ABC Listen, Podcasts, Radio, News, Music, and more.

There is this long-standing idea that when people get in a crowd, when they're among a massive other people, they get more irrational.

By the mere fact that he forms part of an organized crowd, a man descends several

wrongs in the ladder of civilization. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual. In a crowd,

he is a barbarian. Wow. That is, creature acting by instinct.

These are the hugely influential words of Gustave Le Bonn, a French social psychologist

working in the late 1800s, early 1900s, who was considered the father of crowd psychology.

Basically, what he theorized is that by the sheer fact that people are in a crowd of people,

they lose the sense of self.

And he later on concluded that because of this, crowds are basically trouble in the making.

It's an idea that's reverberated through history.

LeBahn has had many fans among dictators.

Mussolini was a fan, for example.

And he has said here and there in writing that he has learned a lot

about crowd behavior by studying the book that Gustav LeBahn wrote.

So because of this, Leban is often referred to as the father of crowd psychology, but it's safe to say that

crowd psychology has not had the best father.

But was Gustav Leban wrong? Like, aren't crowds sometimes dangerous? How does crowd psychology really work?

Nowadays we know much more about crowd behavior. There are modern-day social psychology theories that have debunked the theory of Le Bonn.

And we know much about crowd behavior that is more connected to reality.

This is All In The Mind.

I'm Sana Khadar.

...