Crowd Psychology and its Causes and Motivations: An Analytical Study in the Context of Pakistani Society

Abstract

Mob psychology is a discipline of social psychology, which studies how the collective psychology of a group is different from the individual psychology of its members. The study of mob psychology studies the behaviors and thought processes of individual crowd members and the crowd as a whole. Crowd's behavior is largely influenced by deindividuation and an individual's perception of the universality of the behavior, both of which intensify with the increase in the size of the crowd. If we look into the history, large crowds were able to cause dramatic and sudden social changes by neglecting the established due process which would often lead to controversies. Social scientists have put forward many theories to explain crowd psychology and the difference in the psychology of the collective crowd and the psychology of the individual within the crowd. There are three important theories in this regard, classical theory, deindividuation theory, and convergence theory. Mob psychology can be related to various contexts such as protests, riots, sporting events and even sometimes in online interactions.