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Mob Psychology

From The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
Crowds are defined as “co-acting, shoulder-to-shoulder, anonymous, casual, temporary, and unorganized collectivities” (Brown, (1954), p. 840). According to Floyd Allport (1924), “A crowd is a collection of individuals who are all attending and reacting to some common object, their reactions being of a simple prepotent sort and accompanied by strong emotional responses” (p. 292). Crowds can be subdivided according to whether they are active or passive, the former being a mob and the latter an audience . Mobs are further classified according to the dominant behavior of participants, whether aggressive, escapist, acquisitive, or expressive. Aggressive mobs, which include riot and lynch mobs, involve a display of aggression toward persons or objects. The dominant behavior of escapist mobs is one of panic, as during a fire in a theater. Orderly escape is not panic. According to Brown (1954), “Panic is emotional and irrational. The escape behavior of the fear-driven mob must either be…
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Full text Article Mob Psychology

From The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
Crowds are defined as “co-acting, shoulder-to-shoulder, anonymous, casual, temporary, and unorganized collectivities” (Brown, 1954, p.840). According to Floyd Allport (1924), “A crowd is a collection of individuals who are all attending and reacting to some common object, their reactions being of a…
| 980 words
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Crowd psychology emerged in the late nineteenth century when the rise of trade unionism and socialism led to widespread fears about the masses among social elites. This was reflected in theories portraying crowd members as mindless and barbaric. Most famously, Gustav Le Bon (1895) argued that people…
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Full text Article The Money Game

From QFinance: The Ultimate Resource
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| 610 words
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Full text Article Le Bon, Gustave (1841-1931)

From Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
A physician and polymath whose writings ranged from studies of Arab and Indian civilization to treatises on photography and theoretical physics, Le Bon is best known today as the author of The Crowd (1895 [trans. 1896]) and as the founder of a school of social psychology that became linked to…
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Full text Article Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

From QFinance: The Ultimate Resource
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Full text Article The Great Crash, 1929

From QFinance: The Ultimate Resource
WHY READ IT? Entertaining account of the market mania and resulting historic crash of 1929. Tells a relevant and timely story of over-investment and market frenzy, and why financial bubbles since then have always been compared to the Great Crash. Traces the market fluctuations of the time, showing…
| 563 words
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Full text Article Mob Psychology

From Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology
Rioters take to the streets of Baltimore on the...
Mob psychology, also called crowd psychology, is the branch of social psychology that examines the behavior of people in large gatherings. However, mob psychology is commonly equated with herd mentality, the idea that people in crowds cease to behave as individuals and become part of a single…
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Full text Article behavioral finance

From Webster's New World Finance and Investment Dictionary
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Full text Article collective behaviour

From The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology
The early theory of crowd behaviour is associated with G. Le Bon (1895), who argued that, in periods of social decline and disintegration, society is threatened by the rule of crowds. In the crowd, the individual psychology is subordinated to a ‘collective mentality’ which radically transforms…
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Full text Article Collective Behavior

From World of Sociology, Gale
Collective behavior is a form of social behavior in which groups of people, in response to some influence or stimulus, act in spontaneous and unstructured ways. These actions usually violate dominant social norms of behavior and may be explosive, unstable, and/or unpredictable. Collective behavior…
| 1,001 words
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