If the individuals of a crowd confined themselves to putting in common the ordinary qualities of which each of them has his share, there would merely result the striking of an average, and not, as we have said is actually the case, the creation of new characteristics. How is it that these new characteristics are created? This is what we are now to investigate.
Different causes determine the appearance of these characteristics peculiar to crowds, and not possessed by isolated individuals. The first is that the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, he would perforce have kept under restraint. He will be the less disposed to check himself from the consideration that, a crowd being anonymous, and in consequence irresponsible, the sentiment of responsibility which always controls individuals disappears entirely.
The second cause, which is contagion, also intervenes to determine the manifestation in crowds of their special characteristics, and at the same time the trend they are to take. Contagion is a phenomenon of which it is easy to establish the presence, but that it is not easy to explain. It must be classed among those phenomena of a hypnotic order, which we shall shortly study. In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the collective interest. This is an aptitude very contrary to his nature, and of which a man is scarcely capable, except when he makes part of a crowd.
A third cause, and by far the most important, determines in the individuals of a crowd special characteristics which are quite contrary at times to those presented by the isolated individual. I allude to that suggestibility of which, moreover, the contagion mentioned above is neither more nor less than an effect.
To understand this phenomenon it is necessary to bear in mind certain recent physiological discoveries. We know to-day that by various processes an individual may be brought into such a condition that, having entirely lost his conscious personality, he obeys all the suggestions of the operator who has deprived him of it, and commits acts in utter contradiction with his character and habits. The most careful observations seem to prove that an individual immersed for some length of time in a crowd in action soon finds himself—either in consequence of the magnetic influence given out by the crowd, or from some other cause of which we are ignorant—in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotised individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotiser. The activity of the brain being paralysed in the case of the hypnotised subject, the latter becomes the slave of all the unconscious activities of his spinal cord, which the hypnotiser directs at will. The conscious personality has entirely vanished; will and discernment are lost. All feelings and thoughts are bent in the direction determined by the hypnotiser.
Such also is approximately the state of the individual forming part of a psychological crowd. He is no longer conscious of his acts. In his case, as in the case of the hypnotised subject, at the same time that certain faculties are destroyed, others may be brought to a high degree of exaltation. Under the influence of a suggestion, he will undertake the accomplishment of certain acts with irresistible impetuosity. This impetuosity is the more irresistible in the case of crowds than in that of the hypnotised subject, from the fact that, the suggestion being the same for all the individuals of the crowd, it gains in strength by reciprocity.
The individualities in the crowd who might possess a personality sufficiently strong to resist the suggestion are too few in number to struggle against the current. At the utmost, they may be able to attempt a diversion by means of different suggestions. It is in this way, for instance, that a happy expression, an image opportunely evoked, have occasionally deterred crowds from the most bloodthirsty acts.
We see, then, that the disappearance of the conscious personality, the predominance of the unconscious personality, the turning of feelings and ideas in an identical direction by means of suggestion and contagion, the tendency to immediately transform the suggested ideas into acts; these, we see, are the principal characteristics of the individual forming part of a crowd. He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will.
Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings, whom he further tends to resemble by the facility with which he allows himself to be impressed by words and images—which would be entirely without action on each of the isolated individuals composing the crowd—and to be induced to commit acts contrary to his most obvious interests and his best-known habits. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.
It is for these reasons that juries are seen to deliver verdicts of which each individual juror would disapprove, that parliamentary assemblies adopt laws and measures of which each of their members would disapprove in his own person.--Gustave Le Bon (1986 [1895] [Psychologie des Foules] The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, pp. 6-8 (translation of second edition published by Dover)
The (1785) Condorcet Jury theorem tells us that with modest assumptions, the rule of more is better and, thereby, vindicates democracy from the verdict of history by all the learned. A century later, near the end of his book, Le Bon admits that "the parliamentary system represents the ideal of all modern civilised peoples. The system is the expression of the idea, psychologically erroneous, but generally admitted, that a large gathering of men is much more capable than a small number of coming to a wise and independent decision on a given subject." (123) While the official theme of Le Bon's book is to offer an explanation of the functioning of crowds qua crowds, there are two sub-themes in his argument: first, how come the psychologically erroneous idea persists as a civilizational dogma (that is, Le Bon gives us a theory of the rise and fall of civilizations and institutions)?; second, why does the Jury Theorem fail so often in practice, despite the fact that it should function as a self-fulling prophecy given that people widely expect it to succeed?+ Lurking in the second sub-theme is an account of why institutions fail in different places despite the pull of incentives, and why demagogues may succeed.
