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- relatively unorganized and unpredictable social behavior

In contrast to institutionalized behavior, a well-organized and rather predictable one, collective behavior operates largely outside the confines of norms. Despite it being rather amorphous, sociologists have broken down a structure that it follows.The degrees of normative regulation for the social behavior are distinguishable when arranged on a continuum.

Collective behavior (behavior less regulated by traditional norms)
- panics, crowds, fashions, rumors, public opinion, social movements

Institutional behavior (behavior more regulated by traditional norms)
- small groups and large organizations

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Collective Behavior & Social Movements Homepage

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Welcome to Sociology 335: Collective Behavior and Social Movements

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Modernization is the form of social change that involves transforming an agricultural society to an industrialized one (415). Modernization does not destroy tradition. In fact, it's more likely that it reinforces tradition and vice versa.

Through modernization, societies are advancing technologically while growing apart culturally. These trends led to the development of two theories regarding the change in global society. The convergence theory argues that modernization will bring non-Western and Western societies together by diverting from cultural barriers. Under modernization's influence, technocrats and leaders in non-West countries will dissolve their cultural differences with the West. The divergence theory emphasizes the developing separation between non-Western and Western cultures.

IS THE UNITED STATES IN DECLINE?

The proposed theories called for an evaluation of whether non-Western societies are more like/unlike Western societies. From a U.S. standpoint, Paul Kennedy argued that the U.S. does not have enough resources on the financial front to solve the handful of economic issues, problems in public education, and social strifes. While many sociologists agree with Kennedy, they argued that the United States has great potential to resolve these problems. Their reasoning included the fact that the U.S. is the world's largest economy, the greatest military power, and the United States' democracy is widely admired. Joseph Nye concluded that the U.S. possesses both hard and soft power. Hard power being the economic and military strength and soft power being the ability of persuasion through intangible sources (417).

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FORMS OF COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

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FORMS OF COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

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Social movements are conscious efforts to bring about or prevent change (412) These movements are more purposeful than the prior forms of collective behavior. They are more structured, though no necessarily centrally coordinated. A social movement is also more enduring than any other collective behavior, giving them potential to build more membership. Types of social movements include:

1. Revolutionary movements: movements that seek radical change in a society with a goal of overthrowing and replacing the existing form of government. Such movements often lead to violence and illegal action.

2. Reform movements: movements that seek partial change while supporting the existing system and its preservation with improvements through legal action.

3. Resistance movements: movements that seek to preserve an existing form of government by resisting social change (ex. the KKK)

4. Expressive movements: movements that seek to change individuals and not society. Most are religious in nature.

Three theories contribute to determining the causes of social movements. Eric Hoffer proposed the frustration theory. Hoffer believed that participants of social movements use it as a diversion from their personal problems and frustrations. Participants, according to Hoffer, gain senses of nobility, belonging, and identification. In contrast to the frustration theory, the breakdown-frustration theory argues that a social breakdown (i.e. widespread unemployment, pollution, or racial strife) can develop frustration among the masses. Consequently, a social movement develops. The resource mobilization theory argues that social movements develop in response to the availability of resources for mobilization; including organization, leadership, money, and access to mass media. Each theory applies depending on the movement. Crisis movements - involving the lower classes, minorities, or unemployed - typically revolve more around frustration while affluence movements - involving mostly affluent Americans - revolve more around resource mobilization.

Though they often fail to meet their goals, social movements can influence public policy, lead to new institutions, and make their participants more knowledgeable about societal issues.

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A crowd is a collection of people temporarily doing something while in proximity of one another. Social psychologist Gustave Le Bon determined that a crowd is homogeneous in thought and action. As a crowd, people possess a collective mind. This collective mind is emotional and irrational without civilizing restraint. People in a crowd usually dismiss their mask of civilized behavior and act on their barbaric, primitive instincts. According to Le Bon, individuals succumb to the collective mind as a result of social contagion - the spreading of a certain emotion and action of one member of the crowd to another. Contagion roughly depends on the crowd size and noise.

While Le Bon set separated crowd behavior from normal social interactions, most present day sociologists argue that there are more incidents of civilized behavior within a crowd, and that despite the appearance of homogeneous activity, the actual homogeneity was exaggerated by Le Bon. In fact, the appearance of unanimity was found to be more of an illusion than a reality. Sociologists Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian developed the emergent-norm theory. This theory declares that all members of a crowd develop a new norm to deal with the unconventional situation facing them through interaction.

