Sociology

Sociology Study Guide

crowds, riots, fads, and public opinion. Collective behavior is hard to study because it is unstructured. It can also be difficult to trace underlying causations and regularities from one incident to the next. Another reason it is difficult to study is its commonly spontaneous nature. Researchers have been able to identify five factors or conditions that can lead to a collective behavior episode: • Environmental factors: Timing and ease of communication add to the likelihood of spontaneous behavior. • Lack of norms: An absence of developed norms that will guide actions. • Conflicting values and norms: The existence of contradictory cultural elements. • Relative deprivation: The occurrence of people not having what they think they deserve. • Breakdown of social control: A failure of police to perform their roles or a loss of confidence in the system. Theories Value-Added Theory: Developed by Neil Smelser, this theory identifies six conditions that must be present for any type of collective behavior to occur. This theory helps to identify the conditions that underlie collectivebehavior. His social conditions include: • Structural conduciveness: A social structure that allows collective behavior to occur. • Structural strain: The perception that something is wrong. • Generalized belief: An analysis of what is wrong, how things should be, and how the problem is corrected. • Precipitating factors: The spark that lights the fire; the often dramatic event that stimulates action. • Mobilization of participants: Action! Vague norms emerge. • Social control: shapes or constrains the other five requirements. Contagion Theory: The French sociologist Gustave Le Bon developed this theory to explain crowd behavior as the result of infectious emotion and action. Individuality is lost in the collective mind of the crowd. This collective mind is caused by: • Invincibility: Apparent power in numbers • Contagion: Rapid infection of ideas • Suggestibility: The likelihood of agreeing with ideas Emergent-Norms Theory: Lewis Killian explained crowd behavior as a result of norms that arise in the process of social interaction. In this theory, conformity to the groups explains the behavior of the crowd. The norms of the group explain what behaviors are accepted in crowd situations and are initiated from the visible actions of a few. Even those who disagree with the norms remain silent and passive; in other words they support it by not voicing or acting against it.

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