Le Bon is no friend of democracy. But in this book he has little interest in offering a replacement for democracy because he accepts Tocqueville's claim that in an era of equality men have "an almost limitless confidence in the judgments of the public." In fact, he quite clearly argues that limiting the franchise to a meritocratic sub-set (a la Mill or Brennan) won't improve matters. Because for him once in a crowd, even widely diverging people behave similarly and lose a lot of the characteristics that give them their individuality.* In a crowd "men always tend to the same [low] level.....with regard to social problems... mean are substantially, equally ignorant."
Before I confront the announced subject of this post, I need to be clear about some of his population assumptions. Le Bon works with a contrast between barbarism and civilization. And once in a crowd otherwise civilized people are likely to become barbaric. Despite Le Bon's racism, all kinds of people can become civilized. (Throughout the book, he treats Islam as one of the great civilizations.) Le Bon also works with a racial theory. And it does important work for him because for him races have deep-seated commitments that help explain how people qua people respond differently to stimuli and incentives.
I actually think that what Le Bon calls a 'race,' is (for students) better translated by 'nation.' For, while Le Bon is undoubtedly casually racist (and sexist) in our modern sense (and clearly admires Anglo-Saxons over his own Latins), his race theory turns out to be primarily sociological: that is, a race is constituted by shared history, shared dogmatic commitments, and shared practices (including language). So, Le Bon's 'race' is not far removed from Renan's 'nation.' And crucially the biological stock of a race is never pure according to Le Bon. (This is because for him barbarism, which is always prior to civilization, is always a period of mixing.) And somewhat surprisingly -- given his reactionary mindset -- when explaining crowds no race escapes being barbaric in the crowd.
The brilliance of Condorcet's proof resides, in part, in the fact that (a) he assumes very modest voter competence. All that is needed (recall) is better than chance odds for getting things right. Let's call this average intelligence. Unlike modern students of Condorcet, who recognize that the conditions of (b) independence and (c) lack of communication, may often be violated, Le Bon thinks this (a) is the weak part of Condorcet's proof. For while Le Bon accepts Condorcet's assumption that in a crowd we are (d) sincere, Le Bon thinks that once we become part of a crowd (and for him juries are also crowds) in our sincerity our competence reduces below such average. We become as it were for him hypnotized automatons.
To be sure, Le bon thinks that in a crowd we stop acting independently in large part because through the mechanism of contagious sympathy, we end up being suggestible by the same influences. Group diversity, which might give a crowd intellectual strength, evaporates for Le Bon and we become homogeneous, hypnotized automatons in a crowd. And while the Stoic sage is homogeneous with other Stoic sage in his philosophical virtue, crowds act like one in pursuit of one idol or another.
One may well wonder if the shared feeling of invincibility is really the triggering cause of crowd-like phenomena, and to what degree hypnosis is really the best physiological explanation and explanatory analogy for crowd behavior. I am here not to defend Le Bon. But I do note it is no objection to Le Bon's theory that some crowds get it right or produced fine political outcomes. Le Bon explicitly admits that crowds may well be heroic or help found great civilizations (etc.). If you are fond of great strikes or mass protests, Le Bon is happy to admit that these shape history.
Rather the key point is that friends of Condorcet's jury theorem assume methodological individualism: that being within a jury/crowd baseline competence is not reduced or at least not so reduced as to fall under average. And Le Bon points out this commitment (a) needs to be earned if, as is not wholly implausible, cognitive characteristics are changed when in large company (subject to polarization, group loyalty, sense of justice, etc.).
One way to put this is that in practice, the assumptions of independence and lack of communication secure the modest competence the Jury Theorem relies on. Le Bon's point is recognized by many procedural interventions/norms that prevent a group of deciding individuals to act as crowds.** That is to say, deliberative democrats are, in a way, Le Bon's true heirs.
+Condorcet (recall) is never mentioned by name. But the very structure of Psychologie des Foules, suggests that Le Bon is targeting the jury theorem (including non-trivial discussion of actual juries).
*There is another quite interesting exploration of the nature of individuality in civilizational decline. But about that some other time.
**Le Bon has great fun treating such interventions as a virtue of his theory.
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