the core belief that “Deaf” is spelled with a big “D” and
disability is spelled with a small one (Deaf is not a disability,
rather a unique and co-existing ethnic sub-culture).
In the case of Gallaudet as with the Civil Rights Movement,
Women’s Suffrage Movement, and many other collective behaviors,
sociology opens a world of understanding about why and how people
behave collectively to accomplish their goals and interact together
in large numbers. Collective Behaviors are
unusual or non-routine behaviors that large numbers of people
participate in. There are a variety of types of collective
behaviors.
A 
Mass
is a large number of people oriented toward a set of shared
symbols or social objects (media). The NFL’s Super Bowl
draws an enormous mass of viewers in the US and the world—over 130
million in the US alone according to www.NFL.com . The annual World
Cup of Soccer (Known as Football outside the US) tends to draw over
1 billion each year according to www.FIFA.com. That’s a
tremendous number of people in a mass of fans and viewers
worldwide.
Crowds are large numbers of people in
the same space at the same time. As mentioned above they
are not always groups who share a common identity, have roles, and
meet together often. Crowds are more often many people in the same
place at the same time doing about the same thing (aggregates). My
wife and I stayed in Vancouver, British Columbia for the Pacific
Sociological Association’s National Conference. While there a
world-class marathon was run with thousands of participants. We
video-taped the beginning of the race from our 15th floor window of
the hotel. When you watch it think about how Sociologists try to
get a metaphorically similar view by studying masses and crowds.
This gives a uniquely powerful perspective when studying
society.
The Why and How of Crowd Behaviors
There have been a number of core research studies on how and why
crowds behave as they do. Keep in mind that a crowd at a bus stop
that gets on the bus does not necessarily qualify as having
participated in collective behavior because of the brevity of their
time together and the purpose in which they share the same public
space. A crowd coming together to celebrate a State College’s
transition to a University does participate in collective behavior
(See UVU case below).
Gustav Le Bon (1841-1931) was a French Social Psychologist who
studied crowds in his work, “The Crowd: A Study of the
Popular Mind.” Le Bon believed that when a crowd came
together their individual conscious merges into one large
collective conscious. Le Bon’s Contagion Theory
claimed that in a crowd people get caught up in the
collective mind of the crowd and evade personal responsibility for
their actions. Though his idea proved not to be true, it
helped other social scientist study the ways in which crowds and
the people who comprise them are motivated to act.
Another more viable argument, Convergence Theory, proved to be a
better explanation of crowd behavior. The Convergence
Theory claims that motivations are not born in the
crowd but develop in individuals who carry them to the
crowd. The crowd may provide an outlet for relieving their
frustration. By themselves, it would be difficult to act out.
Together in the group it becomes much easier with other like-minded
people. In other words angry people who feel victimized by a racial
injustice might come together (say the KKK or Nation of Islam) and
collectively their emotions would contribute to collective actions
that probably would not occur if such people were simply by
themselves.
Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian (1993) wrote a book about crowd
behavior (See Collective Behavior 4th edition Prentice Hall). The
Emergent Norm Theory claims that as crowds
form and people interact, new norms develop in the crowd and
facilitate certain actions. In other words events and
emotions develop within the crowd while they are together. For
example (and I know this is extremely unusual), In Bolivia a drunk
man was discovered beating a woman on a neighborhood street. A few
men came and stopped him and restrained him until the police
arrived. Word spread to the adult son of the beating victim and he
and his friends came to defend her honor. They overpowered the
original bystanders and began beating the drunk man. Yes, it gets
more complicated. The drunk man’s family heard about the new
beating of the drunk and an all out mob-on-mob brawl ensued. The
police arrived and rescued the drunk (this was on www.Youtube.com).
To understand crowds and how they function you need to think
about them in terms of: how they came to be a crowd; how they
compare or contrast to other crowds; and fundamentally what the
crowd did or did not do together. Consider a more normal
circumstance of a crowd at Utah Valley University. I started here
as a professor in 1993 when we were Utah Valley Community College
and had only 10,000 students. We became Utah Valley State College
in the 1990s then became Utah Valley University in 2008 with about
26,000+ students. By the time I retire in 2022 there should be
about 35,000 students enrolled here (UVU Factbook, 2007). On July
1st, 2008 a huge crowd gathered for the formal dedication ceremony
and ribbon cutting. Hundreds of people came to see state and
national dignitaries and local personalities where a series of 2
minutes speeches resonated throughout the campus (see photo
below).
