Crowd psychology

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A category of social psychology known as "crowd psychology," or "mob psychology," examines how the psychology of a group of people differs from the psychology of any one person within the group. The study of crowd psychology looks into the actions and thought processes of both the individual members of the crowd and the crowd as a collective social entity. The behavior of a crowd is much influenced by deindividuation, a person's loss of responsibility, and the person's impression of the universality of behavior, both of which conditions increase in magnitude with size of the crowd.^[1][2] Notable theorists in crowd psychology include Gustave Le Bon, Gabriel Tarde, and Sigmund Freud.^[3] Many of these theories are today tested or used to simulate crowd behaviors in normal or emergency situations. One of the main focuses in these simulation works is to prevent crowd crushes and stampedes.^[4][5]