Sociology › Section U · Social movements and change › Topic U.1
Collective behavior
A crowd surges towards a stage, a rumour races through a school, a dance challenge spreads across the world in a week. Sociologists ask why people sometimes act together outside the usual rules, and whether crowds are as irrational as they look.
In this topic
- What counts as collective behaviour
- Crowds, masses and publics
- Four types of crowd
- Rumours, fads and panics
- Early views: contagion and convergence
- Emergent norm theory
- Value-added theory
- The assembling perspective
- Worked example: applying value-added theory
- Worked example: a crowd in a blackout
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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