Jared Clawson

Professor Matt Barton

COMM 3100
September 30, 2020
Social Contagion Theory
Numerous illustrations throughout human history have made it abundantly clear that,
when in groups, people tend to not think straight. Whether it be years of bloody revolt, paranoid
witch hunts, or more recent examples of civil unrest such as the racially-charged rioting the
nation has witnessed, an individual can easily be swept off into irrational territory when inserted
into a determined group. Why is it that this happens? A most level-headed person, finding
themselves embedded in a particular scenario, can order and perform the most outrageous
behavior. Social Contagion Theory, also called Collective Behavior Theory, seeks to answer just
that–why people act irrationally as a collective in contrast to their individual aptitudes.
The theory was pioneered following a man’s sickened spectation of the years of
gruesome civic turmoil in France during the 18th and 19th centuries. Gustave LeBon personally
observed ordinarily reasonable people gather in mobs only to behead hundreds and thousands of
men and women and perpetuate violence and death, only to return home normally as one would
after a 9-5 shift. He resolved that when people gather in groups, there simply must be a
“contagion” that is communicated between members, until one collective consciousness is
formed and the individual ceases to speak for themselves. It is following this convergence that a
crowd is reduced to their “lowest,” meaning least-intelligence and most impulsive, member. It is
then that this new entity, products of their environments and personal convictions, acts
collectively to behave in ridiculous ways.
LeBon, despite not being a sociologist of any sort and having rather outdated views,
managed to provide an excellent skeleton for what would become the Social Contagion and
Collective Behavior theories. However, he didn’t accomplish outlining the “how”–just the
“what.” Just nine years after the publication of LeBon’s book, sociologist Robert Park took and
improved his ideas, seeking to provide the hitherto lacking “how.” He observed, similarly to
LeBon, that this crowd mentality certainly existed and allowed ordinary people to do unordinary
things, but that there were many important, empirical factors contributing to the phenomenon. It
was not a matter of some mystical force (LeBon believed that there was a literal contagion that
was spread) but perfectly explanatory human behavior, which he called “circular reaction,” a
system of attention and imitation produced out of a crowd involved in an emotionally elevating
situation. It is out of this, Park argued, that a collective mind is born. He also proposed a diverse
system of crowds, such as the “ecstatic crowd,” an aroused crowd with no clear intention but
expression, such as religious denominations like Quakers, and the “milling” crowd, excited and
aimless like cattle.
Park dramatically enhanced and developed the theory, but its third major contributor,
Herbert Blume, fleshed it out and advanced it into accepted scientific thought even further,
modifying and expounding on original terms, and including new key definitions on the way
individuals and crowds communicate and interact. He distinguished the difference between an
individual's mental state in an intense crowd situation and normal conditions, which he calls
“interpretive interaction.” It’s when an individual fails to interpret as they would typically that
Park’s “circular reaction” arises. He also elaborated on “milling,” stating that in a crowd’s
aroused state they are extra sensitive to outside stimulus, driving them to ignore outside
influences and limit themselves to their crowd. This is when the “contagion” begins, according to
Blumer, and the collective mind is produced. One innovation Blumer introduced to the theory is
the idea of the “mass,” a similarly collective mind attuned to the same stimulus, but not
composed of direct interaction, such as those groups that follow a murder trial on television or
that get heavily invested in a sports team.
In essence, Social Contagion Theory, or Collective Behavior Theory, aims to understand
how ideas and behavior are communicated in group settings that drive individuals to behave in
collective ways that they never would while in isolation. Its pioneers believed that when this
collective mindset emerges, the self-awareness of the individual breaks down and a group’s
members submit to a singular entity of sorts, often behaving irrationally and lacking self-control.
This can explain extensive examples of such collective behavior throughout history, and can
hopefully help us, as a society, refrain from degenerating to such behavior in the future.

Bibliography
LeBon, Gustave. “General Characteristics of Crowds - Psychological Law of Their Mental
Unity.”
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, 1895, pp. 9–14.
Park, Robert. “Collective Behavior.” Introduction to the Science of Sociology, University of
Chicago Press, 1972, pp. 865–874.
Blumer, Herbert. “Social Problems as Collective Behavior.” Social Problems, Vol. 18, No. 3,
University of California Press, 1971, pp. 298–306.
Locher, David A. “Social Contagion Theory.” Collective Behavior, Prentice Hall, 2002, pp.
11–23.