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A rumor is an unverified story that spreads from one person to another. Sociologists view rumors as a normal form of communication because people act on a basis of unverified reports daily. Consequently, rumor is  a process in which many individuals try together to construct a definition on an ambiguous situation. A rumor is most likely developed when the demand for news about an equivocal situation is not presented in institutionalized forms of communication. Thus, rumors are a more common form of interpersonal communication in societies where people place little trust in mass media.

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A fashion is a great, though brief, enthusiasm among a relatively large number of people for a particular innovation. Fashions are subject to traditional norms and almost all aspects of human life - clothes, art, hairstyles, architecture, philosophy - are influenced by them.

A source of fashion includes the placed value  of change. In result, clothing, hairstyles, etc. are all subject to change routinely. In addition, changes in fashion are often promoted to increase demand. Lastly, fashions, more often than not, work their way down. Most fashions derive from higher classes and work their way down to the lower classes. Two subcategories of fashions include fads and crazes.

A fad is a temporary enthusiasm for an innovation less respectable than a fashion while a craze is a fad of serious consequences. Fads are typically trivial, but sometimes serve as a sense of status. They also provide people with a sense of being part of a group. Crazes are usually economic in nature, including what's known as a boom; a situation in which the demand of something of popular and exaggerated value, and a bust, in which people sell things perceived as worthless.

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THE SIX FACTORS NECESSARY TO PRODUCE COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR:

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THE SIX FACTORS NECESSARY TO PRODUCE COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR:

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1. STRUCTURAL CONDUCIVENESS: Before taking part in collective behavior, a common condition, like living in the same neighborhood, has to be shared in order for assembly and communication.

2. SOCIAL STRAIN: Strain can arise from conflicts within groups, government failure to meet the public's needs, or social inability to problem solve.

3. THE GROWTH AND SPREAD OF A GENERALIZED BELIEF: Those participating in collective activity eventually learn to share beliefs regarding the social strain.

4. A PRECIPITATING FACTOR: Sometimes, social strain is brought to a high pitch, thus confirming the generalized belief about it.

5. THE MOBILIZATION OF PARTICIPANTS FOR ACTION: Leaders of a group move participants to a specific location.

6. INADEQUATE SOCIAL CONTROL: Police, or other agents of control, fail to adequately prevent collective action.

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FORMS OF COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR: PUBLIC OPINION

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FORMS OF COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR: PUBLIC OPINION

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In sociology, a public refers to a dispersed collection of people who share a particular interest or concern (411), making many publics within a population. Public opinion is the collection of ideas and attitudes shared by the members in a particular public (411). The opinion changes often and is often represented via surveys and polls.

Propaganda is communication tailored to influence opinion (411).  It is distinguished from other communications because of its purpose to change opinion. Alfred and Elizabeth Lee identified a number of methods by which propaganda influences opinion. Some of the more popular methods include:

1. Name calling; giving someone a negative label.
2. Glittering generality (the opposite of name calling); associating an idea or product with an ambiguous but popular concept.
3. Transfer; associating an idea or product with something else that is widely respected, admired, or desired.
4. Testimonial; having a celebrity endorse or oppose an idea or product.

Despite such methods, propaganda is limited. There are at least three identified limits media has on public opinion. First, a multitude of organizations present diverse viewpoints. Second, majority of the time the media only presents what the audience wants to see or hear. Third, communication usually happens through the two-step flow: we hear of an issue via mass media, but we choose to accept or reject it after being influenced by our opinion leaders.

However, there are four ways in which the media affect opinion.

1. The authentication of information; making it credible.
2. The validation of private opinions, preferences, and values.
3. The legitimization of unconventional viewpoints; the more we read of an opinion that seems ridiculous, the more likely we are to rationalize it.
4. The mass media concertizes anxieties and ill-defined preferences.

These concepts are more likely to prevail in democratic societies, as opposed to developing countries in which is there stricter government control.

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A panic is a "collective behavior that is characterized by a maladaptive, fruitless response to a serious threat" (407). When we look at the "fight or flight" response, majority of the time it's rational to use flight as an adaptive response to successfully avoid danger; ex. a burning building or near car crash. However, in panic doings, flight is more likely to be irrational and recalcitrant. It leads to loss of self-control and increases the likelihood of danger imposed on both oneself and others. Consider a dozen people trying to escape a burning building stampeding on one another or a car swerving out of the way to avoid being hit, but causing other vehicles to lose control and swerve into one another.

There are several preconditions that must be met before panic is developed. Firstly, there must be a perception that a crisis exists. Second, intense fear must result in response to the perceived danger. Third, in a group there must be panic-prone individuals. Such people are typical focused on their own safety and disregard the consequences of their frantic behavior imposed on others. Lastly, there must be a lack of cooperation within a group. However, majority of the time people have a sense of responsibility to others. An example of such behavior includes the majority of those who were able to escape the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Mass hysteria is the occasion of numerous people engaging in frenzied activity without regarding the source of their fear. Those who are not participants in such hysteria are categorized as having critical ability; the fundamental ability to reason with logic.

