
noun Definition of collective behavior : the mass behavior of a group whether animal or human (as mob action) : the unified action of an assembly of persons whether organized or not also : the like or similar response of the members of a society to a given stimulus or suggestion
Full Answer
What are some examples of collective behavior?
Types of Collective Behaviour
- Casual crowd which comes together by coincidence and does not interact with each other. ...
- Conventional crowd which gather for a certain purpose like a scheduled event. ...
- Expressive crowd comes together to express the strong emotions for a certain issue. ...
- Acting crowd engage in violent and destructive behaviour. ...
What are the different forms of collective behavior?
Types of Collective Behavior
- Crowds. A crowd is a large number of people who gather together with a common short-term or long-term purpose.
- Conventional Crowd. A conventional crowd is a collection of people who gather for a specific purpose. ...
- Expressive Crowd. ...
- Acting Crowd. ...
- Protest Crowd. ...
- Riots. ...
- Social Movements. ...
- Disaster Behavior. ...
- Rumors, Mass Hysteria, and Moral Panics. ...
- Fads and Crazes. ...
What does collective behavior mean?
collective behaviour, the kinds of activities engaged in by sizable but loosely organized groups of people. Episodes of collective behaviour tend to be quite spontaneous, resulting from an experience shared by the members of the group that engenders a sense of common interest and identity.
What is collective behavior in sociology?
by Sociology Group Collective Behaviour can be defined as any action engaged in by a sizeable but loosely organised group of individuals that is not mandated or regulated by institutions, which is spontaneous and consequently more volatile and less predictable. The term was first used by Franklin Henry Giddings in 1908.

What is an example of collective behavior?
There are three primary forms of collective behavior: the crowd, the mass, and the public. It takes a fairly large number of people in close proximity to form a crowd (Lofland 1993). Examples include a group of people attending an Ani DiFranco concert, tailgating at a Patriots game, or attending a worship service.
What does collective Behaviour mean?
Definition of collective behavior : the mass behavior of a group whether animal or human (as mob action) : the unified action of an assembly of persons whether organized or not also : the like or similar response of the members of a society to a given stimulus or suggestion.
What are the 4 main types of collective behavior?
Sociologist Herbert Blumer (1969) developed a popular typology of crowds based on their purpose and dynamics. The four types he distinguished are casual crowds, conventional crowds, expressive crowds, and acting crowds.
What are some successful examples of collective behavior?
Examples of collective behavior may include a crowd doing the wave at a football game, a group of people forming around a street preacher, or even widespread interest in a new fad or product, like silly bands. I will explain collective behavior in sociology through three main forms: the crowd, the mob, and the riot.
What causes collective behavior?
Collective behavior results when several conditions exist, including structural strain, generalized beliefs, precipitating factors, and lack of social control.
What are the traits of collective behavior?
Characteristics:Spontaneous and episodic: Collective behaviour is spontaneous and takes place occasionally rather than regularly and routinely. ... Unstable: It tends to be short-lived as long as the centre of attraction exists. ... Unstructured: ... Unpredictable: ... Irrational: ... Emotional: ... Non-traditional:
Why is it important to understand collective behavior?
Collective Behavior's great interest lies in its high cultural value, as it can explain important social phenomena, and because of its high concrete and practical value; studies on the dynamics of Collective Behavior can help prevent unrest, and violence; it can also help to plan and suggest strategies as to prevent ...
How does collective behavior affect society?
The most notable immediate effect of all kinds of collective behaviour is to alter the salience of various problems, issues, and groups in public awareness.
What is the difference between collective behavior and group behavior?
Collective behavior involves limited and short-lived social interactions, while groups tend to remain together longer. Collective behavior has no clear social boundaries; anyone can be a member of the collective, while group membership is usually more discriminating.
What are the 8 types of collective behavior?
Common forms of collective behavior discussed in this section include crowds, mobs, panics, riots, disaster behavior, rumors, mass hysteria, moral panics, and fads and crazes.
What is the only thing that can end the collective behavior episode?
The fifth condition is mobilization for action, when leaders emerge to direct a crowd to action. The final condition relates to action by the agents of social control. Called social control, it is the only way to end the collective behaviour episode (Smelser, 1962).
Which of the following is a theory of collective behavior?
Contagion theory states that collective behavior happens because people who think alike are drawn together. Social movements often push for change outside of institutional means, such as using protests.
What are the 8 types of collective behavior?
