Crowd psychology
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 associated with the fact that large numbers of people show an often surprising appearing behavior. For example, triggering a panic due to a rather insignificant event.
According to studies by Davis and Harless (1996 ) important decisions are not made in a group of individuals, but brought out from the crowd in coordination to achieve a goal through collaboration. In the history of large numbers of people have been able to initiate dramatic and sudden social change outside the established legal processes. Collective cooperation is condemned by some, supported by others. Social scientists have provided a number of different theories to explain mass-psychological phenomena and to explain how the group behavior on the behavior of individuals is significantly different within the group.
Contagion theory
An early theory of collective behavior, the French sociologist Gustave Le Bon with his main work " psychology of the masses " (1895 ) formulated. According to Le Bon's contagion theory (german Contagion theory ) to practice social groups from a hypnotic effect on its members. Managed in the anonymity of the crowd, giving people on their personal responsibility and surrender to the contagious emotions of the crowd. The crowd then developed a life of its own, churns feelings on luring people tend to irrational actions. As Clark McPhail points out, systematic studies reveal, however, that " the madding crowd " is not a life of their own shall keep separate from the thoughts and intentions of their members. Norris Johnson, who explored a panic during a Who concert in 1979, came to the conclusion that the mass of many small groups consisted whose members are mainly trying to help each other.
Le Bon's work is the starting point of Freud's essay Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Wilhelm Reich formulated from his own further development of psychoanalysis in 1933 his work The Mass Psychology of Fascism.
Approximation theory
The convergence theory (English Convergence theory ) postulates that the mass behavior does not go out from the crowd itself, but is brought in from individuals in the group. The group formation itself amounts to the approximation of individuals with similar sentiments. In other words, the contagion theory states that groups causing people to certain actions; approximation theory, however, says the opposite: people who want to act in a certain way, are joining forces.
An example of the convergence theory is a phenomenon which can sometimes be observed when increasing immigrants appear in a previously homogeneous area, and members of existing community itself (apparently spontaneously ) join forces to threaten the newcomers. Supporters of the convergence theory believe that in such cases, not the mass produced racial hatred or violence, but that the animosity has simmered a long time in many residents. The mass arises from the convergence of those people who are against the new neighbors. The convergence theory states that the behavior of the mass itself is not irrational, but rather the people existing views and values express in the group, so that the reaction of the mob is only the rational product of wide-spread popular feelings.
Methodology
In the academic study of mass psychology classic methods reach their limits very quickly. Unlike individual psychological issues can not be validated with experiments in the laboratory hypotheses of mass psychology. Interviews and questionnaires are disabled means, field studies also prove to be rather unsuitable, because they are difficult to handle in this context. Recent research apply to agent-based models to analyze collective phenomena ( Brudermann 2010).
Areas of application
The financial market psychology is an important application area in which the mass-psychological research can establish. The pooling of knowledge on investor behavior with the findings of mass psychology reveals new models and approaches for more realistic explanation concepts of financial market dynamics. Because the cycle of boom and bust is a "natural" element in the financial market history and traditional economic theories and financial market models (eg efficient market hypothesis ) but fail to explain and predict such trends and their underlying behavior of market participants. Because they do not take into account the whole person, but just an academic abstraction of those aspects of human behavior that they deem economically relevant. And they forget the company with which the markets are inextricably linked. It is precisely at this point is the mass psychology, which is based in part on the concepts of mutual social and psychological contagion and the human propensity for orientation and imitation of others in the social environment, to. The research of collective dynamics yet further contributes to a better understanding of the processes in the financial markets, by pointing to the relationship between short-term developments and long -term processes of change. Based on the principle of long and short cycles are distinguished in the mass psychology between consciously realized short-lived effects and the underlying slow, subtle and often unrecognized developments. This central insight that already goes down substantially on Gustave LeBon, makes the mass-psychological research to contribute to the description of the interaction of an accumulated since the 1960s debt mountain and the periodic emergence of boom -crisis cycles during the past decades ( Fenzl 2009).