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EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
The evolutionary theory argues that societies "change gradually from simple to more complex forms" (417). Herbert Spencer, and early exponent of the theory, believed that all societies follow the nature laws of evolution. The concept of the survival of the fittest played a large role in the development of this theory. It was the idea that the aspects within a society that worked well would survive and those that didn't would not.

CYCLICAL THEORY
According to the cyclical theory, societies move forward and backward, up and down, in an endless series of cycles (418). Oswald Spengler, a German historian, compared a culture to an organism. He proposed that "like any living thing, a culture went through a life cycle of birth, youth, maturity, old age, and death" (418). While Spengler's theory is considered more misleading than useful present day, his idea that change occurs in cycles has altered social sciences.

Arnold Toynbee and Pitirim Sorokin both developed theories in result of Sengler's theory. Toynbee did agree with Spengler in the sense that cultures rise and fall, but not according to a biologically determined cycle. He proposed the idea that humans and environments influence change; that being the challenges environments pose and the resolutions humans choose to solve them. In short, civilizations will only thrive through challenges. Though interesting, Toynbee's theory doesn't give allow us to determine the fate of a society until after a challenge could not be overcome. Nevertheless, his theory allows us to explain what happened rather than predict what will happen. Sorokin, on the other hand, argues that "societies fluctuate between two extreme forms of culture, which he called ideational and sensate" (418). Ideational culture emphasizes the value in faith and argues that it is the key to knowledge. Sensate culture focuses on how science and concrete evidence is the path to knowledge. Like Toynbee's, Sorokin's theory is speculative and unable to break down scientifically.

EQUILIBRIUM THEORY
The equilibrium theory argues that all parts of society serve some function and are interdependent (419). If a part of society changes, other parts will follow its lead in order for society to function. All parts of society, according to this theory, are moved through a moving equilibrium towards a more harmonious system. This theory is useful for explaining gradual change.

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The most representative view of this theory is Karl Marx's theory that society revolves around conflict and that conflict is the key to radical change. Marx claimed there are two classes in a capitalist society; the bourgeoisie/capitalists and the proletariat/workers. Marx predicted that the workers would eventually revolt against the capitalist system and replace it with a communist society. He failed to consider the large working class and the possibility of positive changes in the workplace by the government. His predictions, however, did urge the government to make the workplace a better environment. On the other hand, Marx was able to predict a large-scale industry, emphasis on capital on big corporations, and the strain between technology and employees. Today, his proposed idea that material conditions shape political, social, and intellectual life holds true.

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According to symbolic interactionism, human beings actively interpret the world around them and then act in accordance with the interpretation (420). The two major types of social change revolve around modernization in agricultural and industrial societies. Both impact an individual's outlook on the world, self-perception, and interactions. In traditional societies, people tend to have a clearer self-concept because they are familiar with certain social statuses since youth. In contrast, people in modern societies achieve certain statuses that they did not learn through their childhood. This gives people a less clear self-concept and makes social interactions out to be more problematic. In addition, people in traditional societies tend to feel like more of an integral part of a group. "In this kind of society, primary relations are prevalent, causing people to interact with genuine interest in the interaction itself" (421). However, in modern societies, it's more likely that you'll find people who value their independence of others and privacy. Superficial interactions are more common because of this.

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WHY UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL CHANGE IS IMPORTANT IN MAKING A BETTER LIFE FOR OURSELVES AND OUR SOCIETY

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WHY UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL CHANGE IS IMPORTANT IN MAKING A BETTER LIFE FOR OURSELVES AND OUR SOCIETY

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Social change is a crucial part of understanding the transformations within cultures, institutions, behaviors, relationships, and stratification. It's of great importance that we take the time to understand how social reform derives and its consequences. If we were to look at the U.S., for example, and evaluate the significant changes within our society, we would see a multitude of positive outcomes. Some include the fact that our economy has prospered greatly, women are slowly but surely winning their fight for for age equality, living standards are rising, people are becoming better educated, etc.

However, without social change, our future could be at stake. Being a participant in social movements can aide in preventing our system from proceeding with restrictions on immigration, as immigrants make up over 40% of our country's population. It could also lead to better education systems and more opportunities for lower class youth who cannot afford the same education as those in upper classes. To prevent conflicts that arise from differences in culture, religion, or class, we can do more to act on social change and better our future.