the crowd

Thursday, 7 May 2020

Why collective behaviour will get us through the Covid-19 pandemic: Sussex psychologist Professor John Drury is among a group of behaviour scientists giving the UK government guidance during the coronavirus pandemic.

Prof John Drury: Brighton, University of Sussex, United Kingdom; I am a Social Psychologist at the University of Sussex. My research is on the crowd. Crowd events are a locus of both psychological determination and transformation. My research examines how social identities both shape participants’ actions but also change their sense of self, with important psychological and political consequences. I am also studying mass emergency behaviour, in order to develop a model of collective resilience – for example by exploring experiences of crowd solidarity behaviour in the London bombings of 2005. With David Novelli and Steve Reicher, I have been examining the way that one's 'tolerance' for social density and 'personal space' varies in relation to whichever of one's social identities is salient in relation to the identities of others present. Crowds are routinely pathologized and/or criminalized. Such constructions have important implications for policy and practice. In my research, I have sought to problematize such accounts and hence suggest a language for the crowd that recognizes and indeed celebrates its positive potential in the social world.

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