Crowd behavior

With exception to the recent World Trade Center crisis, I had never seen anything more bizarre and disturbing then the Los Angeles riots. I can remember watching television and wondering in amazement at how people could act in such chaos and pandemonium. People whom had been law-abiding citizens the day before were now engaged to the point of looting and physical brutality. Upon reading Le Bon and Asch’s work, I have only yet to …

…of Asch and Le Bon I am better able to understand the extreme personalities that emerge in crow behaviors. When deindividuation sets in the responsibility is deferred from the individual’s conscience and they will perform tasks that they would normally find immoral and wrong. This of course does not make it right for an individual to do so but at least it gives a conceivable reason for individuals to act in such a manner.