Six zombie ideas in crowd psychology

 

What are zombie ideas? These are ideas that keep coming back, even though they have been thoroughly refuted by the evidence. They should be dead, but they won’t stay dead! They keep coming back because they serve certain interests or prejudices (or both). Here are six zombie ideas in crowd psychology that keep cropping up in everyday talk, in the news, among policymakers and practitioners, and in academic publications. And here’s why they’re wrong.

1. De-individuation

The most distinctive claim in the ‘de-individuation’ family of theories was inherited from Gustave Le Bon – the idea that being anonymous leads to a loss of self and hence uncontrolled, anti-normative behaviour. This idea could not cope with the evidence that conditions of anonymity in fact are associated with a wide range of behaviours, including accentuation of pro-social behaviours. There is little evidence that anonymity leads to a ‘de-individuated’ state of reduced private self-awareness. Rather, anonymity makes group identities more salient and hence leads to more, not less, conformity to relevant situational norms.

Key reading: Postmes & Spears (1998)

Gustave Le Bon headstone

(Pierre-Yves Beaudouin / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)

2. Groupthink

While groupthink is supposedly a pitfall of small groups and organizations rather than crowds, I include it here as it’s another example of an anti-collectivist concept. It is used loosely by commentators to refer to any situation where group members prioritise the group’s own ideas over critical or external views. For example, some of those involved in decision-making at the height of the Covid pandemic have used the idea of groupthink to explain organizational failures in decision-making. The distinctive claim of the ‘groupthink’ concept is that highly cohesive groups will be subject to concurrence-seeking at the expense of critical inquiry, leading to faulty decisions. A big problem for this idea is that there is not much evidence that greater cohesiveness leads to worse decision-making. Rather than the tendency to ignore critical evidence being a function of groupness, it’s more likely to be an effect of particular group norms (for example that value loyalty).

Key reading: Aldag (2022)

3. Mass panic

Aside from the profound problems of judging whether behaviour counts as ‘panic’ in an emergency (what is reasonable behaviour in this situation?) and the related problem of trying to import a polysemic everyday term into scientific explanation, there is another basic problem. There is no evidence that people in crowds are typically uncontrolled, selfish or competitive in emergencies. The common finding of social support among people in emergencies adds to the problems of this concept.

Key reading: Clarke (2002)

4. Contagion

One of the most popular concepts in the social and behavioural sciences, ‘contagion’ is often used synonymously with spread and social influence. But there is little evidence that mere exposure alone is sufficient to prompt emulation. Group boundaries in the transmission of behaviours and emotions demonstrate this. Even for supposedly basic processes like so-called emotional contagion, reviews of the evidence suggest that the mimicry involved is not automatic, but rather relates to communication goals that already involve an emotional orientation to the other person.

Key reading: Drury et al. (2019)

5. The hooligan

The hooligan is a concept from sociology more than psychology, but it is a good example of a dispositional explanation. For the earliest beginnings of crowd psychology as a science, some have claimed that crowd conflict occurs through the convergence of certain kinds of individuals (usually with criminal, violent, or poorly socialized dispositions). From the 1960s urban riots in the USA to the 2011 English riots, proponents of such ideas have failed to produce the required evidence. In the football context, of course some groups seek conflict, but this in itself can’t explain collective behaviour. As Stott and Pearson explain, the 'hooligan' concept has little explanatory power: ‘disorder’ sometimes occurs when known ‘hooligans’ are not present; and when known ‘hooligans’ are present, ‘disorder’ doesn’t always take place.

Key reading: Pearson & Stott (2022)

6. Mob mentality

An overarching zombie idea, that links many of the above, but which also includes the distinctive claims that in crowds people revert to a simpler, less intelligent, and more primitive or archaic psychology, under the influence of which behaviour tends to gullibility, barbarism, loss of control, and violence. The fundamental problem here is two-fold. First, if this is a real tendency it cannot easily explain the majority of crowds, which are peaceful and pro-social. Second, the suggestion of a universal tendency like this cannot explain the social form of behaviour when there is crowd violence. To explain the distinct targets of the sans culottes, urban rioters, football fans and many others, and the sophistication in even the most violent crowd, it makes better sense to refer to their identities, group norms, and values.

Key reading: Reicher (1984)

Ten things I learned from being editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology

Today (31^st December 2019) I step down from being editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology (BJSP), a post I have occupied for three years, shared with Hanna Zagefka (Royal Holloway University of London). The occasion has prompted me to review some of the things I have learned (or views I have developed) from the role. 

