Psychology, the study of behaviour / by William McDougall.

  • McDougall, William, 1871-1938.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Psychology, the study of behaviour / by William McDougall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    confidently made to him; and, if the same proposition is made to him by a hundred or a thousand men, it becomes difficult for him to retain a critical attitude towards it. But now, when a great crowd acclaims a statement made by an orator, the proposition not only comes to each member as the accepted opinion of each of his fellow-members; but the fact that these constitute a crowd, a vast whole impressive by reason of its mass, its power, its unknown possibilities, renders each man more suggestible, more ready to accept its opinions uncritically, than if he merely heard the same opinion expressed by the same number of individuals. The most striking illustration of this suggestibility of crowds is afforded by many recorded instances of collective halluci- nation thus induced, instances in which all or most of the members of a crowd have been led to perceive objects that had no existence, objects such as the sea-serpent, or a fiery cross, or even a host of men or angels in the clouds. By reason, then, of its emotional excita- bility, its high degree of suggestibility, and the diminished sense of responsibility of its members, the behaviour of the fortuitous unorganized crowd is apt to be of a kind much inferior to the average behaviour of its units when they think and act as individuals.