This crowd came together to celebrate a new era of campus and
community connection. It was a Conventional Crowd is a
crowd that gathers for a typical event that is more routine in
nature (IE: Moody Blues concert, Super Bowl Game, or
Midsummer’s Night Dream play). An Expressive Crowd is a
crowd gathered to express an emotion (IE: Woodstock; the
Million Man March; or the 9-11 Memorial Services).
Solidaristic Crowds are crowds that gather as an act of
social unity (IE: Breast Cancer awareness events). All
three of these types of crowds are safe, non-violent, and mostly
predictable in terms of what they accomplish.
Acting Crowds are crowds which are
emotionally charged against an event or goal. Some become
mobs, but not all of them. This might happen when a large number of
fans exit an arena after their team won or lost. When they see
police arresting another fan their emotions become more
anger-centered and they collectively move against the police. The
fact that the other fan may have been robbing someone at knife
point may or may not matter if the others perceive an injustice or
overbearing police action. Generally speaking, Acting Crowds are
more dangerous that other crowds.
Many crowds have evolved into Riots, or
large numbers of people who act violently in protest against some
authority or action of others (typically governmental or corporate
authority). Fans whose team won or lost, employees laid
off from work, neighbors who are angry about a police action, and
other scenarios are connected to typical riots. Very few riots are
purely protestive in nature. In the 1991 Los Angeles Riots they
became commodity riots, where the original issue is forgotten as
locals loot businesses and stores for commodities. Commodity riots
are the norm since about the 1960s in the US. Prior to that,
property damage and violence against police were the norm.
The Why and How of Movements
On September 11, 2001 governmental, corporate, and private
organizations closed their doors and put their very best security
at protecting their people and property. Days later we realized
that the real threat was to New York, Washington DC, and
Pennsylvania only. Panic occurs when
crowds or masses react suddenly to perceived entrapment, exclusion,
or danger. Panics can impacts masses and crowds.
In the 9-11 terroristic attack the panic may have saved lives
and property had the terroristic threats been broader than they
really were. In the Stock Market, panics damage profits and put the
economy in peril. It doesn’t matter if the threat is real or
imagined (see Thomas Theorem). When something catches on for a
short season of intense interest, we call it a fad. A
Fad is a novel form of behavior that
catches on in popularity but later fades. The Lance
Armstrong forever strong wrist band was an example of a popular fad
that came and went to some degree of popularity.
On a larger scale and with more social impact, is the phenomenon
of a social movement. Social Movements are
intentional efforts by groups in a society to create new
institutions or reform existing ones. Social movements are
much more organized and goal driven than crowds' fad behaviors.
They typically organize to promote or resist change at some level
of society. They also tend to have the same intensity of
organizational leadership that might be found in a government or
business organization.
Messianic Movements seek to bring about
social change with the promise of miraculous intervention.
Almost always these movements are led by a rather charismatic
leader and followed by people inclined to need or want to be a part
of something exceptional in their lives. Charisma
means having an outstanding personality that magnetically
attracts others to you. In recent years there have been
three very similar messianic movements whose charismatic leaders
were born and raised in the US, but were not very successful in
their individual lives and ended up leading large numbers of people
to their mortal demise (See Jones, Koresh, and Applewhite
below).
Figure 1. A Comparison of Jones, Koresh, and Applewhite
Messianic Movements
© 2009 Developed by Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D
Although the details vary, these movements are very similar in
terms of what was accomplished and in terms of how their end was
voluntarily self-destructive. Many people feel threatened by social
change, especially when their definition of what keeps society
together, of what makes a “good” society, or what God would be
happy or unhappy with in our own society leads them to distrust the
collective direction of their main stream society.
In the three cases listed above, Jimmy Jones and the People’s
Temple, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, and Marshal
Applewhite and the Heaven’s Gate groups all had similar social
processes at play, even though there was no apparent connection
between leaders of one group and the others (Google “Cults that end
in suicide” to read about these cults all over the world).
