Rioting in American Society - Essay Example

Hysteria on this level was a mass-ecstasy of panic, through which later psychologists interpreted that individuals shed their exhibitions and released repressed thought energy through violent activity in a type of trance – many mob participants were allegedly “seized” by some force they identify as coming from outside of themselves and overtaking them, causing the person to commit acts of violence or lust that would not ordinarily be even within the threshold of their annual conscious awareness.

This is similar in experience and description as possessions reported by ethnographers and anthropologists with ritualistic religions. The psychology of crowds and mass persuasion has steadily advanced since the time of Mackay, yet there are still no explanations for these aspects of human experience from psychology that really explain with any certainty what is occurring in the dynamics of the group mind, or if a group mind even exists. If it does exist, the concept should shatter our commonly held assumptions about individuality and the autonomy of being.

Yet if it is not something we can consciously experience, or that happens on cue, it cannot be replicated or tested. Even wildfires, tornados, and hurricanes have a set of evolving principals describing their behavior that are accepted as scientifically valid. Crowd dynamics, as a science, and group psychology can combine to collect evidence on riot situations when they occur in modern times and research historical records of riots to see if they can find patterns and rules of behavior in chaos.

Thus a question arises as to whether or not a riot can be organized, for if it is organized in advance it would simply be an attack on a location and not an eruption of primal chaos and the group mind. We need then to discover if there is a valid method of judging the difference between these two situations. From this we can posit the first distinguishing characteristic of