Advanced Social

Psychology
The problem of individual
and group
 the master problem of social psychology
(Allport 1962)

What is the psychological status of the group?

 Overview
Group Mind theories
Le Bon
McDougall

Allports individualism
 Group mind
Collective behaviour qualitatively different from
individual behaviour
Role of group-level phenomena in distinguishing
psychology from sociology
Durkheims argument
Crowd theory: fell b/w psych & socio
Tarde & Sighele: question of criminal responsibility
Crowds vs organized groups
 Le Bon
The law of mental unity of crowds: a
psychological crowd emergence of a group mind
Not the sum of individual psychologies

Individual psychology: rational, conscious and

logical
Collective psychology: irrational, unconscious
and instinctual
 Evidence
Discontinuity b/w lone and collective behaviour

French revolutionary crowds (Taine)

Enlightened citizens of peaceful habits

endorsed savage proposals
 Heroic crowds:
Contagion
Leadership

Paradox of the collective as a force for good

 Trotter (1916)
Wartime: people come together and sacrifice
their lives for others in the service of the nation

herd instinct : a non-reducible properly of the

collective
 McDougall
We may sum up the psychological character of the
unorganized or simple crowd by saying that it is
excessively emotional, impulsive, violent, fickle,
inconsistent, irresolute and extreme in action, displaying
only the coarser emotions and the less refined
sentiments; extremely suggestible, careless in
deliberation, hasty in judgement, incapable of any but
the simpler and imperfect forms of reasoning; easily
swayed and led, lacking in self-consciousness, devoid
of self-respect and of sense of responsibility,
 and apt to be carried away by the consciousness of its
own force, so that it tends to produce all the
manifestations we have learned to expect of any
irresponsible and absolute power. Hence its behaviour
is like that of an unruly child or an untutored passionate
savage in a strange situation, rather than that of its
average member; and in the worst cases it is like that of
a wild beast, rather than like that of human beings (p.
64)
 Otherwise rational and peaceful people could behave
abominably in a group:

while in the year 1906 the newspapers contained many

reports of almost incredible brutalities committed by the
peasants in many different parts of Russia, an able
correspondent, who was studying the peasants at that
very time, ascribed to them, as the most striking quality
of their characters, an exceptional humaneness and
kindliness (p. 65)
 BUT the civilization process takes place through
participation in groups:
all mans highest expressions, including art,
science, morality etc. were social products

distinction between organized and unorganized

groups
 Group mind accounts
Le Bon
instincts and unconscious forces

McDougall
emergent functions of collectively such as
system and organization
conscious perception and knowledge can
operate in the collective
 McDougalls The Group Mind
group mind as a system of relations between
individuals in the group

mind = an organized system of mental or

purposive forces (p. 9)
this could apply as much to a group as to an
individual
 the more organized the group, the more complex its
psychology and the more developed its group mind

minimal conditions for a group mind:

1. Some common object of mental activity

2. A shared emotion or reaction to this common object
3. Reciprocal influence between members in terms of
their reaction to this object
4. Additionally, but not necessarily, an awareness of
the group as a whole
 The presence of a developed collective mind overcomes
the excesses of primitive crowds.

Conditions for such a development:

1. Continuity in the existence of the group

2. Self-awareness of the group in the minds of its
members
3. Relations with other groups, which promotes this
group self-awareness
4. The development of traditions and customs
5. The development of organization, social structure and
a division of labour, which raises the level of group
performance.
Key difference from Le Bon:
Group mind only in organized groups

McDougall later regretted using the term group mind.

there is no consciousness except that of individuals
His criteria for a group mind was most clearly fulfilled in
the case of nations
 Freud
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
(1921)
Identification with others in the group and with a
leader-figure
a psychology of groups: distinct scope,
categories and topics, non-reducible to individual
psychology
 Individualism
Floyd Allport
Stimulus-response principles of learning theory
(Reductionist)
you cant trip over a group
There is no psychology of groups which is not
essentially and entirely a psychology of
individuals (1924, p. 4)
 there is no mind separate from the minds of the
individuals making up the group

The group as a psychological entity is therefore

a nominal fallacy
behaviour of collective entities = the behaviour of
individual people
 Collective vs individual behaviour
Allport: stimulation

Same observation as Le Bon etc., different

process (individual):
(1) existing (similar) constitutions
(2) social facilitation
the individual in a crowd behaves just as he would
behave alone only more so (p. 295)
 methodology
Laboratory experiments to demonstrate social
facilitation:
hand-grip strength
cyclists
Tripletts fishing reels

Social facilitation vs rivalry

 Enhancing of existing responses

(quantitative not qualitative)

Dominant responses/learned behaviours vs

difficult actions
 Allports (1962) partial recantation
Ultra-individualism as a product of its time?

Responding to Sherif, Asch

Problem with the personification of the group

Group real but not of same order as individual

 Three key points
 Summary
Group mind theories distinctive psychological
properties and processes in group behaviour
Le Bon: collective psychology as irrational,
unconscious, instinctual
Trotter, McDougall: paradox of the collective as
a force for good
McDougall: distinction between organized and
unorganized groups
 McDougall: group-mind as system of relations

Allport: applied s-r principles to social

psychology
Group behaviour due to existing individual
constitutions and social facilitation
Hence group behaviour only quantitatively
different from individual behaviour