Eventually the leaders, who have enough leadership skills to get
the group together and manage them, but not enough leadership
skills to negotiate their interactions with social organizations
outside of their compounds, run out of options and are content with
suicide and murder.
When threatened, the leaders call for more isolation. When
members question their authority they are exiled or co-opted.
Cooptation is the absorption of new
(threatening) ideas and people into the policy making
structure. In some cases questioning members are sent
away. In other cases they are recruited into the leadership
structure. David Koresh drifted into the already existent Branch
Davidian cult and posed a threat to Rodens (original founder
family). Koresh and others violently wrestled leadership from the
Rodens (he common law married Lois Roden in her 77th year). With
the Rodens gone, Koresh claimed polygamy, and sexual relations only
between females and himself. Koresh did not respect police
authority but used it to obtain his own goals of power and control.
Many members who still believed in the movement defected before the
confrontation murder suicide (Google Koresh and Branch Davidian for
much more detail).
There are other types of movements that can be classified in
terms of their function, similarities, or differences. A
Revolutionary Movement seeks to overthrow
existing institutions and class systems while replacing them with
new ones. The United States, French, Mexican and other
national revolutions fall under this category. A Reformist
Movement seeks partial changes in only a few
institutions on behalf of interest groups. In the US the
feminist, children’s rights, and animal protection movements are
indicative of this type movement. Most efforts work within existing
political channels.
A Conservative Movement seeks to uphold
the values and institutions of society and generally resist
attempts to alter them. The Conservative Right movement in
the US falls under this category. A Reactionary
Movement seeks to return the institutions and
values of the past by doing away with existing ones. The
Ku Klux Klan is an example of reactionary movement. An
Expressive Movement seeks to allow for
expression of personal concerns and beliefs. Punk, Goths,
and Emos are examples of this type.
Let’s briefly discuss a few sociological theories that support
the study of social movements. The Deprivation
Theory claims that people feel relatively deprived
in comparison to some other group or institution and use the social
movement to equalize things. Movements are more supported
when members feel that compared to others they are worse off and a
balance needs to be struck. The Structural-Strain
Theory claims that social problems/strains on the
current social structure combined with discontent lead to
movements. Such is the case with the spread of American
liberal values across the world via satellite TV. Many conservative
cultures world-wide (Muslim, Asian, and others) find the US and
other Western nations repulsive in their values on women’s roles,
sexuality, and crime. This unites many people in many diverse
societies to become like-minded in their values.
The Resource Mobilization Theory
maintains that a social movement succeeds or fails based on
people's ability to gather and organize resources. The
environmental movement has made tremendous collective progress
because of the vast numbers of key educational, governmental, and
social leaders who bring resources to bear on social change.
Given the discussion above, where would sociologists place
terrorism on the spectrum of types of social movements? Let’s
define it first. Terrorism is the use of
murder and mayhem to create a state of fear which can be used to
gain political, religious, or ideological advantage.
Terrorists can be classified as political, religious, and or
cultural (many overlap in terms of functions and goals). At its
core, terrorism follows a basic strategy:
- Scare average people and force their compliance with desired
goals of the terrorist group
- Force organized governments to overreact to terrorists in
trying to prevent future violence and thereby create sympathy among
average people
- Direct the attention of people and government to the
terrorists’ issues
- Obtain the organizational goals of the terrorist group
Terrorism works, and there appears to be an unending supply of
people willing to support terrorism for a “noble cause,” because
they are criminal minded to begin with or are somewhat insane
enough to forfeit their lives. Laird Wilcox wrote a paper in 1988
called, “What Is Political Extremism?” (Google title). In it he
discusses some of the characteristics of people inclined to
participate in or support terrorism among other extreme politics.
Wilcox argues that terrorist take the moral high ground, enjoy the
power, appear to be happier when they don’t have to make their own
decisions, and find a series of closes family-like relationships
among other terrorists.
Israel, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Asian Nations, and even the
United States have adopted the basic anti-terrorism doctrine of
moderate reactions to terrorism; no negotiation with terrorists;
use covert deception and detection combined with lethal
militaristic action; and unfortunately suppression of civil rights
for its citizens. In this regard terrorism always wins if the
economy, day-to-day lives, and safety of a society is out of
balance.
