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The Dancing Plague

fishera10_1 — 2025-09-16 15:21:55 UTC

The Dancing Plague was a documented moment of mass hysteria throughout Europe in the 14th to 17th centuries. Large numbers of people were affected by a "disease" that caused them to dance and do other unexplained actions uncontrollably, often times until they dropped from exhaustion, and for some even death. The cause of this "dancing disease" is still unknown, but common theories include stress, famine, disease, and ergot poisoning. The largest and most famous event revolved around the dancing disease is the dancing plague that occurred in July 1518, in Strasbourg, when hundreds to thousands of people started dancing uncontrollably for weeks.

Starting My Research

fishera10_1 — 2025-09-16 16:04:23 UTC

Leading Research Question:

My original question on this topic was: "What caused the Dancing Plague to occur?" Because this question could not be answered with the articles provided, I changed my question into a few different questions that could be explained by the articles.
"What are the underlying causes of mass hysteria?”, “In what ways does mass hysteria, specifically in the case of the dancing plague, affect society?”, and “Why would others join in on the dancing when they see others have not stopped dancing, and how does this connect with social contagion?"

Search Terms I Used to Find Articles

The Dancing Plague, 1518, Mass Hysteria, Mass Mania

I used the following databases:

Academic Search Complete (through UF's Shafer Library)

I chose five articles based on the following criteria

I made sure each article included sufficient information on either the dancing plague or the causes and effects of mass hysteria. Each article made an argument on the possible causes of the dancing plague, how mass hysteria begins, or the psychological effects of social contagion.

The Dancing Plague has been something of a mystery for hundreds of years, with no experts finding a for sure cause. Because we cannot confirm an exact answer to what happened, it is important to find answers of what affects the dancing plague has had on Europe, the understanding of psychological influence, connection between mind and body, and informing the public of outbreaks of behavior along with social contagion.

Article 1

fishera10_1 — 2025-09-18 15:45:05 UTC

Mental Warfare

Bernstein, M., & Baird, G.

https://research.ebsco

.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=18a43939-d093-32da-a5a0-3072fe1f6dab

Bernstein and Baird talk on the idea of social media and social contagion causing symptoms or signs of illness in those that are not directly affected. They connect these issues with what happened during the dancing plague and other phenomena that occurred and caused mass hysteria. They then take the topic of social contagion to social media, and how easily humans are exposed to facts, correct or incorrect information, and opinions. They also explain that because social media platforms use specific demographic groups to target individuals, people are very influenced by social media, causing social contagion.

The strengths of this article are the authors are passionate, knowledgeable and have heavily researched the topics of cognitive science of medicine, cognitive biases, statistics, and diagnostic radiology. The article being only eight pages long is a weakness, as well as the authors do not explore any other authors opinions or findings on the topic.

Article 2

fishera10_1 — 2025-09-18 15:51:37 UTC

Leading article: The dancing plague: a public health conundrum

Donaldson, L. J., Cavanagh, J., & Rankin, J.

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0033-3506(97)00034-6

Donaldson, Cavanagh, and Rankin explore the many possibilities of the cause of the Dancing plague. They first talk on the issue of if the dancing plague was caused by a physical factor, or a psychological factor. After arguing this idea, they look into the possible cases of the dancing plague, including demonic possession, epilepsy, the bite of a tarantula, ergot poisoning, or the cultural dimension. They go into depth of each example of why it could be an explanation of what caused the plague, but also give facts of why each one would not have made total sense.

Some weaknesses this article presents is the lack of length in the article. Although the article is short, Dondalson, Cavanagh, and Rankin provided sufficient information on the possible causes of the dancing plague. The authors also provided thoughts and evidence from other sources, causing their article to have more credibility.

Article 3

fishera10_1 — 2025-09-18 15:55:26 UTC

Affectivity, subjectivity, and vulnerability: on the new forces of mass hysteria

Lee, R. L. M.

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41286-022-00127-6

Lee starts the article by explaining what mass hysteria is, along with the major causes and many examples of mass hysteria and mass psychology. He also explores that today’s society has instability, disappearance of trust, and the deepening of insecurity, causing people to look towards the past for comfort. Lee goes into detail about how these issues affected the outcome of COVID19 in many areas. He also dives into the effects the social contagion through technology has caused in today's society, especially when it comes to the COVID19 epidemic.