Common forms of collective behavior discussed in this section include crowds, mobs, panics, riots, disaster behavior, rumors, mass hysteria, moral panics, and fads and crazes.
How does collective behavior affect society?
The most notable immediate effect of all kinds of collective behaviour is to alter the salience of various problems, issues, and groups in public awareness.
What is collective behavior in sociology quizlet?
collective behavior. relatively spontaneous and relatively unstructured behavior by large numbers of individuals acting with or being influenced by other individuals. crowd.
What are the differences between collective behavior and social movements?
Collective behavior describes the actions, thoughts and feelings of a relatively temporary and unstructured group of people. In contrast a social movement is a large ongoing group of people engaged in organized behavior designed to bring about or resist change in society.
What is collective behaviour?
Collective behaviour refers to actions people engage in when they are a part of a larger group.
What are the characteristics of collective behaviour according to Le Bon?
Le Bon argued that anonymity, suggestibility and contagion are the main characteristics of groups that result in collective behaviour.
Who coined the term deindividuation?
Leon Festinger
What is deindividuation?
Deindividuation occurs when individuals become unidentifiable members of the crowd and lose a sense of personal responsibility for their actions.
How can deindividuation lead to antisocial behaviour?
The anonymity of being in a crowd and identifying with the crowd makes individuals more likely to engage in antisocial behaviour under the influenc...
What are the types of collective behaviour?
Prosocial and antisocial collective behaviour.
What is prosocial collective behaviour?
Prosocial collective behaviour occurs when the collective actions of the group intend to benefit others.
What is antisocial collective behaviour?
Antisocial collective behaviour refers to socially harmful and disruptive crowd behaviours like violence or vandalism. Antisocial crowd behaviour i...
What is an example of collective behaviour?
In 2011, a protest was organised in response to the police shooting of Mark Duggan. The protest later turned into wide-scale rioting that spread ac...
What are the different types of crowds?
The different crowds are casual, conventional, expressive, and acting crowds. Casual crowds might be people on a beach, conventional crowds might b...
What is an example of collective behavior?
Collective behavior refers to spontaneous and mostly unstructured behavior by large numbers of people acting with or being influenced by each other...
What is an expressive crowd?
An expressive crowd is a group of people who come together, mainly to be excited and to express one or more emotions. Examples include religious re...
What is collective behavior?
Collective behavior refers to the spontaneous and unstructured behavior of a group of people in response to the same event, situation, or problem, like this crowd of people, for example. These events do not conform to typical structures that other events are formed around, such as rules or laws, but are not necessarily deviant in nature either.
What are the characteristics of collective behavior?
Collective behavior can be characterized as being: 1 Short-lived in nature 2 Having no clear leaders or organization within the group 3 Having weak to little guidelines or procedures to follow
What is the collective behavior of unstructured and disorganized crowds?
The collective behavior of unstructured and disorganized crowds can often turn into mobs and riots. Investigate different types of crowds and discover ways collective behavior can turn an event into something far more dangerous. Updated: 08/26/2021
What is a crowd that quickly changes types?
Crowds can quickly change types, and they often turn into mobs. Mobs are crowds in which the members are quick to take action and engage in behavior, sometimes violent, that they would not usually engage in. Riots have larger numbers of people and often last longer than crowds or mobs. Learning Outcomes. After this lesson, you should be able to: ...
What is a crowd?
Crowds are a group of people who share a common concern in close proximity of each other. Behavior for the people in the crowd is not defined, but the members of the crowd often feel something should be done immediately. There are different types of crowds. Casual crowds are loosely organized and emerge spontaneously.
What is an expressive crowd?
Expressive crowds form around an event that has an emotional appeal. It seems the man on the platform is talking about the recent tax hike that the city council approved. That may be why this crowd below has become engaged and is growing.
What is a crowd of people?
Example of a crowd of people. The crowd is defined as a relatively large number of people in close proximity to each other (this is sometimes referred to as localized collectivities ). The crowd reacts at once to a common focus or concern.
What is collective behavior?
Collective behavior is a term sociologists use to refer to a miscellaneous set of behaviors in which large numbers of people engage. More specifically, collective behavior refers to relatively spontaneous and relatively unstructured behavior by large numbers ...
What is a conventional crowd?
A conventional crowd is a collection of people who gather for a specific purpose. They might be attending a movie, a play, a concert, or a lecture. Goode (1992) again thinks that conventional crowds do not really act out collective behavior; as their name implies, their behavior is very conventional and thus relatively structured.
What is a crowd?