Before I do that, it is worth explaining what being an editor entails. The following applies to BJSP but is also true of many other academic journals. The basic bread-and-butter job of the editor (also called ‘chief editor’ or ‘editor-in-chief’) is triage. This means that when submissions come into the journal, the editor decides whether they should be considered further or rejected there and then (‘desk-rejection). If the editor thinks a submission merits further consideration, s/he forwards it to one of the journal’s associate editors. These are the people that invite the reviewers. The reviewers might be people listed as on the journal’s editorial board as ‘editorial consultants’, but more likely they are anyone the associate editor regards as most appropriate and willing to provide expert refereeing for the particular submission. 

So, if you are considering any of these roles, you might find useful some of my thoughts on editing a journal.

1. Co-editing is good

In the past, a single editor-in-chief was the norm. Today, shared editorships are becoming more common. Sharing the editorship is helpful for a number of reasons. First, you benefit from each other’s experience and judgement. In my case, Hanna’s decision-making presented solutions to numerous tricky problems that I struggled over. Second, and more practically, sharing the load allows breaks from triage and enables holidays without a backlog building up.

2. Reviews are not decisions; associate editors use their judgement to make decisions

Editors receiving reviews should use these reviews to make their judgements about a submission. You may be surprised to learn, however, that for some journals (not ours) the editor stands back, and exercises little of their own judgement. They treat the reviews as if speaking for themselves. This means that for a ‘revise and resubmit’ they automatically send the revision out for review again. In my view, this is sometimes a waste of time. Even where a significant revision is required, if the editor has the expertise to judge whether the author has made the necessary changes (and can determine that these changes have not adversely affected the rest of the paper) a second round of reviews is not necessary. If the editor needs the extra expertise then send it out again, but otherwise the editor’s job is not to stand back but to think for him- or herself. 

3. Manage your associate editors

It follows from the point above that it is necessary to appoint associate editors with the range of expertise sufficient to cover the types of papers that get submitted to the journal. So you need to find out what kind of thing gets submitted, what kinds of topics are submitted most often, and who in the discipline has knowledge in that area. There is another consideration, however. When I look at the lists of associate editors for some journals, I think either the journal doesn’t have many submissions, or those associate editors are burned out. At BJSP, we managed the issue of the workload of associate editors by appointing a large number of them, to spread the load. This makes it more likely that your associate editors will get to their allocated submissions in time and that they will give them the care and attention they need.

4. Triage is emotional labour

Just as it’s exciting to find promising and interesting submissions in the editor’s inbox, there is an emotional cost to handling the rejections. As authors ourselves, we know the pain of a rejected paper. We know the time and effort that has gone in. At BJSP, in common with many journals, the desk-reject rate at triage is around 50% (and the total rejection rate closer to 85%). That’s a lot of disappointing news to give.

5. Give rejected authors something constructive

At the triage stage, rejections occur for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, papers are rejected because authors are not familiar with the culture of research publishing. The editor has a responsibility to help these aspiring authors learn something, even if it’s simple things like the presentation of statistics. In fact, the same is true of more experienced authors who might also get rejected at this stage. It is incumbent on editors to include in the rejection letter something constructive that the authors can use as they take their work forward.

6. It’s hard to spot top papers

One of the pieces of advice I remember receiving in a discussion about improving the journal’s impact factor was to identify early those papers that are likely to be well-received. But this turned out to be much harder to do than you might imagine (at least for me). Quite a few of those submissions that I thought would likely get a lot of interest were rejected by the associate editor (and sometimes even desk-rejected), and one or two of those that I thought only just scraped in were among those most highly cited.

7. Think carefully about special issues

Another piece of advice we received was about special issues. It is widely thought that these are typically highly popular and highly cited. If you are an editor considering a call for a special issue, I suggest you check the data from your journal. While for some disciplines and journals, special issues always work, for others the articles in special issues actually get fewer people reading and citing them than normal articles. The lesson here is think carefully about the topic of the special issue. Is it one that large numbers are interested in or not?

8. Keep an eye on the website

In the old days, of course, the triage role of the editor would be all there is, more or less. But since the journal will now have a website, and online versions which will be the principal way that readers access articles, in my view it is important to keep an eye on how the journal is being presented online. The job of managing the website will fall to the journal publishers, of course, but editors will be the best judge of content and so will have views on prominence of content across the site.

9. Run a social media account

Twitter is now clearly an excellent way of raising the profile of particular articles and indeed the journal as whole. The publisher will probably have their own Twitter account, but your name and profile can help in all promotion drives, and can result in greater interest in the journal from both readers (measured in both downloads and impact factor) and authors (measured in number and quality of submissions).

10. Typesetting is not proof-reading

Many journal publishers do not provide a full proof-read of the articles they publish. At all stages, associate editors and authors should be alerted to any presentational issues in their manuscript, and authors should check all drafts and proofs very carefully. Sometimes typesetters introduce new errors into a manuscript, so vigilance is required.