A major strength of this article is the amount of information included that was supported by many different sources. The depth of the knowledge provided and also the great length of the article are both major strengths. A weakness of this article is the lack of connection between mass hysteria and the dancing plague. Lee provides great information about mass hysteria and causes, but hardly any information connecting directly with the dancing plague.

Article 4

fishera10_1 — 2025-09-18 15:57:59 UTC

Divine punishment or disease? Medieval and early modern approaches to the 1518 Strasbourg dancing plague

Miller, L. J.

https://doi.org/10.3366/drs.2017.0199

Miller starts her article by explaining specifically the beginning of the dancing plague of 1518 using writings from observers of the plague. She then talks on the issues people faced in Europe that caused extreme stress, including effects such as famine, disease, floods, extreme weather, the bubonic plague, and the stress of religion. Miller then digs deep into the effects religion may have had on the dancing plague, as well as the beliefs of those that were experiencing the dancing mania in either themselves or others. Last, she discusses whether the dancing plague was caused by a physical phenomenon, or a psychological sensation, arguing facts of all possibilities.

Miller’s article is strong in the sense that she includes information from many different points of views of other authors and observers. Her article is also strong in factual evidence, length, and depth of each topic mentioned. Miller’s article directly correlates with the topic of the dancing plague and how mass hysteria affects society.

Article 5

fishera10_1 — 2025-09-18 16:00:03 UTC

Dancing plagues and mass hysteria

Waller, J.

https://

research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=90334a59-f9e6-3204-90ea-e1eda1f2371e

Waller starts his article by explaining what the dancing plague was, along with other strange phenomena that occurred in Europe and the United States. He then looks into observations of others and confirms that those partaking in the dancing were in an altered state of consciousness. Waller then investigates the possibility of religion and fear being a main cause for the dancing plague and connects these with other mass panic events such as the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. He ends his article explaining why mass hysteria was a major cause of the contagion of the dancing plague, while also explaining the effect mass panic has on people and society.

A weakness this article presents is the lack of length. A strength this article provides, though, is Waller includes ideas and evidence from other authors and articles, supporting his stance on the topic. He also provides sufficient information under each topic he introduces.

fishera10_1 — 2025-09-20 21:21:20 UTC

Connections

fishera10_1 — 2025-09-20 21:45:19 UTC

The first and third article are similar in the ways that they explain what social contagion is and what can cause it, both including the use of technology being a big factor. They also explain that people feed off others emotions and shape their own emotions off others.

The second, forth and fifth articles are similar as the authors are attempting to find a solution as to what caused the dancing plague. They look into possibilities of both physical and mental factors. They also looked into peoples observations of the dancing plague and from that, studied how cultural attitudes toward religion had changed throughout time.

Gaps and Limitations

fishera10_1 — 2025-09-20 22:12:44 UTC

My original question of "What caused the Dancing Plague to occur?" cannot be answered with these articles provided. There has been so much research done, but nobody has confirmed the actual cause. The question "What are the underlying causes of mass hysteria?" has been answered throughout each article. The underlying causes of mass hysteria has been explained to be stress, fear and the spread of information on diseases or other unfortunate events happening that cause symptoms to appear. Technology has also been explained to be a huge factor into causing mass panic today. The question of "In what ways does mass hysteria, specifically in the case of the dancing plague, affect society?" has been partially answered by these articles. By looking into peoples observations on the dancing plague, we are able to understand how views on religion, dancing and sin, and curses have changed throughout time. Because there were multiple breakouts of the dancing plug throughout a few centuries, there were obvious differences in how treatments and punishments were given. The last question of "Why would others join in own the dancing when they see others have other stopped dancing, and how does this connect with social contagion?" has also partially been answered by the articles. Articles one and three talked about the fact that when someone is experiencing an actual illness, and tells others about their symptoms, people look within themselves and may see that they have one or two of the symptoms that person is experiencing. This then leads them to have extreme stress, and to also think that they have the illness as well, and may make them feel ill, even when they do not actually have the sickness. This is similar to the dancing plague because bystanders of the dancing plague may see symptoms in others that they have in themselves, or think they have in themselves, and come to believe that they will just turn out like the others that are uncontrollably dancing. Religion, the belief of curses, and distress appear to be the main factors of social contagion in the dancing plague.

References