Question

No single theory can explain the behaviour of all crowds. Discuss.

Answer 1

Social psychology is a broad field and among the various topics been discussed and researched Crowd Psychology is very prominent. Crowd Psychology basically deals with studies and researches on the behaviour of individuals in the crowd as well as the behaviour of the whole crowd as a single unit. There are various theories being given which attempts to discuss how crowd behaviour changes and is determined for various crowds with various individuals at diverse situations. It has also been found that as every theory has their unique opinions, it is very tough to use a single theory for explaining the behaviour of alll kinds of crowds.

On reading about various theories and the perspectives provided, it can be seen that many opinions wre contradictory to each other. On one hand, some theories have opined that individual's tend to show those behaviours in crowds which are not based on their thoughts and personality but are based on confirming to the thoughts, agenda and attitude of the crowd and it's leader. On the other hand, some theories opines that the actions exhibited in a crowd by an individual is actually based on his inner desires, thoughts and attitudes which he or she doesn't exhibit or express when alone. Some theories opines that individuals in a crowd wants to get rid of his own responsibility regarding a situation and wants to stay anonymous but on the other hand some other theories suggest that individuals in a crowd wants to share his or her thoughts and wants them to be heard with the help of a crowd support. While some Psychoanalytic theories opines that the id drives an individual to be in a crowd in order to fulfill some desires, some other theories also opines that crowd behaviour is driven by the superego which gets displaced by the crowd norms and leader control.

Thus, we can see that there wre contradictory opinions provided by various theories and in case of some crowds some theories may hold good while some other theories may not. Thus, in a nutshell every opinions provided by the diverse theories are important and they together can be utilised and analysed in order to explain crowd behaviour and thus, it is pretty tough to explain the behaviour of all crowds with the help of a single theory.