Mass Psychology Revisited: Insights from Social Psychology, Neuroscience and Simulation

Thomas Brudermann ()
Additional contact information
Thomas Brudermann: University of Graz, ISIS/Institute for Systems Science, Innovation and Sustainability Research

A chapter in Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics 2012, 2014, pp 39-53 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Mass psychology plays a role in many different phenomena like human stampedes, financial bubbles, fashion trends or political movements. Although of different nature, phenomena driven by mass psychology have a common ground: Individual decision making is replaced by psychological contagion, and facts are replaced by opinions about facts. The aim of the paper is to illustrate how technological and methodological progresses in recent years advance the understanding for mass dynamics. Neurosciences allow for a better understanding of human behavior on the individual level; studies inter alia indicate that human brains are not well-equipped for independent decision making. Moreover, agent-based simulations close the analytic gap between individual decisions and collective outcomes. Simple simulation models for example reveal that the susceptibility of people to certain messages, opinions or emotions is the key factor for large-scale propagation of social phenomena. Results from both fields hence contribute to a better understanding of mass dynamics.

Keywords: Mass psychology; Crowd psychology; Collective behavior; Collective dynamics; Social influence; Neuroscience; Agent-based modeling; Simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-02447-9_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319024479

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-02447-9_3

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().