ABSTRACT
A number of social psychologists have suggested that simply being immersed in a large group is enough to cause one to engage in impetuous, wanton behavior. Le Bon described how an individual immersed in a crowd descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization. The perpetrator is temporarily unaware of being an individual. These range from the vigilante lynchings and other acts of violence against Blacks in the United States in the early 1900s; to Kristallnacht, a 1938 uprising in which Nazi hoodlums attacked Jews, looted their property, and burned their synagogues; to the riots in Watts, Harlem, and Newark in reaction to White racism in the 1960s. Transgression rates were notably higher in groups in which the first child took money or extra candy compared to groups in which the first child took only a single piece of candy.
