CO SCI 136 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Social Reality, Wayfinding, Crowd Psychology
Document Summary
Lecture 22: psychology of crowds in public transport and during evacuations. Mass action and mundane reality: an argument for putting crowd analysis at the centre of the social sciences. Difference between physical and psychological crowds (former can become the latter) People in crowds do not lose their identity; they are meaningful in terms of shared identities, and they act based on shared group norms/ for shared interest. Power abets the full expression of social identities. ". Collective empowerment = function of number and coordination of participants. Two senses of shared social identification: representational sense: people define themselves in terms of category membership. Senses not necessarily correlated: e. g. possible to experience one and not the other. Shared identity facilitates co-action (more likely to engage (closely) with others if they are part of your ingroup) Models of crowd behaviour oftentimes treat people as individual units, though they should also factor in group memberships and relationships.