A crowd is a large number of people who gather together with a common short-term or long-term purpose. Sociologist Herbert Blumer (1969) developed a popular typology of crowds based on their purpose and dynamics. The four types he distinguished are casual crowds, conventional crowds, expressive crowds, and acting crowds.
What is social movement?
A social movement is an organized effort by a large number of people to bring about or impede social, political, economic, or cultural change. We have much more to say about social movements later in this chapter, but for now simply identify them as an important form of collective behavior that plays a key role in social change.
What are some examples of acting crowds?
Many films and novels about the Wild West in U.S. history depict mobs lynching cattle and horse rustlers without giving them the benefit of a trial. Beginning after the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, lynch mobs in the South and elsewhere hanged or otherwise murdered several thousand people, most of them African Americans, in what would now be regarded as hate crimes. A panic —a sudden reaction by a crowd that involves self-destructive behavior, as when people stomp over each other while fleeing a theater when a fire breaks out or while charging into a big-box store when it opens early with an amazing sale—is another example of an acting crowd. Acting crowds sometimes become so large and out of control that they develop into full-scale riots, which we discuss momentarily.
Is the line between a conventional crowd and an expressive crowd clear cut?
As this example indicates, the line between a conventional crowd and an expressive crowd is not always clear-cut. In any event, because excitement and emotional expression are defining features of expressive crowds, individuals in such crowds are engaging in collective behavior.
What is collective behavior?
To shed more light, a collective behavior refers to the action or behavior of people in groups or crowds where, due to physical proximity and properties of the group, individual behavior deviates from normal, tending toward unpredictable and potentially explosive behavior. People engaging in collective behavior may be divided into crowds.
What are the conditions of collective behavior?
1. Collective behavior always represents the actions of groups of people , not individuals. The action of a lone gunman who opens fire in a post office is not collective behavior, ...
What is social movement?
Social movements are a collective behavior that typically develops over a longer period ; crowds are more ephemeral. Both long-term and short-term incidents of collective behavior can, however, transform society.
What are some examples of collective behavior caused by panic?
A good example of collective behavior caused by panic is the actions of the passengers on the flight that was overtaken by terrorists on September 11, 2001 and then crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
What is pattern behavior?
Patterned behavior is activity that is relatively coordinated among the participants. For example, crowd members may all be focused on the same thing, such as a rock band. They attend concerts with their friends and progress to and from the concert site in a more or less orderly fashion.
Is grieving over a dead child collective behavior?
Parents who grieve over a dead child are emotional but not necessarily acting collectively. But if a group of parents gather at the site of a school bus accident, weeping over lost lives, this is collective behavior. Emotionality per se does not define collective behavior; what defines collective behavior is its spontaneous character.
Is collective behavior a social behavior?
Collective behavior often falls outside everyday institutional social behavior. The behavior of people who commute to work together is not considered collective behavior, because commuting is an ordinary part of their everyday life. However, if traffic comes to a halt because a barge has plowed into a drawbridge up ahead and everyone gets out of their cars to look, their actions constitute collective behavior because they are all responding to the same unusual circumstance.
What is collective behavior?
Collective Behaviour can be defined as any action engaged in by a sizeable but loosely organised group of individuals that is not mandated or regulated by institutions, which is spontaneous and consequently more volatile and less predictable.
What is an expressive crowd?
Expressive crowd comes together to express the strong emotions for a certain issue. For example, people at weddings, funerals, political rallies, etc. Acting crowd engage in violent and destructive behaviour. For example, a mob i.e. an extremely incited crowd which is likely to commit or has already committed a violent action as in mob lynching, ...
What is the fifth type of crowd?
Clark MacPhail and Ronald T. Wohlstein (1983) identified a fifth type of crowd. Protest crowd is a gathering of people who collectivise for political, social, economic change through collective actions such as sit-ins, demonstrations, marches, rallies, etc.
What is casual crowd?
Casual crowd which comes together by coincidence and does not interact with each other. For example, people on a train or people standing in a queue.
Is protest crowd a part of social movement?
Protest crowd might form a part of the social movement but involves another long term collective change such as online petitions, policy changes, etc. This field has come to dominate the study of collective behaviour in Sociology.
What does "collective" mean?
1 : denoting a number of persons or things considered as one group or whole flock is a collective word. 2 a : formed by collecting : aggregated. b of a fruit : multiple. 3 a : of, relating to, or being a group of individuals.
What does "pick up litter" mean?
2 : done or shared by a number of persons as a group Neighbors made a collective effort to pick up litter.
