When people are alone, their behaviour can be different to when they are part of a crowd, and sometimes this change in behaviour can even lead to violence. When you consider that crowds exist in nearly all walks of life, such as work, sports and general social life, this can become a problem, so why is it that a persons behaviour does in fact change?

There have been many studies in conjunction with crowd behaviour and they often fall into the category of conformity. An example of a highly respected experiment to do with conformity was carried out by Asch. It involved showing participants a set of two cards. On one of the cards, there was a line, whilst on the other card, there was a three lines, one of which was identical to that on the other card. The experiment proceeded by Asch asking participants to say aloud which line out of the three matched the single line on the other card. He found that when the participants were alone and were asked to decide, they all answered correctly by matching the two lines. So, it was then that Asch decided to change the settings of the experiment. This time around, he made the participants group together, but did it in a way t

hat outcast one of the groups members in a way that the rest of the groups participants were now accomplices trying to catch out the naive participant.

From these two original arrests, a few members of the public began to bombard the two arresting police officers with stones and bottles due to their decision to take away the apparent offenders. On seeing the behaviour of the few members of the publics reactions, other passers by soon joined in until a riot involving over 3000 people broke out onto the streets of Bristol. From this study, it was found that after interviewing members of the riot, that the people involved were seeing themselves in a high position of power, and thought that they were doing the right thing, whilst at the same time, they thought that the police were not doing the right thing. Le Bon proceeded to call this 'Mob Behaviour'. It was argued, however, by Reicher, that the behaviour was not as erratic as first perceived, and in fact was planned out. This was due to the fact that none of the rioting members, hurt each other, and very few select buildings were chosen for damage, particularly those to do with power, such as the local tax office, whilst not damaging any of the area as a whole.

To conclude, it is evident therefore, that people can easily change their views and actions to simply fit in with the rest of the group or crowd. And even though it is not completely clear to why this occurs, it is now known that it is to do with the fact that people like to fit in with others, no matter how much

Some common words found in the essay are:
Behaviour Crowds, Deutsch Gerard, Le Bon, Pauls Bristol, Theory Reicher, experiment crutchfield, crowd behaviour, participants agreed, le bon, 'mob behaviour', involved participants, naive participant, deutsch gerard,
Approximate Word count = 1034
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)