Friday, February 25, 2011

Gustave Le Bon: Mass Psychology

Rob Edwards

Gustave Le Bon: Mass Psychology

  • Gustave Le Bon was a french social psychologist with strong conservative leanings

  • Thousands of isolated individuals can be extremely susceptible to mob mentality when the opportunity presents itself

  • Whoever the individuals are that compose these crowds, regardless of their class, occupations, character, or intelligence, all become one collective mind

  • A lot of times this is brought about by the unconscious dealings of the mind that far outnumber its conscious dealings

  • The greater part of our daily actions are the results of hidden motives which escape our observation

  • In a crowd, every act and thought is contagious

  • People become the slave of the unconscious activities of their brains, and mob rule takes over

  • Mob rule makes all people, no matter what their social class, act like uncivilized beast

  • The ideas that take control of mobs are often the ones that are the most absolute and simple

  • Crowds have a powerlessness to reason

  • The leaders of these crowds are more frequently men of action than thinkers

  • “Ideas, sentiments, emotions, and beliefs possess in crowds a contagious power as intense as that of microbes”

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