Amid COVID, studies in Denmark suggest that crowds do not always engage in bad behavior—and that mass-gatherings sometimes offer meaningful connection
The long days of summer have returned to the Northern Hemisphere. They promise music festivals, sporting events, camps and travel. But for many people, the scars of a global pandemic have made these activities feel fraught with worry.
As psychologists, we are curious about these questions, too. A classic theory in psychology suggested that people in large crowds lose their sense of self and become emotionally impulsive and susceptible to the influence of others. As a consequence, the logic went, those in a crowd become reckless, violent and destructive. Though this characterization of crowd psychology is out of date, it’s been hard to shake. Many people still assume that groups will invariably engage in risky behavior.
In an initial investigation of how people felt about group events, we surveyed more than 18,000 would-be attendees at one of Europe’s largest outdoor music festivals, planned for June and July 2020. Our findings revealed that people who felt comfortable and safe about the prospect of attending these events were influenced by at least two factors. First, they felt a sense of shared identity with other festivalgoers.
Many people told us that they deeply wanted to connect with others in the crowd. They were not unaware of the risks, nor did they blithely ignore these dangers because they wanted to socialize. People came out because they weighed the joy of being together as greater than the risk of contracting or transmitting COVID. Members of the crowd lamented being separated from others during the pandemic and were excited to participate in what they conceptualized as a relatively safe environment.
Of course, there are many counterexamples of group events in which people have behaved badly or put themselves at serious risk. A contemporary perspective on group behavior reveals that these actions are, in a sense, predictable, based on the motivations for gathering in the first place. In other words, crowds don’t transform people’s motivations for the worse. Instead being in a large group allows people to live out shared motives and intentions—whether positive or negative.
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